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##  Academic Departments: How They Work, How They Change. ERIC Digest.           

SHOULD DEPARTMENTS CHANGE?
In the current environment of economic,             political, ideological, and technological pressures on higher                   education, departments must attend carefully to stakeholders'                   demands to (a) improve undergraduate student learning, especially in            general education; (b) collaborate across disciplines; (c) apply                knowledge to community and workplace needs; (d) be more                         cost-efficient or "productive"; and (e) provide education by                    alternative means, using technology to transcend boundaries of time             and space (Kennedy, 1997, p. 277; Layzell, 1999). But departments               must not only respond to the latest societal pressures but also, in             a free society, defend values, question societal norms, and freely              pursue knowledge. In fulfilling their complex missions, departments             must focus not only on what to do but also on what to be. Though not            all departments need to change in the same ways, departments across             the nation must reinvent new forms of collegiality and become more              outward-oriented, more focused on results, and more entrepreneurial.            They must develop new systems to reward their members, enhance                  productivity, and assure the quality of their work. HOW CAN                   DEPARTMENTS CHANGE?The foundation for departmental reform is                Zemsky's concept that "the way to reform is not to circumvent the               departmental structure that is endemic to most academic institutions            but to enlist that structure in the reform itself." (1991, p. 5)                Those who would change the department must deeply understand it.                From that understanding emerge strategies for change.                           Characteristics of departments emerge from the national literature;             each practitioner must use them as a heuristic to question the                  cultures and structures of his or her own department. 
Appendix A              summarizes the specific traits of departments we discuss and the                avenues for changes suggested by those traits. Unlike normal                    businesses, which organize subunits of people around functions                  aligned for administrative convenience, academic departments                    organize people of similar disciplinary interests to serve multiple             constituencies in ways that allow both innovation and                           predictability. At its best, the department is the flexible belt,               not the fixed cog, that channels intellectual energy into                       administrative work. 
In the department, the core academic values              among them academic freedom, autonomy, collegiality, specialization,            and reason are strong but often in conflict and under attack; change            strategies must build upon and redefine these values. The department            within its institution is uniquely autonomous yet uniquely                      interdependent. Change must build on departmental autonomy, but it              also requires complex roles from central administrators provision of            shared mission, rich information, fiscal incentives, crises and                 deadlines, support for chairs, alternative structures that enhance              or replace traditional departmental tasks, and university governance            systems that encourage interdisciplinary collaboration for the                  common good. If the role of departments is to channel intellectual              energy to serve multiple constituencies, then the role of the                   administration is not to fight the department or master it, but to              help it do its proper work. 
Departments' internal organization                combines elements of the collegium and the bureaucracy as well as               oligarchic, political, feudal, and caste-based systems. The                     collegial model, in which a closely knit group of peers under a                 consultative leader share work and decision making in collaborative             ways, is treasured as an ideal by faculty. Some literature suggests             the collegial model is the most successful form of governance in                higher education. But traditional collegial forms are stressed as               departments take on new roles and new types of non-tenure-track                 faculty or support staff, and as they conduct education in                      geographically dispersed or virtual spaces, collaborating in new                ways with businesses and with alternative providers. Much of                    departmental leadership, work, roles, and rewards can be understood             as a mixed, transitional response to these new                                  challenges. 
Departmental leaders, largely untrained for                       administration, are torn among multiple allegiances and multiple                tasks, and they wield ambiguous power. They must somehow balance                bureaucratic work with strategic and visionary functions to lead                change. Departmental work is determined by multiple influences and              by the considerable autonomy of faculty to allocate their time. As              increasing numbers of non-tenure-track or geographically dispersed              faculty fall outside the traditional modes of collegial interaction             and shared norms, departments may lose control of quality, or they              may implement more bureaucratic modes of control, such as job                   distinction by rank and title, assessment of outcomes, and extrinsic            rewards. Change must build on the best of departmental experiments              with new modes of ensuring quality. 
