Organizational decline and effectiveness in private higher education

The central purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between organizational decline and three domains of effectiveness (i.e., academic, morale, and external adaptation) in private colleges and universities. The study differed from earlier inquiries in terms of its measurement of the organizational decline construct and its reliance on faculty perceptions of organizational effectiveness. The results clearly demonstrate that the relationship between decline and effectiveness is not uniform across the three types of private institutions (i.e., Research Universities, Comprehensive Colleges, Liberal Arts Colleges). For example, organizational decline has a negative effect on effectiveness in the academic domain only at Liberal Arts Colleges. Similarly, the magnitude of decline necessary to have a negative effect on effectiveness varies among the three institutional types. The implications of these findings for future research and for the management of decline in private higher education are discussed.     

Organizational responses to the labor market

Shifts in the labor market require adaptive responses on the part of formal organizations. Such organizational responses are shown in changes in recruitment strategies. This study examines how departments in comprehensive colleges and universities formulate their faculty recruitment strategies and set standards for new faculty personnel. Comprehensive institutions are neither research universities nor liberal arts colleges. Even though most offer graduate degrees at the master's level in such areas as teacher training and business programs, they are predominantly devoted to undergraduate education. Lacking strong ties to distinctive beliefs and identities, these institutions have become increasingly vulnerable to environmental changes.Based on extensive fieldwork at four institutions, this paper focuses on twenty faculty searches conducted over a period of substantial changes in academic labor markets. Several common search episodes are identified.The general pattern of recruitment strategies is shaped by the rule of status competition in a prestige hierarchy: less prestigious organizations compete for institutional legitimacy by adopting the norms of more prestigious organizations. Search-related practices in these comprehensive institutions are, therefore, organized around the institutional rituals that conform to the standards of more prestigious research universities and elite liberal arts colleges. Search and recruitment practices often reflect a ritualized form of preoccupation with credentials, specialities, and procedures. Despite their initial emphasis on specific goals, those involved in the search were less concerned about search outcomes than about processes.     

A behavioral change model with implications for faculty development

A model of voluntary behavior change is developed and applied to faculty in higher education and the process of instructional innovation. The model identifies individual and organizational variables that determine whether or not a faculty member will change his instructional practices by adopting methods, techniques, or ideas that are new to him and the likelihood that he will succeed if he decides to try to innovate. Some implications of the model for faculty development programs are discussed.     

Academic Environments in Detail: Holland’s Theory at the Subdiscipline Level

Studies of change in colleges and universities often consider faculty support a key influence on the success of academic reform efforts. Scholars, however, have given relatively little attention to the role of disciplinary environments (e.g., culture, values, and habits of mind) on educational innovation and change. Using data from 1,272 faculty members in 203 engineering programs on 39 campuses, this study examined whether engineering faculty from different academic environments (defined by Holland’s typology) vary in their responses to changing curricular and pedagogical requirements. Findings suggest that the broad disciplinary groupings often used in higher education research fail to capture the subtleties of within-field variations in faculty values, customs, and dispositions relating to curricular and pedagogical change and provide moderate support for using Holland’s theory for studying organizational change.     

学术权力合法性危机与大学组织结构变革

我国大学行政化泛滥、学术权力式微,深层次原因是学术权力的合法性基础动摇,引发了合法性危机,以致被迫让位于行政权力。学术权力的合法性危机源于大学组织结构的变化,而大学组织结构的变化又是由整个社会组织系统的变化引起的。学术权力与大学组织结构有着高度的一致性和被规定性,因而,要解决合法性危机,彰显学术权力,必须着眼于大学组织结构的变革。     

Motivating Individuals: Growing research from a “fragile base”

Faculty around the world are experiencing changes in their academic work. While “traditional” universities are responding to demands for greater accountability and increased and timely outputs from research, faculty within new higher education institutions (HEIs) are undergoing a paradigm shift within three concentric circles of change. Not only do they have to alter their own academic practice, but their HEI is also undergoing a revolution at a time when higher education is itself being transformed. The article documents these changes, challenging the assumption that there is a homogeneous or “single academic profession” with a common experience of academic change, and suggests a more complex picture for faculty in new HEIs. There are three sections: (1) overview of the literature on academic work, (2) how faculty in new HEIs are learning to play the research game, and (3) strategies and policies being introduced to encourage and facilitate research.     

