Locus of Authority: The Evolution of Faculty Roles in the Governance of Higher Education (The William G. Bowen Series)

Although I've only read the first chapter of Bowen's book, my general impression is that he does an excellent job of analyzing the issue of shared governance in the context of a traditional university. However, he does not examine the issue in other contexts.In particular, he does not look as the role of faculty in well established online universities such as the British Open University. If he did, he would find that their organizational structure is significantly different from that of the traditional university in the United States. The role of the faculty at the OU is significantly different, too. So, to get a better idea of how organizational structure might affect the role of the professor, and the issue of shared governance, one might look to experts in the field of organizational design such as Henry Mintzberg.Henry Mintzberg's taxonomy of organization types can be used to categorize universities by their organization structure. And, in turn, a university's organizational structure can shed light on the role of faculty in a given institution, and on the problem of shared governance.Mintzberg starts by describing five sub-unit types: 1. Strategic Apex: Board of Directors, Chief Executive Officer 2. Technostructure: Strategic Planning, Personnel Training, Systems Analysis and Design 3. Support Staff: Legal Counsel, Public Relations, Payroll, Mailroom Clerks, Cafeteria Workers 4. Middle Line: VP Operations, VP Marketing, Plant Managers Sales Managers 5. Operating Core: Purchasing Agents, Machine Operators, Assemblers, Sales Persons, ShippersAnd, with these, he describes four basic types of organization structure: 1. The Machine Bureaucracy where technocrats standardize procedures and outputs in the operating core. 2. The Professional Organization where highly skilled professionals in the operating core (e.g. doctors, professors) rely on roles and skills learned from years of schooling and indoctrination to coordinate their work. 3. The Entrepreneurial Startup where managers in the strategic apex directly supervise the work of subordinates. 4. The Adhocracy where teams of professionals from the operating core, support staff, and technostructure rely on informal "mutual adjustment" to coordinate their efforts.For the most part, Bowen's book describes the role of faculty at a traditional university, which would be a professional organization in Mintzberg's taxonomy.However, support units within the traditional university may be composed of other forms. For example, support subunits that perform routine functions may have machine bureaucratic managements, while technocratic subunits may be administered as professional organizations or adhocracies.As the traditional university struggles to cope with new information technologies, its overall organizational form may tend towards adhocracy. But, the stress of working in an adhocracy puts pressure on the organization to organize subunits according to one of the other forms.Also, at a traditional university the faculty tend to view faculty development staff and educational technology units as support staff. The faculty do not want them to become technocrats. Instead, the faculty want them to be there to serve the interests of the faculty. It is generally assumed that if any kind of academic innovation is going to happen, then faculty must take the lead. And, even then, the innovation typically only happens in courses taught by early adopters. More conservative faculty are academically free to ignore their more progressive colleagues, and to continue teaching their own courses in the traditional fashion.Unfortunately, Bowen's book does not consider well established institutions focused on online learning such as the British Open University, which has more of a machine bureaucratic structure. In this case, senior faculty work with other technocrats to standardize procedures and outputs in the operating core, which is made up of teaching faculty.At the OU, star faculty work with a team of experts at OU headquarters in Milton Keynes England. There, faculty subject matter experts and other team members are technocrats in Mintzberg's model. The operating core of the UK OU consists of professors-of-the-practice who work directly with students at the teaching centers scattered around the globe.Technocrats in a machine bureaucracy standardize work processes and outputs. In the case of higher education, this would include online content, learning designs (lesson activity plans), and assessments of learning outcomes. According to Berkeley Professor David Kirp: When a new course is to be designed, a battalion of experts gathers at Milton Keynes; during the next year and a half, this group turns out draft syllabi, visions, revisions, evaluations, paper topics, and examinations. OU's professors take the lead: the nine hundred faculty members, many of them recruited from similar posts at other British universities, are expected to be pedagogues as well as scholars. The team also includes senior tutors, who supervise instruction when the course is in the field; text editors, who sharpen the prose of books specially written for the course; TV producers; software designers; test and measurement specialists; library consultants; outside assessors, who critique what's being prepared - as many as forty people working together on a single project. A "caretaker course team" does periodic updates, and after eight years the course is entirely rebuilt.Faculty at more traditional schools, on the other hand, use the Lone Ranger model of course development. Most traditional schools do not normally employ teams of content development experts. And, if they do, it is usually a one-off effort that results from one-time grant funding. Also, when faculty at traditional schools create content, they own the content. This makes sharing and collaborative development difficult. To address these difficulties, many faculty now use some form of creative commons license so others can reuse their work as Open Educational Resources (OER).But, never-the-less, most faculty at a traditional schools are subject matter experts, not pedagogy experts, not graphic artists, not programmers, not project management experts, etc. They do not have the all skills one would find in a team of content development experts. They are a critical component of a content development team, but only one component.Also, most faculty at traditional universities do not want to see their institution transformed into a machine bureaucracy. Hence their long standing resistance to online education in general, and distance education in particular. They do not want to become the teaching assistants of high-level faculty technocrats and their team of experts.So, given the fact that traditional universities have some form of shared governance, and given the common sense observation that faculty do not want to innovate themselves out of a job, the question for the traditional university is: "How does change happen in Higher Education? "This question has been answered cynically by some as follows:"One faculty retirement at a time."In my opinion, this cynical