Leadership Change in Change Leadership

Due to the increased influence of knowledge on society, higher educational universities seek to transform through new leadership paradigms drawing on the learning, teaching, and research undertakings across all segments of academic communities. The paper concentrates on the necessity to shift the leadership focus from top-down to down-to-top propagation of leadership initiatives. The authors give weight to educational agents for leadership impact and emphasize university teachers’ capacity to transform fundamental knowledge into practical knowledge and then apply it to create new knowledge. The authors provide empirical insights into the ways of enhancing research activity through leadership transformations in the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation. The paper suggests a new perspective on change leadership initiation and invites further research on its tangible embodiment.