The Other Side of Academic Dishonesty: The relationship between faculty scepticism,gender and strategies for managing student academic dishonesty cases

Student academic ethics is a serious concern for colleges and universities. The literature dealing with student academic ethics, however, focuses little attention on the possible connection between organizational characteristics and the efforts made by faculty to deter student academic ethics violations. In this case study analysis of faculty at a medium-sized university in the western USA, we found that the level of faculty institutional confidence is related to the use of formal deterrence strategies. Additionally, we found that female faculty members are less confident in the administration, but are only marginally less likely to use formal administrative approaches to manage academic ethics.     

Faculty Liaisons: an embedded approach for enriching teaching and learning in higher education

This paper explores the experiences of a group of academic developers who support educational development work as Faculty Liaisons at a large, research-intensive university. These academic developers inhabit complex ‘third spaces’, providing support through an embedded partnership relationship that requires lateral movement across functional and organizational boundaries to create new professional spaces, knowledge, and relationships. The authors utilize narrative inquiry and auto-ethnographic approaches to present an interpretive qualitative analysis of their experiences supporting Faculty and University projects across complex and evolving organizational boundaries. From this analysis, they highlight key roles and responsibilities associated with their blended context and identify challenges that academic developers who occupy third spaces within academic organizations face as they negotiate competing interests, identities, and requirements associated with the diverse range of their projects and the blended experience of working in scholarly and administrative, central- and Faculty-based roles. The lessons they have learned from these experiences will be of particular interest to academic developers who are experiencing the flux of change within higher education settings that are impacting teaching and learning practices both for faculty in the classroom and for those across the institution who support them.     

象牙塔里的压力——中国高校教师职业压力与学术产出的实证研究

高校教师是教学运作和学术研究的第一线实践专业人员,如何强化其职业发展和学术产出成为影响高等教育质量的关键因素之一;但与此同时,新管理主义和学术资本主义在高校组织管理体制中的渗透、社会环境与科学技术的急速变迁,高校规模扩大以及由此带来的院校组织内部的一系列变化,导致高校教师处于高度压力之下。本研究利用2007北京市高校教师调查数据,尝试从组织环境与个体特质两个层面,揭示高校教师职业压力的内涵与影响因素,探讨过度压力对高校教师职业发展所形成的冲击效应。研究发现:(1)高校教师面临不同层次的教学、科研和经济压力。在教师职业生涯轨迹中,40岁以下为高压期,41～55岁为缓压期,56岁以后为低压期。(2)高校扩招、高校内部绩效评估机制的实施和教师的婚姻状态、薪酬水平、工作负荷、发展定位、职称等成为引发高校教师压力的重要因素。(3)压力的膨胀不仅不能有效促进教师的学术产出,相反会导致教师的职业倦怠。     

大学发展张力的内组织学视角分析

影响大学这一学术组织发展的内部矛盾有两方面：自然模糊的组织目标和松散的组织结构。大学组织中这两方面的矛盾,形成了一种张力,从而影响组织的发展。从大学组织内倾性来看,对应以横向方式（部类、部门）和纵向方式（层次、等级）交叉形成学术组织的内部影响力量,构成组织变迁的内部线索,这一特殊的组织结构能很好地适应环境变化,使其不会轻易走向衰落;从学术组织的外倾性来说,大学贯有的学术精神,使其有可能与外界其他制约因素保持相对独立性,按照自身的运动特点演进和发展。     

