Adolph O de Sousa
Curtin University of Technology
ABSTRACT
In 1995 The Review of Higher Education Management in Australia succeeded in identifying a number of issues concerning university governance, and in initiating debate on improved efficiency and effectiveness. Initial response to this debate has focused, in some respects disappointingly, on the size and constitution of university governing bodies. This paper seeks to relate these issues of governance to issues of accountability and delegation raised in the White Paper, and to place them in the context of the wider discussion of collegiality and managerial responsibility. In doing so, this paper will examine whether there are some meaningful distinctions which can be drawn between types of policy and decision-making and which might be helpful in defining the roles of governing bodies, committees, executive and other staff.
Introduction
Just as the term government is used to refer sometimes to the political party in office and sometimes to the wider infrastructure which supports the implementation of policy, so the term university governance is sometimes used to refer to the composition and role of university governing bodies and sometimes to the wider decision and policy-making structure of the university. Discussions of university governance, raised through a number of recent government reports, have correspondingly placed that discussion within a context of a wider debate about the management of higher education. The most recent enquiry, conducted by David Hoare, was awaited with some apprehension. Despite some excited debate with regard to the size of the governing bodies in at least one state, the Review was received largely with relief. Although a change of federal government led some to foreshadow the redundancy of the Review, the relevance of its recommendations has recently received new attention.
Efficiency and effectiveness
It is important to recognise that the recommendations of the Hoare Review are related, in a strong sense, to the 1986 Review of Efficiency and Effectiveness in Higher Education and to the 1988 Higher Education Policy Statement. Consistent throughout these reviews has been an assumption, often more implicit than explicit, that the management of universities has been deficient. The Review of Efficiency and Effectiveness in Higher Education made scant reference in fact to university governance, save for four paragraphs generally descriptive of the historical state of affairs (CTEC 1986, pp 254-5). Despite this brief attention, the Review was able to make some more detailed recommendations which included a re-emphasis on the ultimate legal responsibility of the governing body, and a belief that members from outside the institution should be in a clear majority. It recommended also a process of continuous forward planning, which it regarded as an essential feature of good management and accountability, and which had not been a common practice in Australian universities, and that as the quality of academic leadership was critical, chief executives required management skills as well as academic reputation (CTEC 1986, pp 16-7).
The tentative findings of the Review of Efficiency and Effectiveness in Higher Education were amplified in the 1998 Higher Education Policy Statement. After restating the accountability of governing bodies, there was explicit criticism of the size of those governing bodies, of confusion amongst members as to their roles and objectives, and of a tendency for some members to see their primary roles as advocates for particular interests. There was again emphasis on the need for strategic planning, performance monitoring and a review. Most controversially, as it was to emerge, there was an explicit expectation that governing bodies delegate clear responsibility and authority to chief executive officers, introduce strong managerial modes of operation and streamline decision making processes (Dawkins 1988, pp 102-4).
The Hoare Review, with a more narrow focus on higher education management, was correspondingly able to provide a more comprehensive analysis of university governance. It was also more critical. It believed that only a limited number of governing bodies operated effectively, and that the major causes of that ineffectiveness were a lack of focus and emphasis on strategic issues, and appropriate skills of members, the size of some governing bodies, an imbalance between internal and external appointments and certain other procedural difficulties. It addressed the role of the governing body, and of the important responsibilities of the chancellor and vice-chancellor. On the other hand, the Hoare Review was also a kinder review, in the sense in which it recognised the collegial tradition of universities, the contribution of staff and students elected to the governing body, the need for the governing body to ensure an independent and vigorous academic board or senate, and that decisions took into account the views of appropriate stakeholders (Hoare 1995, pp 41-57).
The university as organisation
All three recent government reviews of higher education have sought, in essence, to apply modern management processes to the governance of universities. There has been little empirical justification for criticism of university management. Rather, the most commonly identified deficiencies have been for accountability, forward or strategic planning and performance appraisal.
The application of management theory and practice is of course dependent upon assumptions about the nature of the university as organisation, and in practice upon the validity of comparisons drawn between universities and other forms of organisation. The 1988 Higher Education Policy Statement,for example, sought to reappraise the roles of university governing bodies as boards of trustees, and the composition and size of those bodies by analogy with boards of large private sector organisations (Dawkins 1988, pp 102-3). Likewise, the Hoare Review justified the prominence of the issue of governance on the grounds of poor business practice and performance in the corporate sector and commercialisation of public sector enterprises (Hoare 1995, p 41).
The debate about managerialism and collegiality, which emerged from the recommendations of the Higher Education Policy Statement with regard to the introduction of strong managerial modes of operation, and which remains unresolved, is fundamentally a debate about the nature of the university as organisation. Geoffrey Lockwood, writing about British universities, has noted that while universities possess characteristics common to other entities, the combination of those characteristics is unique. Universities are organisations, in the sense in which they employ labour and capital to generate teaching and research. They are also communities in the sense that the universities support a cohesive society, within which relationships between members have ends of their own. They are also institutions, by means of the intrinsic nature of the values placed permanently upon activities such as scholarship. As long surviving historical organisations, Lockwood noticed the sense in which these three different traditions had developed from medieval times. The professional training function of Salerno, the student participation at Bologna, the magisterial style of Paris and the collegiate ethos of Oxford and Cambridge, for example (Lockwood & Davies 1985, pp 25-31).
