Introducing Change from the Top in Universities and Colleges

Ten Personal Accounts

Susan Weil, Weil, Susan

• Editore: Routledge
• Anno: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135353292
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Education
• Categoria: Education General

Part of a series reflecting the recent changes in further and higher education, this volume relates the true stories of 10 educational managers and their experiences of recent events. The managers tell how they have maintained direction and impact, balanced pressures and set up their own systems.

Chapter 1

Management and Change in
Colleges and Universities: The
Need for New Understandings

Susan Weil

INTRODUCTION

Being ‘at the top’: a changing role

The title of this book will raise eyebrows. Perhaps less so than, say, three or five years ago, but this reaction will be triggered none the less.

The idea of the ‘chief executive’ of a college or university has been given new meaning and weight in recent years. In Britain, the power of those at the top of such institutions to exert influence behind the scenes, to ensure a privileged public sector position, is legendary. When Margaret Thatcher initiated her systematic challenge to UK public services, it was believed that colleges and universities would be spared. This proved anything but the case. Legislative changes and various government funding council practices have had a profound influence on both the conception and the enactment of the role in relation to the management of significant change.

Britain offers a powerful case study of such developments but the themes that figure in the story of its changes in recent years are echoing throughout the world. Those charged with leading universities and colleges are being compelled to revise their role and to introduce significant change. There is the force of external pressures (such as through government intervention in Australia, or the effects of economic recession, across the whole of Europe) or the force of challenges that demand new forms of leadership and management (such as in relation to increased diversity in the US or in pursuing new social and economic purposes for education, such as in the Pacific Basin). Themes of public accountability and consumer choice are also acquiring new meanings in many different societies.

My approach to this opening section

The purpose of this opening piece is to set the scene for the chapters that follow. In keeping within the personal narrative approach of the book (please see Preface), I offer my own particular perspective on the context within which the role of the head of a college or university and the management of change ‘from the top’ have been placed at issue in recent years. I speak personally and without any pretence of historical distance or objectivity, which is customarily afforded by the third person narrative. Inevitably, therefore, what is foreground for me will be background for another, and my own priorities and values will remain transparent throughout, as is the case in subsequent chapters.

RAISED EYEBROWS: A STARTING POINT FOR DEBATE?

A key purpose of this book is to offer reflective, action–oriented material that can stimulate discussion across the college and university sector about appropriate management styles and approaches to change. But even before such explorations might occur, a variety of reactions to this book will be prompted by the title alone. Drawing on my own work with staff at all levels of colleges and universities, let me envisage some of these.

First, there will be those who will reject outright the starting premise that there is indeed, or should be, a person who sees him or herself as ‘at the top’ of a college or university. They will say, ‘Whatever do you mean, exactly?’ Using the phrase runs the risk of my being dismissed as foe, not friend – someone who is colluding with the forces of ‘managerialism’ that are seen to be invading colleges and universities and the territorial power and autonomy traditionally enjoyed by academics.

Then there will be those who will be amused. They continue to regard the role of chief executive as something manufactured by government forces, and an imposition to be resisted at all costs. Those who hold this position can dismiss those at the ‘top’ as ‘failed academics’ who through the over-assertion of their managerial role undermine professional and collegial values.

There are others who will argue that change in colleges and universities is the result of external forces and not the responsibility of those ‘at the top’. Those ‘at the top’ instead must react to new pressures as best as possible, in collaboration with their professional colleagues.

The title and my authorship may also raise eyebrows because my own perspective has been shaped greatly by my experience of stimulating change from outside traditional structures, both in the US and the UK. I have researched processes of learning and change, as well as worked alongside people at all levels, as an adviser or consultant: with managers, professionals and students, who are effecting, or are affected by, the style and culture of an institution (eg, Stephenson and Weil, 1992; Weil, 1989a, 1989b; Weil and McGill, 1989; Weil et al, 1985). As such, I bring the different experience, and I hope some of the wisdom, that can come with an ‘outsider’s’ perspective – the value of which is identified by a number of contributors to this volume. (An elaboration of this work is offered in the final chapter.)

IN THE MIDST OF A SEA CHANGE

Challenges to public sector managers

Although the public that has been denied access to colleges and universities may have difficulty perceiving such institutions as public services, none the less those at the top have been subject to the same pressures as other public managers.

I have found the work conducted by Sue Richards, and the Public Management Foundation (PMF, 1994; Richards, 1993; Rodrigues, 1993) particularly useful in deepening my own understanding of recent developments in public sector management. This exploration of the changing role of public managers lays emphasis on the political framework within which they operate. This ‘imposes particular constraints on their authority as well as conferring particular forms of legitimacy’ (Rodrigues, 1993). The nature of these constraints as well as the forms of legitimacy that have been conferred to public service managers are seen to have undergone three major paradigm shifts in the post-war years.

The first of these is referred to as the ‘administrative paradigm’. In this, politicians made the policy but professionals gave this their own meaning through their control of the service production process. They therefore also played a key policy role, legitimated by the perceived inviolability of professional values, the possession of expert knowledge, and the ways in which membership of professional groups was regulated. Within this paradigm, there were no managers but rather administrators with ‘no authoritative independent basis for action. They reconciled and realised the objectives of others’ (Rodrigues, 1993, p. 4).

