Subtitle: What is the position of the European University Association (EUA) in attempts to enhance the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) by academic leadership? The level of awareness of higher education as a global commodity has risen increasingly among European universities during the last decade. This has already affected the strategic planning of research and tuition in universities in Europe. The relatively new market mindedness of European universities can also be seen in more managerial activities for cost-efficiency. Scholars in Higher Education Studies link especially the latter to general New Public Managerial trends for the administration of public or semi-public services. Guy Neave sees the latter trend as universities being incorporated by the Evaluative State (Neave 2007). Is the EUA really creating a platform for a common European way of organizing the academic leadership of research priorities and curricula planning at European universities? Or is it only propagating for more stringent management of funds and personnel within the European higher education institutions? What emphasis is put on institutional autonomy of the universities in Europe? My paper aims to answer these questions by analyzing the policy documents issued by the EUA during the last decade. I am departing from the perspectives of historical and sociological institutionalism in my analysis. Distinctions between academic leadership and management are of interest for Higher Education researchers. This distinction highlights the entrepreneurial and pastoral role of academic leaders, and the planning, coordination and control responsibilities of academic managers. This can be summarized by narrowing in leaders and managers main duties according to Kotter’s (1990) theory on leadership for organizations in change “Leaders establish goals, managers manage resources”. My goal is to find out which policy initiatives by the EUA can be categorized as mainly managerial and which of them can be seen as more strategic academic leadership maneuvers. I will do this by content analysis of the EUA policy documents between 2001 and 2009 including the future goals for European universities and the means to achieve them.
