According to Albert Chinualugomu Achebe, in Things Fall Apart, “A man who calls his kinsmen to a feast does not do so to redeem them from Starving. They all have food in their own houses. When we gather together in the moonlight village ground, it is not because of the moon. Every man can see it in his own compound. We come together because it is good for kinsmen to do so. Therefore, let us continue with the team spirit and enjoy the power of togetherness. Let’s smile not because we don’t have problems, but because we are stronger than the problems” (1996, p.118).

Chinua Achebe is right. We need teams in practically every aspect of our lives. To drive an organization forward, the top team (functional, exeutive & strategic aspects of leadership) must work together like a well-oiled machine.

Given the inadequate research on the topic of top team working in higher education, there is undoubtedly a need for further research in this area. One outstanding interesting area of potential research borders on the issue of team development in Ghanaian higher education institutions.

A discussion on the meaning of teamwork, particularly in top teams, from the higher education and corporate sectors based on the following literature (Bensimon and Neumann, 1993; Katzenbach, 1998; Wageman et al., 2008) is critical and to relate the findings to the challenges of upper echelons (Hambrick, 2018; Hambrick and Mason, 1984) team working in higher education settings.

The focus of the research should be on the theory and practice of teamwork in top management teams in higher education institutions; in particular on the value of teamwork, and what characterizes effective team working in the upper echelons in both the corporate and higher education sectors. It would be valuable to carry out a more systematic study of the approaches to team development that are in existence, the advantages of each, as well as the usefulness of developing tools and practices that could be of high importance for the sector.

Literature Reference

Achebe, C. (1996). Things Fall Apart. Britain: Heinemann,  p.118.

Bensimon, E. S. and Neumann, A. (1993) Redesigning Collegiate Leadership: Teams and Teamwork in Higher Education. Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University Press.

Hambrick, D.C. (2018). Upper Echelons Theory. In: Augier, M., Teece, D.J. (eds) The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Strategic Management. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-00772-8_785

Hambrick, D.C., & Mason, P. (1984). Upper echelons: The organization as a reflection of its top managers. Academy of Management Review, 9, 193–206.

Katzenbach, J. R. and Smith, D. K. (1993) The Wisdom of Teams. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.

Kennie, T. and Woodfield, S. (2008) The Composition, Challenges and Changes in the Top Team Structures of UK Higher Education Institutions. London: Leadership Foundation for Higher Education

Kezar, A., Jude Paul Matias Dizon, & Scott, D. (2019). Senior Leadership Teams in Higher Education: What We Know and What We Need to Know, Innovative Higher Education, 10.1007/s10755-019-09491-9

Wageman, R., Nunes, D., Burruss, J. and Hackman, J. (2008) Senior Leadership Teams. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.

Woodfield, S., & Kennie, T. (2008). Teamwork or working as a team? The theory and practice of top team working in UK Higher education. Higher Education Quarterly, 62(4), 397-415. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2273.2008.00399.x