The Perception of Agile Leadership of Employees in VUCA World: Research at a State University

Whether an organization can adapt to the challenges and opportunities it will face in the future depends on the agility of leaders. The behavior of leaders, top managers and staff can be examined in terms of VUCA components. Among the components of VUCA (variability, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity), the emergence of intolerance of ambiguity, poor cognitive flexibility, and low tolerance for ambiguity result in varying degrees of weakening of agile leadership in a VUCA environment among leaders, senior managers, and staff. In terms of examining agile leadership in VUCA environments, we can think of universities as businesses. In this study, the relationships between the perceptions of the academic/administrative staff towards the VUCA components and the perceptions of the managers on the agile leadership skills were examined. Based on these relationships, the aim was to determine university staff's perspective on agile leadership in the VUCA environment and to develop strategies that will enable university leaders to become more agile. In this context, data obtained through an online survey were analyzed using SPSS 25.0 and AMOS 21.0 statistical packages. Purposive sampling was used as the method. It was also determined whether the perceptions of VUCA components and agile leadership skills differ according to the gender and marital status of the employees. As a result of the research, it was determined that the staffs' mean scores of resistance to change were low, while the mean scores of cognitive flexibility, tolerance of ambiguity, prospective/inhibitory anxiety were high. It has been revealed that the average score of the employees' perceptions of their managers' result-orientedness, competence and speediness is higher. A positive and statistically significant relationship was found between cognitive flexibility scores and perception of speediness. In this context, if the cognitive flexibility of the employees increases, their perceptions of the speed of their managers will also tend to increase.