Abstract
This paper suggests that research in the leadership and management of universities and colleges is relatively poorly developed and under-theorised. It offers some lines of departure that could contribute to an improvement of the situation.Pointing to the continuing lack of formal training for managers in this sector, it suggests that if the gentleman amateur manager has now largely been replaced, it is by the amateur manager. The amateur manager now occupies a difficult and tension-filled space, oscillating between professional leader and executive director. Lack of training leaves tertiary level managers dispossessed of a critical capacity to distinguish good from bad management practice, and exposed to the blandishments of each passing management fashion. The paper explores the effects of this exposure (to, for example, transformational management and the learning organisation) and it goes on to identify absences in the field of research into tertiary level management.Finally, it turns to recent development in general management theory to explore the potential of the latest thinking on trust and to propose the emergence of the dissentful organisation.