Decision Making in a Joint Doctoral Program in Educational Leadership.

This article explores the decision making in developing and starting a partnership between three universities using the decision-making models developed by Graham Allison in 1971 and updated in 1999. University partnerships are complicated and require more than one decision-making model to explain all the significant decisions that are make in both forming and running a partnership of equals. This is an article regarding the development and implementation of an educational partnership between three universities. The first part explores the decision making in developing the partnership, and the second part explores the decision making in starting and running the actual program. Using three different decision-making models that were first discussed together in 1971 (Allison) and later updated in 1999 (Allison and Zelikow), this paper reflects upon the creation of a specific educational partnership between two California State University (csu) campuses and a University of California (uc) campus. The use of the models reveals how a formalized collaborative group makes decisions and carries out the work of the partnership. The different models offer lenses with which to evaluate particular steps in the partnership process. The partnership was formed after the California legislature passed California Education Code 66040 in 2000-2001. It brought both new resources and policies to joint doctoral degree programs, specifically in educational leadership and administration. This article is designed to help others in the field who may be considering forming a partnership involving two or more colleges or universities. The Need for a Variety of Decision-making Models In Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis, Allison and Zelikow (1999) contend that to understand what happened in the Cuban Missile Crisis requires multiple decision-making models or theories, for no one model can explain all of the decisions made within the crisis. The models used in the Cuban Missile Crisis analysis invite a thoughtful approach to examining complicated issues in large governmental organizations. Here, we apply the decision-making models to a different kind of crisis - the undisputed need for more and better-trained educational leaders in California schools, which led to the creation of a unique partnership between universities. In this case, three decision-making models are taken together to discuss some of the processes and problems associated with developing a new program governed jointly by two large educational systems and three universities within these systems. Each model explores decision making from a different frame of reference, and all three lenses together better explain the decision-making process within the partnership than any one model could by itself. The Educational Leadership Crisis in California Public Schools In California, three hearings were held across the state in 2001 to determine the extent of the leadership crisis in California and what could be done about it. The focus of these hearings was on the lack of advanced degrees held by administrators and how the chronological age of administrators who held advanced degrees was rising and that more than half of the administrators with advanced degrees in California would be retiring in less than five years. The second focus of concern was that community college administrators had no place to get advanced training in Northern California and that they were attending programs in Oregon and Nevada. Both representatives of the UC Davis and Sonoma State University attended the third meeting and expressed an interest to work together to help solve the crisis. CSU Sacramento had already indicated to UC Davis that they were interested in helping to solve this leadership crisis. The Three Decision-making Models Allison and Zelikow (1999) refer to the dominant decisionmaking model as the Rational Actor Model. The core concepts of the model are that various goals and objectives are considered in decision making and that the rational agent will explore all of the alternatives and select the one that ranks the best. …