Professor or Knowledge Worker? The Politics of Defining Faculty Work

To define “contractual regulations and institutional practices” for university faculty we need to consider significant changes in academic work in the last two decades. On the one hand, there persists the traditional view of disciplinary knowledge as valuable for its own sake; on the other, universities are a driving force in providing intellectual capital for the new knowledge society. While academic contracts have traditionally focused on defining work regulations and guidelines, faculty freedoms, tenure and so on, within the disciplinary framework, today these issues are deeply dependent on how the university's post‐Fordist organizational model (centralized controls, disaggregated models for managing knowledge) delivers knowledge in which symbolic and exchange values can play conflicting roles.     

走向创业型大学:中国的应对与挑战

创业型大学有四个不同于以往大学的典型特征:学术立业的组织结构、不断创新的创业文化、学术资本的师生共识、协同创新的契约关系。作为仍处于发展中的全球高等教育变革的当代现象,创业型大学已成为知识社会的心脏,围绕学术创业,它的知识逻辑、使命和功能皆发生了深刻变化。中国从变革高等教育结构、建设专业学位、创建自主创新的高科技园区等方面积极回应了这一高等教育的伟大变革,但是囿于旧的大学观念、体制和文化的局限,向创业型大学的转型仍然存在诸多困难,面临着巨大的挑战。     

Faculty and administrator perceptions of their environments: Different views or different models of organization?

Individuals' perceptions of the culture and climate of the organizations in which they work influence their motivation and individual performance. Using a theoretical model of institutional culture, organizational climate, and faculty motivation, this study examines how faculty and academic administrators differ in their perceptions; whether these differences in perceptions are affected by institutional type; and to what extent faculty and administrators have different implicit models of their institutions (i.e., see different organizational variables as predictors of faculty motivation and involvement). The goals of this investigation are to shed additional light on the relationship between institutional variables and faculty performance, to examine the existence of differing implicit models, and to provide new insights for administrators in managing their postsecondary institutions.The research reported in this paper is part of the Research Program on The Organizational Context for Teaching and Learning in the National Center for Research to Improve Postsecondary Teaching and Learning (NCRIPTAL). The research is supported by a grant from the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), U.S. Department of Education (ED), to the University of Michigan (grant number G008690010). The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the OERI/ED or the Regents of The University of Michigan, and no official endorsement should be inferred.     

Institutional change in teacher education: The faculty's tale

A national reform in Israeli seminaries for teachers reclassified them as teachers' colleges. Ten years later the views of faculty members of one teachers' college about this reform were examined. The findings pertained (1) to the nature of academic upgrading, which was vague for most faculty, as it comprised a set of purely organizational changes which were either achieved or will be completed in the future; and (2) to the form of the ultimate college, which looked similar to a university in awarding a degree, yet lacking all the substantial characteristics of academic culture. The failure to achieve institutional transformation and the disparity between the views of the reformers and the faculty were attributed to the nature of the imposed top-down macro-level organizational change with little faculty involvement which led to the continuance of the previous teachers' seminary culture. Suggestions are made for prospective higher education reformers to help them to avoid this outcome.     

The enculturation of new faculty in higher education: A comparative investigation of three academic departments

While studies on organizational entry have, for several decades, examined how individuals choose organizations and how organizations choose individuals (Lawler, 1973; Vroom, 1964; Wanous 1977), most have focused on the employee recruitment and selection processes primarily from the organization's standpoint. Although the academic profession may provide general identity for faculty, an individual's general value structure and the reciprocal nature of the socialization process have been largely ignored (Van Maanen, 1976). Because there is little disagreement that the academic profession provides general identity for all faculty, the concept of one academic profession has obscured the cultural differences of higher education institutions, the subcultural variations within and among disciplines, and the internalized normative pressures to meet organizational interests that arise as faculty enter new settings. Only recently has socialization been conceived as cultural learning in which the values, knowledge, attitudes, skills, and expectations of a particular culture are acquired by initiates (Corcoran and Clark, 1984). At the same time, culture is seen to evolve as it is shaped by the interaction of newcomers and culture bearers (Kuh and Whitt, 1988). While newcomers will integrate, to some extent, their own needs and values with what they perceive to be the institution's norms and values (Bess, 1978), the reciprocal nature of this cultural learning process is only now being recognized (Boice and Thomas, 1989; Tierney, 1988).     

