Shared Governance Means Delegated Decision Making

Several of my colleagues sent me links to Scott Cowen’s recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, “Shared Governance Does Not Mean Shared Decision Making,” assuming that I would be appalled and enraged by what I read. I put off reading it because I didn’t want to be appalled and enraged, but eventually I heard enough about it that I caved and read it.

I wasn’t appalled and enraged, and I think some of the points he makes are valid. But the premises on which his argument rests and the underlying sense of paternalism they imply do compel me to write a response. The question of what shared governance means and who makes decisions has come up again and again in my organization, both at the level of the library, where I work, and at higher levels between the administration and the academic senate. These questions are certainly not new and this is not untrod ground. The differences of opinion that arise over and over again in these discussions are distilled in Cowen’s article and in my colleagues’ and my responses to it.

My most significant point of disagreement is in the notion that the president and the board of a university are the only people responsible for making decisions. The idea that all decision-making authority in any organization rests with one person at the “head” of that organization is a fallacy, and upholding that false notion makes it impossible to work with integrity and honesty in an organization. The truth is that a university is too large an institution for all decision making to be done by one person, and for one person to hold all responsibility and accountability for everything that happens. It’s simply not possible. One person (or even one small group of people) cannot hold all of the information necessary, cannot have all of the expertise required, and cannot be apprised of all of the on-the-ground detail required to make all the decisions. When we claim that the president and board are solely responsible for decision making we erase the work of hundreds, if not thousands, of people who must and do make decisions every single day, and we reinforce a dynamic that encourages learned helplessness on the part of faculty and staff and of condescension and paternalism on the part of the administration.

In describing a structure for a university that might enable more responsive decision making, Cowen seems to be proposing something reasonable and necessary. He describes a crisis situation, the time period after Hurricane Katrina at Tulane University, when a smaller body of elected faculty representatives was able to move more nimbly than the whole of the academic senate to make changes that enabled the university to survive. Setting aside the question for now of whether the university was truly on the verge of collapse at this time, he describes a scenario in which faculty, administration, and the governing board were able to work together to make difficult decisions. He goes on to claim that shared governance is a “competitive advantage” to universities, a notion I agree with on a number of different grounds. He argues that shared governance models can include options for “leaner” operations that can be enacted in crisis situations to make decisions more quickly, and that’s just sound organizational management.

However, he goes on to make the claim that all universities are facing crisis situations and that university presidents should “evoke a sense of urgency” to pull their communities together “with or without a bona fide crisis.” This brings to mind an image of the wiser-than leader manipulating her “followers” into behaving the way she wants. It’s condescending and dishonest. A good leader can engage her team on the basis of shared commitment and shared vision without manufacturing a false sense of crisis and threat. And a leader with integrity would never manufacture threat in order to re-shape governance to serve her own needs.

Let’s not forget that universities are full of smart, committed, hard-working people with a great deal of expertise. In fact, most organizations are full of smart, committed, hard-working people because people, when treated with respect, tend to work hard for things we believe in. It’s when we’re not treated with respect, when we’re manipulated, when information is hidden, and when our leaders seem to care more about their images than their mission, that people become cynical and stop caring.

Faculty, staff, and students don’t need to “accept their roles as advisers, as opposed to decision makers.” We need a clear sense of our roles and responsibilities, of where we do have the expertise, experience, and freedom to make decisions. And administrators need to respect those roles and those decisions, and to recognize that they alone don’t hold all of the answers. Administrators don’t have some kind of magical omniscience that confers on them all knowledge, they don’t have a direct line to the truth. And they will lead better, create better organizations, and achieve their missions more effectively if they are willing to rely on and trust everyone in their organization to make the decisions that are appropriate for them to make.