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By Kent A. Farnsworth
Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2007, 256pp., $44.95 (hardcover)
Leadership as Service: A New Model for Higher Education in a New Century provides perspective on the need for new models of leadership in higher education, for which the author defines a view of academic management based on service leadership. Kent Farnsworth writes with a significant number of years as a leader in postsecondary education behind him. He starts off by noting mentors and writers who have influenced his view of educational leadership, including individuals such as James Fisher, Robert Greenleaf, and Mary Parker Follet among others. With an academic frame of mind to share knowledge on leadership in higher education, the book postures a conversational, almost literary tone that invites the reader to take an interest in his own years of learning. From the author's insights into leadership for the 21st century is an implicitly subtle foundation for further theory development and comparative study in debated areas such as governance and international education, based on cognizance of local needs and community.
The first two chapters of the book examine the present state of leadership in postsecondary learning. Farnsworth argues for the need of new leadership, believing that institutions have a short window of opportunity to make the changes necessary in preparing education for a changing world. The first chapter notes examples of reform efforts undertaken by institutions to meet new educational demands and briefly develops insights from systems, management and organizational specialist Peter Vaill as well as his personal experience in the Air Force, to then note topics particular to leadership in higher education. Identifying the obstacles of traditional leadership in postsecondary institutions and the problems of resistance to change, the second chapter defines a model based on Greenleaf's leadership as service, that is, principles of Servant-Leadership.
The following two chapters provide a frame of reference from which the challenges to higher educational leadership can be understood. Farnsworth devotes a chapter to lessons from the Wisdom traditions, beginning with that of the East and concluding with service in the West. The author does little to develop and open a market for leadership from the Eastern traditions into an educational context. However, the following chapter provides perspective on the way in which the...