The System and Culture of Academic Decision Making 47
Autonomy and Authority^1
As organizations, colleges and universities try to mix oil and water by combin-
ing the academic value of autonomy with the institutional value of authority.
The university itself draws its first breath from freedom of inquiry and builds its
life around academic autonomy both for itself and its faculty members, both indi-
vidually and collectively. The creativity of intellectual work and its inestimable
value to society depend on academic freedom for each individual. Yet freedom
and autonomy apply to collectives as well. Only those who know the special lan-
guage, methods, and content of an academic discipline, which are first inculcated
in the rites of passage of graduate study, can judge the work of others in the same
field. The autonomy and the prerogatives of each academic department have deep
cultural and professional roots. Yet, as academic professionals become members of
formal organizations, they experience the structural tension in value systems. Just
as professionals embrace autonomy, institutions emphasize authority, order, and
accountability, values that are exercised through systems of controls. Organiza-
tions must control—define, systematize, regulate, and legitimize—what otherwise
would be the chaos of freedom without boundaries (Morrill 2002). Many controls,
from class schedules to budgets, are taken for granted as annoyances, until they
begin to press hard against the requirements of autonomy. Should they ever touch
the content of teaching or research, the academic heart of things, then the con-
flict becomes a deep crisis in fundamental values. So it is that academic authority
plays out uncomfortably within the organization.
Intrinsic and Instrumental Values:
Measuring the Immeasurable
The same rudimentary conflict appears in a parallel form in the conflicting ways
that knowledge professionals and their institutions define and measure worth.
Faculty members are driven by a commitment to the intrinsic value of teach-
ing and research. At their core, the worth of the discovery and transmission of
knowledge is self-authenticating and intrinsically motivating. It is not determined
by measurement. Academic institutions respect these basic values but still must
construe and measure value instrumentally to balance competing claims on their
resources and responsibilities. The procedures of managerial decision making and
the criteria of the market continually try to determine the value of the pursuit of
knowledge. Judgment become quantified in costs and credit hours, and systems of
measurement become normative, even though most academic people have little
confidence in the ability of any system to measure what matters most to them
(Morrill 2002). Courses and programs are dropped or added, and new initiatives
pursued or forsaken, in ways and by measures that assault the academic values and
sensibilities of scholars and teachers committed to their fields. These polarities are
woven into the culture of academic decision making itself, which is understood as
a system of values, beliefs, and practices.