The Ambiguities and Possibilities of Leadership in Higher Education 33
multiple realities that they face. Those, for example, who live by political insights
and skills will be confounded by the unyielding commitment of faculty members
to academic values and to collaborative processes. To lead through administra-
tive authority and expertise alone is to force managerial methods beyond their
proper domain, and to reduce every human and academic problem to a rational
one or to a cost-benefit analysis. Whatever else, the studies of the presidency show
the severe limitation of authority alone as a model of campus leadership. Yet to
emphasize the inspiration of symbolic leadership to the exclusion of other abilities
can lead to a worship of the past and to a sentimental celebration of the artifacts
of community. If administrative systems are dysfunctional, the celebration will not
last very long. The collegial model may function well by itself in a static world, but
its tendency toward insularity and stasis requires other models of decision making
to deal with the realities of change and competition.
Clearly, both adequately describing and leading organizations of higher learn-
ing requires the integration of the various frames. Integration means more than
deploying a serial combination of skills and insights, using political abilities for
one set of issues, and shifting to other frames as circumstances dictate. Such an
approach might create a stable organization, but it cannot produce a coherent
form of leadership. Nor can truly integrated leadership be achieved by another
common pattern, that in which one approach becomes dominant while others
play supporting roles. Such a model would produce less than a true integration,
since some elements of a situation would be distorted to fit the dominant orienta-
tion (Bensimon 1991).
Yet if complexity in both thought and action is likely to be more effective as a
form of leadership, we should press harder to consider an integration of the differ-
ent models of leadership. To be integrative, the model of leadership will have to
draw elements from the various frames into a new and coherent whole. To find a
new integrative logic for their relationship to each other, the cognitive frames will
need to be situated within a different and larger perspective on leadership. We will
have to find methods of leadership that enable an institution to be true to its deep-
est values at the same time that it deals effectively with change and conflict.
A Cybernetic Model
Birnbaum proposes an integrative theory that he calls cybernetic leadership.
A cybernetic system is self-regulatory and automatically adjusts the activity that
it controls to stay within an acceptable range. Birnbaum (1988) uses the example
of a thermostat, which is a cybernetic device since it keeps a room’s temperature at
a given setting by automatically turning the heating system on or off. Translating
this idea to a university, we see that each sphere of administration uses a series of
monitors to regulate its performance. So, if a department overspends its budget,
its purchase orders may be refused until steps are taken to bring things back into
balance. Similarly, if an admissions office misses its enrollment target of first-year
students, it adjusts automatically by accepting more transfers. As we have seen, in