Navigating Dynamic Tensions: A Social Network Framework for Leadership Development

• In Event: Conversations of Women in Higher Education Leadership Roles: Considering Pipelines, Diversity, Opportunities, and Challenges

Abstract

Leadership development trajectories among women in higher education leadership permeate multitudes of dynamic tensions. On pathways to advancement, these tensions encompass perpetual ‘holding’ patterns, enabling and constraining forces on the path to success. What frames the continuum of these bidirectional forces is the social context of institutions and organizations as systems of interdependent social interactions. Institutions and organizations imbue the sociality of cognitive-affective schemas, dynamics of relational exchange, and innerworkings of structural coordination. This multilevel interplay is activated within channels of interactions –visible and invisible social networks weaved into the fabric of social systems. At the intersection of these domains is social capital. Social capital mobilized within social networks can cast light on salient, though nonlinear pathways to leadership development. How can women in higher education leadership navigate the dynamic tensions in social networks and mobilize social capital to develop leadership capacity? Drawing on social cognitive and social exchange theories, this study explores the question using a conceptual framework that captures the multilevel context of enabling and constraining forces on the path to leadership development. This frame represents a developmental roadmap for women in higher education leadership that articulates tensions in aims, values, and expectations driving individual and collective action.

Author

• Ekaterina Elgayeva