The System and Culture of Academic Decision Making 43
on context. Nonetheless, with a value-centric orientation, we understand more
fully why many contemporary students of leadership refer to the moral dimension
as the heart of the matter. This does not mean that leaders are especially gifted in
deciding controversial moral dilemmas or that their personal lives are exemplary.
Rather, it suggests that leadership involves fulfilling the values that the organiza-
tion exists to serve, and ensuring the authenticity of the commitment to those
purposes.
The values theme also provides one of the conceptual foundations for building
an integrative process of leadership. It offers a center of gravity for finding institu-
tional identity in what may otherwise appear to be so many disparate beliefs, facts,
and artifacts of institutional history and culture, programs, and resources. Just as a
person expresses his values in the fabric of his life, so do institutions incorporate
their commitments in all their tangible and intangible forms of organizational
sense making and decision making.
STRUCTURAL CONFLICT IN ACADEMIC
DECISION MAKING
In the preceding chapter we analyzed some of the complexities and conflicts in
collegial authority, leadership, and governance. We return to those issues here but
reexamine them through the conceptual lens provided by our analysis of agency
and values. With this optic we can gain a new perspective on many of the conun-
drums of academic decision making. We shall seek to show that there is a series of
structural conflicts embedded in the basic values of the academic decision-making
system itself. To examine the way participants experience various forms of con-
flict, we shall begin with a case study that has its roots in my own experience.
A New Dean
After a national search for a new dean at a selective liberal arts college, the
faculty search committee recommends a local candidate to the president. Since
the individual is the highly respected and amiable chairperson of a small depart-
ment, the president quickly clears the appointment with the board, to be effective
in three moths. After the announcement, the dean-elect receives enthusiastic
calls and messages from many colleagues celebrating her appointment. She also
notices that the chairman and two senior colleagues from the history department
have scheduled a meeting with her. Since she knows and likes all of them, she
looks forward to the occasion.
After some pleasant bantering about her “moving to the dark side,” she discov-
ers that the trio is on a mission. They voice their concerns about the erosion of
departmental autonomy and faculty governance during the tenure of the retir-
ing dean, expressing confidence that she will redress the balance. Her colleagues
go on to express their deep personal and professional distress over a decision
recently taken by the outgoing dean not to fill a vacant tenure-track position in