Toward Knowledge-Based Economy: Innovation and Transformational Leadership in Public Universities in Texas and Qatar

Abstract

The essentiality of the universities’ roles in enhancing economies and transforming societies is a global mantra. However, when it comes to wealthy and oil-dependent states such as Texas in the United States and Qatar in the Middle East, the impact of universities on sustainable economic development is questionable. This article discusses the transformational efforts within engineering colleges at two public universities in Texas and in Qatar to support their states’ visions in moving toward innovative and knowledge-based economies. The study examined the innovation capacity building of both institutions through measuring the transformational leadership styles in engineering colleges and its impact on the faculty’s innovative production of technical articles, patents, and sustainable development-related courses. The cultural impact of the two contexts on the leader–follower relationship was addressed in the discussion using Hofstede’s cultural dimension framework. The results showed that leaders in both colleges possess a transformational leadership style, albeit lower than the norm. This study disclosed that, in the high-power distance contexts, the idealized image of the leader contributed positively toward higher satisfaction of the followers with their leaders and current governance systems, while acknowledgment and rewards were the sources of satisfaction in low-power distance societies. Followers in a low uncertainty avoidance, individualistic, and short-term-oriented context achieved higher technical production. Both public universities expressed the need for government involvement in supporting the culture of innovation.

Innovation speed and quality in higher education institutions: the role of knowledge management enablers and knowledge sharing process

“…Innovation in HEIs is primarily manifested in their central functions, namely, research and teaching (Elrehail et al, 2018), that represent knowledge production and knowledge dissemination, respectively (Quarchioni et al, 2020). Therefore, scholars have recognized innovation in HEIs as an institution's ability to develop and implement novel ideas (Boroujerdi et al, 2019), such as new academic programs, teaching materials and methodologies and research projects that represent product and process innovation (Al-Mansoori and Koc ¸, 2019a). Prior studies identifying antecedents of innovation in HEIs have largely focused on these two main dimensions of innovation (Elrehail et al, 2018).…”

What Are the Binding Constraints for a Knowledge-Based Economy in Qatar?

“…Regarding KBE activities in Qatar, previous studies examined various aspects of development, including the educational sector, the strengths and weaknesses involved in achieving a KBE in Qatar, the ICT and innovation ecosystem, the entrepreneurship ecosystem, and the education hub [2,[34][35][36][37].…”

“…Ref. [35] investigated the transformational efforts of engineering colleges in both Texas and Qatar to support their states' visions toward an innovative and knowledge-based economy. Hofstede's cultural dimension framework was used to address the cultural impact of the two states on the leader-follower relationship, finding that leaders in both colleges possessed a transformational leadership style, even when exhibited to a lesser degree than the norm.…”

Liderazgo en instituciones de educación superior: Un análisis a través de Bibliometrix R

“…(producción científica, responsabilidad social corporativa, logro de la calidad, flexibilidad, gestión y efectividad institucional). En este contexto, se reconocen investigaciones en países como Estados Unidos y Qatar [19,20], China [12,21,22], Suecia [23], Malasia [24], Indonesia [25], Filipinas [26], Vietnam [27,28], India [29], Palestina [30], Irán [31,32], Irak [33,34,35], Pakistán [13,36,37,38,39], Jordania [40], Nigeria [41], España [42,43], México [44], Colombia [45] y Chile [46].…”