For that matter, the VCM planning process has been fundamentally at odds with principles undergirding VCM itself. I take those principles to include such things as decentralized responsibility, broadened and more explicit accountability, increased openness about budgetary decision-making, and greater initiative and attention to quality at every level of the University. I am reminded of the story told about Woodrow Wilson during his days as president of Princeton University. The consensus view of scholars and practitioners is that leadership is the practice of mobilizing constituents in pursuit of shared goals. Enlarging a group can only increase its total knowledge base.
Leaders involve constituents because it makes for smarter decisions.
Even if at the end of the day leaders observe that the outcome of a collaborative process is the same policy they wanted to implement in the first place, the collaboration will still have been worthwhile due to the buy-in effect. The leadership capacities of constituents are enhanced when they engage in mutually determinative activities in pursuit of shared goals. Building the capacities of constituents is the right thing to do ethically. Contrast the above ideas with the process that brought VCM to where it is at the University of Michigan. Until very recently the overwhelming majority were unaware that the plan even existed.