Developing a Winning Culture in Autonomous Indian Engineering Institutions

The twenty-first century offers excellent opportunities for engineering institutions to grow. These opportunities demand an appropriate culture to facilitate the institute faculty members and develop them to offer cutting-edge programs. Many institutes suffer from a want of an appropriate winning culture. The objectives of this research are to assess the harms created by toxic leaders in distorting the academic culture, to explore methods to eradicate toxic leaders' actions, to suggest needed winning cultures to facilitate institutional growth, and to identify strategies to institutionalize the winning culture. 1253 faculty members were purposely selected for this research. The twenty-first century offers more opportunities for engineering colleges to develop interdisciplinary programs, offer consultancy projects, undertake sponsored research projects, and provide excellent jobs for graduates. Methods to eradicate the actions and distorted cultures created by toxic leaders were explored. Based on the literature survey, existing cultural models of corporates were identified. Significant cultural models of world-class universities were identified. The harm created by toxic leaders was identified. Appropriate methods to eradicate the actions and distorted cultures created by toxic leaders were synthesized. A needed culture for creating and maintaining high-performance research teams was recommended. A model for a desired set of academic cultures was developed. The model was validated through three engineering institutions and found to be satisfactory. Shortcomings of this research have been identified. Suggestions for further research on engineering culture have been indicated.