By the end of the 1970s, the government took the position that the continued growth of public services and the strain on public expenditure that was sustained by the administrative paradigm, had to be stopped. This coincided with what the introduction of the PMF work refers to as the ‘efficiency paradigm’. (Richards, 1993). The notion of the public service manager developed new currency, fuelled by agendas of the politicians who began to see the manager as a powerful agent for change and not merely a mediator. This shift was characterized by new emphases and priorities, including, for example, on increased accountability for individual and organizational performance, reconfigurations of public service provision (such as through the introduction of purchasers and providers in the Health Service), the development of new management structures and processes that made executive responsibility clearer, and new roles for non-executive directors from the private sector in the governance of public service institutions.

Richards argues that in the 1990s the original key actors of politician, manager and professional remain, but a fourth emerges: the ‘consumer’. This represents a direct challenge to the traditional dominance of professional over client or consumer interests in public services, and indeed, the growing dominance of the politicians. In the ‘consumer paradigm’ further legitimacy for managerial action comes not only from politicians but also from new ways of understanding and consulting those who are intended to benefit from public services. Inevitably, the demands from the constituencies of ‘consumer’, the professionals and the politicians do not necessarily align – and it becomes a further task of the manager to reconcile conflicting accountabilities and, some would say, to provide the organizational steer, since not all can be satisfied. Those ‘at the top’ can therefore begin to create a vision and a mission which brings new influences and new players actively into the interpretation of policy. The chapters by Shackleton, Harrison and Webb are particularly useful in illustrating these issues, while at the same time revealing the kinds of contradictions and paradoxes that need to be managed to maintain the legitimacy of this space.

I believe that the template provided by the notions of administrative, efficiency and consumer paradigm shifts is a useful one through which to understand the issues raised by the majority of the contributors to this volume.

Another useful template is provided by Parston (1994), who explores the idea of conflicting accountabilities. Chief executives in colleges and universities like others across the UK public sector, along with their governing bodies, have had to assume responsibility for coping simultaneously with multiple and often competing demands. Working from his ideas, I cite some of the key ones that challenge those at the top of colleges and universities:

meeting demands for improved comparative performance (on an uneven playing field) while complying with government policy and regulations

achieving ‘efficiency gains’ and, especially, increasing volume and throughput at reduced cost in a ‘mythical market’ where government controls the numbers

maintaining accountability with a wider range of stakeholders (eg, students, employers, the community, politicians, etc.) whose influence and indeed power (as supported by, for example, legislation or developments such as student charters) have grown considerably in recent years

providing high quality services, alone and in partnership with others, that will serve the needs of that institution’s constituencies within the terms of their distinctive mission

generating alternative sources of income when the squeeze on public sector expenditure grows ever tighter, the recession continues and pressures on alternative funding sources have grown enormously

steering a course between professionally determined criteria of effectiveness and those set by other stakeholders, including students and government; between those criteria that uphold traditional notions of quality and excellence and those that are appropriate to new kinds of educational purposes, processes and outcomes and therefore different notions of colleges and universities

These themes will be seen to figure with different degrees of emphasis in all of the accounts that follow.

The challenges to universities and colleges

These general public sector trends and their specific expression in governmental policy have touched the lives of students, college and university staff, professionals, managers, governors and all those who interact with colleges and universities, such as community organizations and employers. The policy changes have given new legitimacy to particular groups such as students, with the introduction of student charters, and employers, through the introduction of developments such as Enterprise in Higher Education. (This was a massive programme of investment by the Department of Employment in curriculum change related to the needs of industry and commerce.) These voices have traditionally been unheard in colleges and universities. They have especially not tended to influence the professionals’ control of the design and delivery of education.

The developments led by government have also coincided with (and, many assert, have been prompted by) significant demographic, social and economic developments. At the same time, the nature and rhythms of knowledge creation and dissemination have changed dramatically, supported by the revolution in technology. It can be argued, and I would agree, that particular configurations of these developments, at a time when the world has become a smaller place, have made certain traditions unsustainable. Amongst these I would include the restriction of access to post-school educational opportunity for only the ‘bright young few’ or indeed the view that colleges and universities are places solely for servicing the minds and social development of the (largely, affluent) young.

Disturbance of the ‘taken for granted’

As external changes are reacted to and their effects are experienced in the day-to-day life of institutions, even our most basic ideas about what a college or university means begin to demand a re-think. As Ronald Barnett (1990) argues in relation to higher education:

In an age when our current concept of higher education has become so enfeebled that it has almost been lost from view, it is important to realise that higher education has stood for notions of substance. Our idea of higher education remains largely buried in the past, but it need not remain there. It can and should be reconstituted, so that it gives our current practice … a sense of being linked with historical tradition – which has largely been lost – and a view of the way forward.

The expansion of higher education, now shifted to further education colleges, combined with a decrease in what government is prepared to fund, has had considerable effect on the character and practices of colleges and universities. ‘Mature students’ now comprise the majority of those entering colleges and universities (see Appendix). The student profile has substantially altered, especially within the former polytechnic and college sectors. Even the more traditional universities can no longer assume ‘homogeneity of intake’, if indeed that mythological notion ever had any validity. Part-time and modular students increasingly rub shoulders with full-time students. Eighteen-year-olds sit beside 45-year-olds. Science students learn alongside humanities students, as more begin to make use of credit-based systems to cross traditional disciplinary and departmental boundaries, wreaking havoc with organizational structures, internal funding arran...