Factors associated with changes in prestige of university departments

Four models of possible predictors of changes in prestige for university departments are advanced and tested using multiple regression. Changes in prestige are measured using a residual change score derived from the ratings of departments in various disciplines collected by American Council of Education in 1964 and 1969. The models are tested using data collected from 1,164 faculty in 80 university departments in 1968, and from published sources for that same year. Results indicate that a resource model is the best predictor for sociology, and that a research productivity model and an organizational model were good predictors of reputational change for political science and chemistry. For physics, only one organizational variable was an important predictor. The fourth model tested involved reputation of faculty within the department, and this model yielded the fewest significant results. A composite predictive equation was then used, retaining variables that had emerged as significant in earlier analyses. Results again exhibited large differences across scientific fields, suggesting that there is no single set of factors that can reliably predict improvement or decline in prestige across all disciplines.     

Perception of Faculty of the Bologna Process at a Spanish Technical University: A Perspective of Change and Improvement

The Bologna Process affects the academic community, particularly faculty members who have to implement the process. This study is an initiative by a group of lecturers to evaluate the perception of faculty members in the implementation of the Bologna Process. The aim was to assess the evolution of their opinion on the process since a 2011 survey, and their degree of agreement with the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). The results show that faculty members call for more adequate training for the new EHEA process and more institutional support. The study reveals the need for greater involvement and collaboration among faculty members to improve the reform process.     

COMMUNITY COLLEGE MANAGEMENT IN TRANSITION: AN ASSESSMENT OF CHANGE

Community colleges tend to follow an authoritarian type of management, but many educational leaders are attempting to develop and implement a more open and participatory management system in these colleges. This is a study of one college in the process of making the change from an authoritarian system to one that would involve the faculty and staff extensively in the process of goal setting and decision making. In this case study, which relied heavily on semistructured interviews to assess the feelings of administrators and faculty toward organizational changes, it was found that the college was more open. Individuals appeared to be more receptive to change and innovations and to have increased willingness to participate in institutional governance. The faculty and administrators expressed the feeling that they had developed a broader view of the organization and a greater sense of trust. The results of the study suggest that the process might have been assisted by using even more in‐service training and by providing a fuller management structure.     

Characteristics of personnel at graduate science education centers: Implications for the future of the profession

Biographical and professional information for all 168 faculty members employed at the 35 largest graduate centers for science education was collected and analyzed. This is a report of the analysis and a discussion of the implication for the profession. The graduate faculty at major U.S. centers is homogeneous as to age, sex, rank, academic preparation, previous experience, research productivity, and professional involvement. The stability (or slight decline) in number of new personnel employed at research centers, and the multipurpose features of most centers are viewed as major problems. There are few examples of cooperative efforts among the 168 and few examples of clearly defined research efforts over an extended period of time.     

孔子与古鲁:中国与印度学术职业的变革

随着高等教育外部环境的不断变化,中国与印度的学术职业已经并正在继续发生重要的变革。在中国,随着政治经济体制改革的推行,政府开始改革公办高校的教师聘用制度,以解决原有体制中存在的冗员、合格教师短缺和效率低下等问题。改革虽然取得了一定的积极成果,但也面临着如何使西方管理文化与中国传统文化兼容等问题。在印度,政府结构调整使政府逐步撤出高等教育领域,其学术职业呈现出衰落的趋势。为此,印度大学拨款委员会采取了各种措施以提高教师的水平,但收效甚微。中国与印度的学术职业正处于一个不确定的过渡阶段。