Rethinking Institutional Leadership Through the University of the Future Lens: Leadership, Uncertainty, and Sensemaking in Practice

This chapter examines the “University of the Future” as a leadership perspective shaped by uncertainty rather than as a fixed institutional model. Drawing on a reflective analysis of seven leadership artefacts produced between 2019 and 2025 within an open university system, the chapter traces a shift from futures imagined as governable visions towards futures understood as conditions of uncertainty. Using Barnett’s concept of supercomplexity as an interpretive lens, it argues that leadership in contemporary higher education increasingly involves sensemaking and ethical judgement rather than the execution of predetermined strategies. The analysis highlights how digitalisation, artificial intelligence, and the mainstreaming of online education challenge the assumed distinctiveness of open universities and expose tensions between scale, efficiency, care, and inclusion. Sustainability is consequently reframed beyond rhetorical commitment as the capacity to sustain responsible institutional action over time. The chapter concludes that the University of the Future is most productive when treated as a reflective framework that foregrounds accountability, adaptability, and ethical leadership in navigating uncertain educational futures.