A Vision OF Collaboration And Scholarly Community Essays Examples

The collaboration within a scholarly community implies that all the stakeholders must form a common front, sharing ideas, visions, strategies, regarding the activities that can be developed for the welfare and the prosperity of the community. The stakeholders of the scholarly community is formed by scholars and alumni, and each stakeholder must have a voice within the matters of the scholarly work, research and similar aspects, in order for a community to be formed. Different stakeholders often means different interests, points of view, ideas or visions. The key to resolving the difference of opinion and reach a common agreement is to have a vision, which to facilitate the collaboration, the respect for the others’ opinions and compromise. Because different stakeholders have different needs and, the differences of opinion should be managed through diplomat negotiation, effective communication, and a common vision, transmitted by a leader.
For creating a shared vision, towards which all the scholarly stakeholders to aspire, the higher education leader should develop a plan and convince all the stakeholders of the value and effectiveness of the plan for everybody’s well-being (Van de Stein, 2010). Listening to the stakeholders’ ideas, problems and visions is the first point that must be applied in the strategy of creating a shared vision.
In the diverse opinions and ideas that the scholarly stakeholders have, there are also common objectives and principles, which can be directed at developing a collaborative culture. A scholarly leader should utilize the commonalties between the stakeholders and communicate them, influencing the stakeholder to understand their shared principles.
Pointing out the shared values, shared expectations, shared experiences , shared problems, he leader could work further on developing a shared commitment among stakeholders, in order to mitigate the common problems, to preserved the values and to reach the expectations (Klugman, 2014).
Based on the gathered information from the stakeholders, the higher education leader, focused on creating a shared vision and a scholarly community will define the situation as it is, creating a situation analysis, which to refer to each stakeholder separately, but also to their relationships (Veltsianos & Kimmons, 2012). After the presentation of the actual situation, the next phase for creating a shared vision should be to present the vision for changing the identified situation for bettering it. Communicating the problems, the constraints that the stakeholders encounter in reaching the envisioned direction should follow and next, together with all the shareholders there should be developed shared objectives and shared planning. In the scholarly environment, the main constraint is that the scholars can develop a monastic practice, working individually, with no collaboration, no or limited participation and communication with his or her colleagues (Veletsianos & Konnons, 2012). While different stakeholders from the scholarly environment work together for a common goal, they are already collaborating and sharing the tasks of developing a vision and a community.
In defining the clear purposes and the shared values of the scholarly stakeholders, the role of the higher education leader is a major one. He or she has the power to synthetize the commonalities between the stakeholders and to emphasize specific aspects, for determining stakeholders to believe that they associate with those aspects, which energizes the participants and creates a feeling of belonging (Van de Stein, 2010).
The vision that the leader presents to the stakeholders involved in developing a collaborative vision and a scholarly community should be clear and appealing for everybody involved in the process, in order to gain the stakeholders’ interest. The stakeholders need to understand the desired outcomes, the impact, their involvement in the process (Veletsianos & Konnons, 2012). Based on these aspects, they can move further and define strategies, targets, create codes of conduct and ethics and other shared values that will lead to a shared culture (Van de Stein, 2010). The advantage of the shared vision is that it facilitates the communication, hence the information of all the stakeholders involved in the process. It also allows solid grounds for informed decision-makings, and the discussions that lead to making decisions.
Creating a collaborative culture implies, besides having shared values, codes, guidelines or communications style, sharing leadership and believing in a common vision, which implies sharing mutual respect. Van de Stein (2010) indicates that in creating a collaboration culture, the leader’s role is to influence culture by directing a joint learning. Having the ability to inculcate learning within the group of stakeholders indicates strong leadership and people-skills that the higher education leader should demonstrate, along with the communication and negotiation competences. As the stakeholders are learning what the leader suggests for developing a collaborative culture, the alumni and scholars alike merge and are becoming more receptive to each-others’ ideas. Because they absorb the same information, they develop a unitary value system and a shared culture. The leader can further encourage brainstorming sessions for encouraging the stakeholders to reach common decisions regarding the scholarly situation, future researches that they will develop, methodologies and so on. This climate will allow the stakeholders to start collaborate on the scholarly objectives and to work on the established targets.
Van de Stein (2010) indicates that the most important outcome of having a shared culture is efficiency, as the stakeholders are able to generate qualitative decisions, based on strong beliefs and shared commitment. Developing a scholarly culture of collaboration would generate new innovations and strategies for research and it would also improve and enrich considerably the research materials in various fields. Vetetsianos and Kimmons (2012) state that scholars contribute to a shared collaborative culture from sharing not only values, but also information, critics, and recommendations. Believing in such future objectives, meant to increase the academic prestige of the alumni and scholars, individual and as a community, will influence the stakeholders to work together, learn, and share a collaborative culture. Helping each other to improve their research and scholarly work, scholars will act as the members of a community, sharing not only vision and culture, but also support. A significant point that the leader needs to consider is that all stakeholders need to be equal within the scholarly community in order to settle the equilibrium of the group and the fact that all stakeholders are identical players (Van de Stein, 2010).
A leader in the higher education interested in creating a collaborative vision and culture and to establish a scholarly community will harness a collaborative culture by maximizing the relationships formed and further engaging the stakeholders into the shared vision, for reaching the established objectives. Encouraging feedbacks and argumentative discussions among stakeholders is the starting point of collaboration, which further develops into a collaborative culture by influencing the stakeholders to agree on a common vision. When the stakeholders learn each other’s and the leaders’ proposed values, they already share a collaborative culture, which leads to supporting each other, as members of a community do.

References

Klugman, D. (2014) “Creating a community of scholars on the edge of disaster” Journal of College Admission. Winter, pp. 25-31.
Van de Stein, E. (2010) “On the origin of shared beliefs (and corporate culture)” RAND Journal of Economics. Vol 41, no. 4, pp. 617-648.
Veletsianos, G. & Kimmons, R. (2012) “Networked participatory scholarship: Emergent techno-cultural pressures toward open and digital scholarship in online networks” Computers &Education. Vol. 58, pp. 766-774.