answer is not necessarily correct. In my twenty years of experience at UC Berkeley, there were many faculty who were very interested in finding new ways of teaching.However, at the typical research university, conservative professors are still academically free to ignore the innovations of their more progressive colleagues. And, in my experience, the conservatives far out number the progressives.But as I mentioned earlier, at the British Open University things are organized differently. There, content development faculty at Milton Keynes head quarters create lesson plans and content for the teaching faculty to use.The teaching faculty work directly with the OU's students in teaching centers. They are obligated to use the lesson plans and teaching materials created by the senior content development faculty back at Milton Keynes.So, when the content development faculty want to experiment with new technology, lesson plans, or content the teaching faculty are obligated to go along. The OU doesn't have to wait for them to retire.Also, the content development faculty create content on a work-for-hire basis. So, there's no question about who owns the content at the end of the day - the OU does. This means that the OU could make an institutional decision to place their content in the public domain.To make this business model work, the OU needs to have a very large student body, which is currently around 250K students. So, if the US wanted to create its own version of the OU, we may have to do so on a federal level (or, perhaps, with a large number of cooperating states).(As a side note, the OU tried to establish operations in the U.S. back in the late eighties. They threw in the towel when they realized that they would have to go through multiple (eight?) accreditation bodies to establish a nation-wide operation in the U.S. So, these accreditation bodies are a barrier to entry, which helps protect smaller state-wide chains (e.g. UC and CSU) and single campus institutions.)So, unlike the traditional university, the British Open University's business model is designed to support the development and maintenance of learning materials. Further, the content development faculty in Milton Keynes are in a better position to make the decision to adopt OER than would be the case with administrators of HE in the US.So, one way to speed up the adoption of OER in the US (and to speed up innovation in general) would be for the US to form HE institutions with a structure and business model similar to that of the British Open University. This is pretty radical, but we have an existence proof that it can happen. A Labor government did indeed create the OU mostly from scratch back in 1969. So, it has happened. Perhaps it can happen again in the US.In my opinion, if the US did start its own OU, we should do so in collaboration with the British and we should put the content developed by our two OUs in the public domain. There it might be used by traditional schools as a substitute for expensive commercial textbooks.Of course, some administrators and progressive faculty at traditional schools may want to reform their institutions into something that resembles the British OU thinking that might be the easier route. But, they may encounter fierce resistance from faculty who prefer the status quo.Why you ask. The reason has been known for quite some time. And let it be noted that there is no more delicate matter to take in hand, nor more dangerous to conduct, nor more doubtful in its success, than to set up as a leader in the introduction of changes. For he who innovates will have for his enemies all those who are well off under the existing order of things, and only the lukewarm supporters in those who might be better off under the new. This lukewarm temper arises partly from the fear of adversaries who have the laws on their side and partly from the incredulity of mankind, who will never admit the merit of anything new, until they have seen it proved by the event. - MachiavelliTherefore, in my opinion, although I admire William Bowen for trying to reform US higher education from within, to me this seems like an impossible task.Although the idea of trying to create a US OU may sound quixotic as well, there is at least an existence proof that it could happen - the British Open University.----------------------------------------ReferencesReview of the Locus of Authority by William Bowenby Fred M. Beshearshttp://innovationmemes.blogspot.com/2015/03/review-of-locus-of-authority-by-william.htmlA version of this with graphics.'Shared Governance' or Faculty vs. Administratorsby Peter Sackshttp://www.mindingthecampus.com/2015/01/shared-governance-or-faculty-vs-administrators-2/Mintzberg's Taxonomy of Organizational Formshttp://innovationmemes.blogspot.com/2012/11/mintzbergs-taxonomy-of-organizational_24.htmlDavid L. Kirp on the British Open Universityhttp://innovationmemes.blogspot.com/2014/02/david-l-kirp-on-british-open-university.htmlThis is an extended quote from a book by UC Berkeley Professor David Kirp. It provides an excellent description of the team-based approach the OU UK uses to develop their online courses.Tony Bates on the Lone Ranger Model of Courseware Developmenthttp://innovationmemes.blogspot.com/2014/03/tony-bates-on-lone-ranger-model-of.htmlThis post is an extended quote from a book by Tony Bates. It provides an excellent description of how faculty at traditional universities go about developing online course materials. It contrasts nicely with the team-based approach used by the British Open University.

Must read for aspiring educators

Yet again, Bowen does not disappoint. His experience and wisdom come through in this historical and current review of faculty influence and involvement in higher education. I wanted to learn more from this historical perspective and that is just what I did. Even after 15 years in higher education now, Bowen and Tobin's insights helped immensely in filling in the gaps in my understanding of the tug-of-war that exists between the academic and administrative sides in higher education today. The four case studies that closed out their work brought real-world practicality and meaningfulness to this learning experience for me. Whether you have enjoyed, as I have, a second career in the higher education space or you have been in this realm for 3-4 decades, there is wisdom in this work and gems to be collected by the reader - throughout it.

Informative case studies that illustrate the changing nature of faculty involved or not invoked in decision making.

Great book for a higher education administration course

This book seemed to have all the same information and timeline as University In, by Jennifer Washburn. The only difference were the suggestions at the end. Not sure if the authors intended to rip off Ms. Washburn, but they didn't even cite her in their book as a reference, even though the information was clearly the same. I really didn't learn anything from this book that I didn't get from her book.

Great source book on the history of faculty governance

Very interesting, informative, and relevant as higher ed examines its ability to adapt to changing societal and economic expectations without losing its fundamental mission.