<![CDATA[This study aimed to examine the relationship between strategic leadership styles and faculty professional development in Indonesian Islamic universities. Employing a qualitative multi-site case study design across two pesantren-affiliated institutions Universitas Islam Lamongan (UNISLA) and Universitas Islam Darul Ulum (UNISDA) in Lamongan, East Java. Data were collected through in-depth interviews, participant observation, and document analysis involving 32 key informants including institutional leaders, academic deans, department chairs, and faculty members. This multi-site qualitative study on strategic leadership and faculty professional development across two pesantren-affiliated Islamic universities in Jombang, East Java, generates three empirically grounded propositions. First, effective leadership in Indonesian Islamic higher education takes the form of a formal-charismatic-symbolic style, in which institutional authority, personal charisma, and culturally embedded pesantren values such as sincerity, honesty, devotion, and spiritual blessing (barakah) reinforce one another and collectively underpin the professional development agenda. Second, leadership strategies for faculty professionalization operate most effectively through a combination of persuasive communication, structured training and education, welfare enhancement, internalization of pesantren values, and administrative SOP optimization, with all five strategies operating synergistically rather than in isolation. Third, faculty responses to professional development initiatives reflect a fundamental bifurcation between supportive engagement and resistant withdrawal, mediated by the quality of leadership communication, the perceived fairness of institutional systems, and the extent to which faculty feel their professional aspirations are genuinely valued. This implies that the effectiveness of leadership strategies whether through training, welfare enhancements, or SOP optimization will only achieve optimal impact when injected with core religious values (ikhlas, khidmah, barakah) that transform faculty perception from passive administrative compliance into a spiritually grounded commitment.]]>
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