Research or management? An investigation of the impact of administrative roles on the research performance of academic administrators

The present study aims to investigate whether the research performance of academic administrators has been affected by their administrative services in a quantitative way. We sampled 116 academic administrators from 26 universities. Statistical methods were applied to compare the research performance of the sampled administrators before and after they accepted the administrative roles. The results suggest that administrative services have strongly affected academic leaders' research performance. The extent of such impact varies in different disciplines. The impact appears to be higher on administrators serving in higher-ranking universities. In addition, the research outputs of both university presidents and department deans have been substantially influenced by the administrative services, whereas the impact on the university presidents is slightly stronger than on the department deans.