Purpose - Positional and influential leaders have a key role in leading change and promoting continuous improvement in higher education. The following research question acted as a guide for this study: "What are the importance and presence of change leadership characteristics?" While there is little consensus on the associated characteristics needed for leading change, this paper utilised eight key sources from a diverse selection of sectors to compile a total of 25 characteristics. These characteristics were grouped into themes of strategy, culture, relationships, capability, and tactics. The presence and importance of these characteristics are then assessed. Design/methodology/approach- Complexity theory was used as a suitable theoretical lens and a mixed methods approach using both qualitative and quantitative research methods was undertaken in this study. This overall research was done in 4 stages, the first stage involved a document analysis of the TU submission document. The second stage involved management staff focus groups, while the primary source of data utilised to respond to this paper's research question was from stage 3 staff survey (n = 371). The fourth stage focused on an interview of the president. While stage 3 was the primary stage for this research question, all stages were used to support these findings as appropriate. Findings- In this case study, the characteristics associated with strategy were found to be the most important followed by culture, relationships, capability, and tactics. Survey respondents believed that the characteristics are between 'very important' and 'absolutely essential' for change leaders to exhibit. However, participants were between 'undecided' and 'agree' for the presence of these characteristics within their organisation. Overall, findings indicate a lack of presence of change leadership characteristics that are important to staff. This could be a constraint to various change initiatives such as continuous improvement and may be related to staff having a lack of awareness of these characteristics, resource constraints or training. Research limitations/implications- Although findings from this study are limited to one case study in a new technological university, they will be of interest to other HEIs and other organisations who are interested in change leadership and wish to carry out similar research. Originality/value- This paper starts to consolidate the fragmented literature on change leadership and syntheses and tests suitable change leadership characteristics. By assessing the importance and presence of these characteristics, a better understanding of change leadership capability has been gained within higher education in Ireland.