Departments have traditionally            enhanced productivity by hiring new (sometimes low-cost) teaching               staff, by increasing class size, and by using technology for                    research and writing. Still largely wedded to the traditional                   classroom lecture and testing paradigms, faculty are faced with new             paradigms of learning, new demands for education that transcends                boundaries of time and space, students with new expectations, and               the need for new forms of productivity--which have given rise to                pedagogical movements and experiments that are still largely outside            the traditional departmental systems of work and rewards. Change                must build upon best practice as departments struggle toward new                modes. 
In short, the department still exhibits the collegial modes            and academic values of its original form as a guild of scholars who             banded together to sell their services. But it is exhibiting on all             fronts the mixed, transitional, and experimental modes that mark its            transition to a much more complex world in which it must not only               keep up with rapidly changing disciplinary knowledge but also offer             increasingly diversified services to an increasingly complex world.             Academic departments are not dinosaurs, but evolving organisms that             are experimenting with new forms and that need help and support to              realize the potential for change that their structures imply. WHAT            TYPES OF STRATEGIES CAN DEPARTMENTS USE FOR CHANGE?Change                   strategies in the literature fall into six categories: (a) change               the environment; (b) change the type of person in the                           department; (c) address values by building on them, changing them,              or resolving conflicts among them; (d) change or build upon the way             the department is structured in terms of its organization, its                  leadership positions, its reward systems, its dispersion of power,              or its forums for conversation and decision making; (e) affect the              decision-making process in which the department is engaged; or (f)              create alternative structures such as institutes or offices of                  first-year studies to take over some of the department's functions.             Because departments differ, strategies from these various categories            must be shaped to the department's own characteristics. They must be            combined and integrated; no strategy by itself is likely to be                  sufficient. WHAT SHOULD DEPARTMENTS BE?The most important goal            is to change not only what a department does but also what it                   becomes. The visionary strand of the literature suggests that                   departments need "collegial entrepreneurialism" or "authentic                   collegiality" enhanced with "quality" principles. It suggests that              departments try to become "learning" departments or "teams." The                primary features of the new visions are (a) a department's capacity             for self-knowledge, including understanding its culture,                        environments, assumptions, values, and mental models; (b) systems               thinking, which views all elements of an organization as interacting            parts; (c) open and productive interaction that encourages                      closeness, collaboration, minimal defensiveness, and the ability to             handle conflict; (d) high freedom for individuals combined with                 encouragement for individuals to commit to the good of the                      department; (e) outward focus on interpreting the environment,                  meeting the needs of stakeholders, and producing results; (f)                   emphasis on learning from experience; and (g) support for leaders               who are collaborative yet who also initiate and guide the group. 
A            nationwide initiative to assist departments might offer consulting              to departments and institutions, helping them to initiate change and            become more effective. The national initiative would also                       disseminate models of best practice, train department leaders, and              conduct research on departmental work and departmental                          change. REFERENCESKennedy, D. 1997. Academic Duty. Cambridge,             MA: Harvard University Press.  ED 413 805. 
Layzell, Daniel T.                 1999. "Linking Performance to Funding Outcomes at the State Level               for Public Institutions of Higher Education: Past, Present, and                 Future."  Research in Higher Education 40(2): 233-246. EJ 584                   036. 
Zemsky, Robert, ed.  November 1991.  Policy Perspectives.                The PEW Higher Education Research Project.  4(1). 
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This publication was                    partially prepared with funding from the Office of Educational                  Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education, under                   contract no. RR-93-00-0036. The opinions expressed here do not                  necessarily reflect the positions or policies of OERI or the                    department. Permission is granted to copy and distribute this                   ERIC-HE Digest.                                                              **Title:** Academic Departments: How They Work, How They Change. ERIC Digest.           **Note:** For the full report, see HE 033 589. Prepared in cooperation with               Jossey-Bass Publishers.                                                      **Document Type:** Information Analyses---ERIC Information Analysis Products (IAPs) (071); Information Analyses---ERIC Digests (Selected) in Full Text (073); **Target Audience:** Practitioners, Teachers                                                      **Available From:** ERIC Clearinghouse on Higher Education, One Dupont Circle, Suite                630, Washington, DC 20036-1183. Tel: 800-956-7739 (Toll Free).               **Descriptors:**  Administrative Change,  Change Strategies,  Departments,                        Educational Change, Higher Education,  Organizational Change                **Identifiers:** ERIC Digests                                                                 
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