Transformational Leadership and Distributed Governance in Advancing University Internationalization: A Comparative Study of PTNBH Institutions in Indonesia

Abstract

This study explores how transformational leadership interacts with decentralised governance to promote the internationalisation of higher education in Indonesia's autonomous higher education institutions (State-Owned Legal Entity Higher Education Institutions, PTNBH). Using a qualitative comparative case study of three leading PTNBH universitiesa A-Institute, B-Institute, and C-Institute data was collected through in-depth interviews with nine senior leaders to analyse how governance transformation, leadership styles, and institutional culture shape internationalisation outcomes. Findings indicate that transformational leadership characterised by vision setting, motivation, and innovation drives the transition from centralised systems to autonomous governance. Each institution exhibits a distinct expression of distributed leadership: A-Institute emphasises decentralised, faculty-driven autonomy; B-Institute demonstrates innovation-driven, performance-oriented leadership underpinned by financial independence; while C-Institute combines centralised strategic coordination with collaborative, socio-entrepreneurial engagement in the Global South. In all cases, a collaborative ethos and participatory decision-making form the basis for institutional collaboration. This study proposes a Transformational-Distributed Leadership Framework for developing universities, suggesting that sustainable internationalisation depends not only on structural reform but also on leadership practices that integrate autonomy, accountability, shared vision, and organisational learning. The findings should be interpreted in light of the study's purposive sampling of three institutions, the anonymisation of participating institutions, and its reliance on senior-leader perspectives, which together constrain the generalisability of the proposed framework.