In charge? (Absent) academic leadership during external assessments

Evaluation literature often emphasises the involvement and interest of local academic leaders as vital conditions for organisational improvement and change during and after assessment processes. Careful planning, organising, staffing and decision‐making in relation to the assessments are in particular highlighted as basic and important responsibilities for academic leaders. By studying a series of external quality assessments of educational programmes at universities and colleges in Norway, and analysing to what extent local department heads influenced the assessment processes, this article suggests that even if such basic leadership responsibilities are taken, a successful outcome of the assessment process is very much related to academic leaders’ ability to translate, interpret and give meaning to the assessment process. This result points to the significance of the cultural and symbolic sides of academic leadership during assessment processes.