Encouraging the development and values of leadership

Higher and further education institutions are complex businesses. Many of the issues they face (including on governance and ethics) are similar to those faced by other organisations. A greater sharing of experience and knowledge on good practice could benefit all parties. Businesses need senior staff who have developed appropriate leadership qualities. The performance of the UK suffers because of leadership and management weaknesses. Higher education can help develop a broad range of capabilities and business awareness in their graduates and equip them to lead; businesses can help in this process.

Hence we:
An organisation's core values and ethics should underpin everything it does. This applies to higher education institutions as much as to any other organisation: how it markets itself in the UK and overseas, how it deals with its students, clients and its research, how it tackles conflicts of interests etc. There is much good practice on these and other issues but there are few comprehensive guides available for any university or college in the UK or overseas.

As a result, an advisory group of the CIHE and the Institute of Business Ethics (IBE), with key higher education organisations and a range of universities and colleges has developed the Guide "Ethics Matters: Managing Ethical Issues in Higher Education"

This guide was launched at the CIHE Council Meeting on the 5th October 2005.

The guide was the result of a successful consultative conference held in June 2005. To view further details on the proceedings of this event, click here to download the conference summary.A review of the report is now available for download here

In support of this guide, Dr John Gibbins (University of Newcastle upon Tyne), produced training material for two CIHE hosted training units for Higher Education Institutions developing their action plans on values. The material for these (one on Generic training and one casestudy on Research ethics) can be downloaded here