Avoiding the definitional confusion, Baum et al. (1998) opted to define the term
vision as each leader defines it, reasoning that it is the leader’s actual vision that guides
his/her choices and actions. Later on, Mumford and Strange (2005) suggest that vision
is ultimately a cognitive construction or specifically a mental model, a conceptual
representation used to both understand system operations and guide actions within the
system. Taking these two definitions into consideration, a vision is defined in the
higher education context as a mental model each faculty leader defines, used to both
understand system operations and guide actions within the system. This pragmatic
definitional approach is adopted in this paper for two main reasons. First, each leader
arrives at a vision in his/her own way, sometimes rationally and objectively, often
intuitively and subjectively (Nanus, 1992). Second, visionary leadership can vary
significantly from leader to leader in both the leader’s style, the content of the leader’s
vision, and the context in which it takes root (Westley and Mintzberg, 1989). Given
these two reasons, it is essential to consider the visionary tools that the leader
practically employs, rather than a possibly unrelated theoretical definition, in
investigating any relationships between leader vision and organisational performance.