Leadership: A cultural perspective on review as quality assurance versus quality enhancement

This chapter explores the culture of leadership at Macquarie University and how that might influence the culture of engagement with peer review by comparing the practices and perceptions across four faculties. In particular we examine views of “top-down” and “bottom-up” approaches to peer review to investigate suggestions that a top-down approach can lead to a particular perception of peer review as a form of quality assurance or managerial surveillance imposed by leaders, rather than a form of quality enhancement encouraged through distributed leadership. What emerges is the importance of leadership actively encouraging a culture of learning and collective community of practice. We present a case study of how institutional policy on peer review contrasts with the perceptions of the same policy by staff.