48 Strategic Leadership
Professional and Personal Identity:
Self and Role
At its best, academic life is a true calling (B. R. Clark 1987). The sense of
self and the identity of the academic professional are interwoven. The academic
professional says easily, “I am what I do.” Even though faculty members are like
other humans in that they value money and power, the profession’s self-definition
involves a sense of service to the cause of learning that transcends narrow self-
interest. It carries the responsibility to address fundamental and enabling dimen-
sions of human development and experience. Because of this, decisions that relate
to the academic standing, effectiveness, and reputation of faculty members touch
on personal identity and professional purpose. This shows itself in a variety of
ways, especially in decisions related to academic programs and to appointment,
promotion, and tenure. If a negative decision is made in areas that define pro-
fessional status, especially regarding tenure, it is felt as a punishing blow to the
person’s sense of identity and self-worth. We meet in a different form the problem
of disproportion in the measures of worth in academic decision making. Integrat-
ing the functional dimensions of organizations with the identities of academic
professionals proves again to be a daunting task.
A deeper understanding of the sources of conflict in this cultural system does not
provide anyone, including our new dean, with a ready formula to respond to disputes
over priorities. But it gives rise to insights about the true dimensions of the world
of decision making in which all academic men and women take up their duties.
With this new point of departure, we can reconceptualize the issues and seek ways
to reconcile the conflict through the integrative methods of strategic leadership.
SHARED GOVERNANCE AND
ITS DISCONTENTS
If we look again at the issues of shared governance through the lens of the
structural conflict in values, several new dimensions come to light. Many mem-
bers of academic communities would suggest that the value tensions in academic
decision making are real, but that they can be effectively balanced precisely
through the traditions of shared governance. Some institutions seem to have
found effective and constructive ways to live with conflicting values. Over the
years they have created, often more by practice than design, a series of councils
and committees to address institutional issues. Following this model, a workable
balance in university governance seems possible (cf. Birnbaum 2004).
Observation of shared governance in a variety of contexts reveals several other
widespread beliefs concerning the exercise of academic decision making that are
important for our development of a model of strategic leadership. Among other
things, shared governance is understood by academic professionals to incorporate
moral imperatives as well as formal processes. Those who try to exercise leadership
in strictly political terms by currying favor or assembling changing coalitions of