Although none of the government reviews has adequately reconciled this organisational uniqueness with its recommendations, the Hoare Review at least stated clearly that it recognised the important differences between higher education institutions and other public and private sector enterprises (Hoare 1995, p 41). Even so, by emphasising the need for accountability, strategic planning and other management reform, these reviews arguably emphasised the primacy of the organisational function of universities, above their institutional and community roles.
The policy-making process
The resolution of difficulties implied by competing traditions in the university as organisation might lie in a closer attention to the policy-making process itself within universities. Half a century ago now, Herbert Simon argued that organisations could be described in terms of their decision-making processes, the anatomy of an organisation being its distribution and allocation of decision-making functions and its physiology the process whereby the organisation influences the decisions of each of its members (Simon 1947, p 220). The study of that subset of higher level decisions, which we call policy-making, is a relatively new discipline drawing its theoretical framework from theories of organisations and theories of decision-making, and its methodology from the approaches of political science, behavioural sciences and the natural sciences.
For the purposes of this paper, it is perhaps necessary only to observe that there are generally seen to be two major theoretical approaches to policy-making. One, a normative approach, seeks to optimise the basis upon which decisions are made and the process by which they are reached. Drawing in part on the behavioural sciences, discussion in this approach centres on the possibility of developing near mathematical paradigms about how individuals make choices among desirable alternatives, and whether riskless choices are attainable. An alternative descriptive approach seeks instead to improve the environment in which a decision can take place. A major contributor to that approach has been Charles Lindblom whose The Policy-making Process recognised that to understand the process of policy-making one must understand the characteristics of the participants and the roles they play. Lindblom argued that improvement in the quality of policy could be achieved only by improving the political environment of the decision-making process. In complex policy decisions, an analytical approach was too limited by its fallibility, costly methodology, and inability to resolve conflicts of value and interest. Lindblom argued instead for a notion of strategic decision-making, based on an acceptance of the partisan role of participants in the decision-making process (Lindblom 1980, Part 1 pp 11-40).
In a loose sense, the distinction between normative and descriptive approaches to policy-making can be related to the distinction between managerial and collegial processes in universities. However, just as it is unfair to imagine that there was ever a Camelot-like college without executive management, or that there are present-day universities in Australia attempting to manage outside collegial processes, theoretical approaches to the study of policy-making have long recognised that neither normative nor descriptive approaches will stand alone. A general contingency theory of policy-making (cf Luthans & Stewart 1977) argues for example for a multi-variate matrix generally situational in orientation, and based on the identification and development of functional relationships between environmental, management and performance variables. Similarly, a general theory, commonly described as an integrative approach, sees policy-makers being both involved in analysing choices and also in allocating and mediating between conflicting sets of interests.
This latter kind of integrative approach (cf Paine & Naumes 1974) is based essentially on a recognition of the strengths and weaknesses of classical descriptive and normative approaches. Indeed it is in the contrast of these two approaches that perspectives on policy formation are inextricably located. An integrative approach recognises that in the process of policy formation incremental stages will be susceptible sometimes to rational consideration, or that sometimes considerations of behavioural or political effects might prevail. Likewise, in practice effective policy formation in universities, despite fears to the contrary, will continue to recognise a balance between managerial direction and the collegial environment in which policy is proposed, discussed and formalised.
A hierarchy of policy-making
Although the complexity and history of universities suggests a model of policy-making which integrates managerial and collegial processes, there remains a need to differentiate between the contribution to policy formation by levels of governance and management. The Hoare Review was anxious, for example, that the governing body should confine itself to strategic and policy issues in terms of its ultimate responsibility for external accountability. It stressed that it was important for there to be a clear understanding about what matters or issues were the authority of the governing body, and what matters the delegated authority of the executive. The governing body, it argued, ought not to be involved in matters of executive management, which are properly the delegated responsibility of the vice-chancellor (Hoare 1995, pp 42-43).
Similarly, the Review was firm that there should be an independent and vigorous academic board or senate responsible for matters of academic policy or of academic standards. Moreover, the governing body should ensure that there are effective consultative mechanisms in place so that the views of all stakeholders are taken into account (Hoare 1995, p 42). However, the Review made no very clear statement as to how such differentiation or process might occur in practice. Theoreticians have suggested that there are different levels of decision-making. Henry Mintzberg, for example, divided decisions into categories of operating, administrative and strategic decisions: operating decisions which are taken routinely, administrative decisions that either coordinate the operating decisions or are taken on an ad hoc basis with minor overall consequences: and strategic decisions which have a significant impact on the organisation (Mintzberg 1979, pp 59-61).
There are no ready made distinctions between categories of policy-making, in large part because policy-making is generally seen more simply as the highest strategic level of decision-making. Indeed, some part of the concern about collegial participation derives from a perception of policy-making as a unitary process controlling the development of every kind of university policy. John Davies has suggested, however, that in universities it is possible to distinguish between three categories of policy (Lockwood & Davies 1985, p 161).
