Academic Agency and Leadership in Tourism Higher Education

This paper explores the leadership agency of tourism faculty in higher education and recommends actions to enhance leadership for social change. Based on a review of literature grounded within an agency perspective, a conceptual framework is presented that identifies systemic and individual influences on leadership. Three types of freedom for faculty to engage in leadership behaviors arise: (1) the capacity of the individual to lead; (2) the freedom afforded by the organizational context to lead in accordance with one’s capacity to lead; and (3) the social freedom to lead derived from each faculty member’s disciplinary and departmental norms and structures.