An exploratory case study: distributed leadership for reforming higher education leadership and academic governance aligning Vision 2030 in a Saudi Arabian context

The purpose of this study was to examine the current leadership system at the University of Bisha, Saudi Arabia. This qualitative study employed three data collection methods: semistructured interview, interview responses in written form, and document analysis. 31 participants were involved in personal and surveying interviews to investigate the current leadership system across campuses of the University of Bisha. I employed distributed leadership (DL) theory to formulate reasonably and practically substantiated the research questions. The findings answered four main research questions. The first question was about how educational leadership is practiced at the University of Bisha. This study found that the current leadership was practiced in a traditional top-down process with a heroic leadership approach at the University of Bisha that lowered decision-making quality. The second question was related to what extent DL is practiced at the University of Bisha. The findings showed evidence for only a small extent of DL practices at the University of Bisha, which limited autonomy and diversity in academic governance. The third question of this research was in what ways (if any) do educational leadership practices at the University of Bisha align with academic governance as described in Vision 2030? The answer was that two significant behaviors of the current educational leadership need to be reformed to hasten the achievement of Vision 2030, which are limited women’s empowerment and the strict hierarchical leadership. The fourth, and final question, researched how COVID-19 affected leadership practices at the University of Bisha. I found that the University of Bisha embraced DL forms to respond to the COVID-19 crisis, which increased the quality of decisions, professional and personal autonomy, and diversity during the pandemic.