· strategic policies: concerned with the role and mission of the institution (and including questions of size, purposes, educational philosophy, community role, local, regional, national, international balance, clientele, desired student profile)
· substantive policies: which give effect to the strategic policies and which form the basis of most political interaction with groups (including curriculum and teaching, research and consultancy, publishing, financial sources and management, facilities utilisation, institutional advancement and personnel policies)
· climatic policies: designed to create a favourable psychological and social setting through which interest groups are activated to play a constructive part in strategic and substantive policy formation (including openness of information, access to decision-making books, grievance and due process procedures, ethical considerations, incentives and reward structures, equity and justice, counselling and advisory services).
The above typology, whilst useful in describing different kinds of policy made in universities, is less helpful in relating those policy levels to levels of governance. It is possible, however, to construct a similar typology, and to do so drawing where possible from the argument and recommendations of the Hoare Review.
Discussion on such a typology is being experimented at Curtin University of Technology and is as follows:
· Governing Policies: these concern the broad overall purpose and strategic direction of the University as embodied in major University Plans concerned with the role and mission, external accountability, including questions of overall size, purposes, educational philosophy, community role, regional and international balance, desired student profile, and directional strategic statements about academic policy, quality and standards, financial policies and human resources and physical policies.
Governing Policies will be determined by Council, following advice from the executive, and the University community.
· Framework Policies: these provide a basic framework for the University to implement the high level strategic directions set by Council and also underlying principles for the general management of the University.
Framework Policies will be determined by Academic and Resources Boards and would not require Council approval. Council will be advised on these matters through the reports of these Boards to Council.
· Operational Processes: these provide the operating guidelines by which day to day affairs of the University are conducted. They emanate from decisions taken by managers with the framework policies.
Operational Processes are ultimately determined by the Vice-Chancellor through the authority vested in the position of Chief Executive. In practice, much of the formal endorsement will be recorded in the minutes of “executive”, and through the standing committees of Academic and Resources Boards and promulgated through Administrative instructions.
It is important to note that the distinctions between governing and framework policies and organisational processes are neither self-contained nor separate. While the typology might be useful in delineating the broad responsibilities of different levels within the hierarchy of governance, the practice of policy-making will necessarily and appropriately involve some or all of these levels in a formal or informal way. Likewise, the development of policy will thus take account, as the Hoare Review suggests, of the important views of appropriate stakeholders (Hoare 1995, p 42).
The experiment at Curtin is undergoing intensive debate within the organisation. There are concerns that the past practice of a layered decision making system where every decision was funnelled to the highest level (de Sousa, 1997) and now delegated through the different levels will somehow disfranchise the very essence of collegiality and participation of wide stakeholders in decision making processes, especially at the operational level. A fundamental change in such practice cannot take place unless a corresponding cultural shift takes place with principal stakeholders.
Conclusion
Universities occupy a special place in society, not only because they provide for the teaching of undergraduate and postgraduate students, and for theoretical and applied research, but also because of their role in the preservation of the values of intellectual integrity and freedom of speech. We all recognise that this special role implies that there are stakeholders in the institution of universities. Over the past decade, the Commonwealth Government has claimed a principal role as stakeholder through a succession of reviews and reports, and structural and funding rearrangements. It would be unfair to say that government has failed to recognise the uniqueness of universities, but in arguing for reform especially in areas of strategic planning, accountability and governance, it could be argued that government has emphasised the role of university as organisation. This has led to tension within the sector, and some parts of the university community have perceived that emphasis as a threat to the equally important historical roles of the university as community and institution. That threat has been based on assumptions about a redirection from descriptive or participatory processes to normative processes of policy-making, and about policy-making as a unitary process. This paper has argued that collegial input will remain an important part of the policy-making process. Moreover, this paper has suggested that it is possible to discriminate between types of policy-making, and suggested that such a typology might be applied to assist in the preservation of collegial processes while accommodating the need for more corporate and strategic direction.
References
CTEC (1986) Review of Efficiency and Effectiveness in Higher Education, Canberra, AGPS.
Dawkins, J.S. (1988) Higher Education. A Policy Statement, Canberra, AGPS.
de Sousa, A.O. (1997) University Governance : An Australian Experience. Proceedings of the International Association of Management, Vol.15, Number 1.
Hoare, D. (1985) Higher Education Management Review, Canberra, AGPS.
Lindblom, C.E. (1980) The Policy-Making Process, Englewood Cliffs, Prentice-Hall.
Lockwood, G. & Davies, J. (1985) Universities: The Management Challenge, Windsor, NFER-Nelson.
Luthans, F & Stewart, T.I. (1977) A General Contingency Theory of Management, Academy of Management Review, April.
Mintzberg, H. (1979) The Structuring of Organisations, New York, Prentice-Hall.
Paine, F.T. & Naumes, W. (1974) Strategy and Policy Formation. An Integrative Approach, Philadelphia Saunders.
Simon, H.A. (1947) Administrative Behaviour. A Study of Decision-Making Processes in Administration Organisation, New York, Macmillan.
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