In line with 'the entrepreneurial university' discourse, managerialism and performative culture brought new expectations to faculty such as developing online programmes/courses, carrying out training for professionals, obtaining research funds, leading projects in cooperation with industry/business, collaborating with colleagues from various disciplines, participating in international networks and representing their disciplines and institutions. These new duties and the traditional roles of academics, as knowledge producer and public intellectual, constitute their intellectual leadership. Given these new circumstances, it is important to investigate the influence of universities' organizational components to understand how university managers can support academics' intellectual leadership. This research aims to explore intermediary relations between communication, climate and managerial practice flexibility in universities and academics' intellectual leadership. Quantitative data were collected from 937 Turkish faculty via an online questionnaire and analysed using Path analyses. Analysis revealed that faculty, by their intellectual leadership behaviours, contribute to the development of their disciplines, institutions and society, and that communication in universities has a strong impact on faculty's intellectual leadership by mediation of the organizational climate and managerial flexibility regarding scholarly practices. Consequently, university managers should establish functional communication systems in their institutions to generate a positive atmosphere and to maximize the efficiency of institutional practices.