- 344 23d St. SW
Loveland, CO 80537 - 9709667790
- Professor of higher education emeritus at the University of Maryland, College Park. Now living in Loveland, Colorado.edit
This book is for academics who currently are department Chairs or are thinking about becoming one. I am going to look at the Chair’s role from two perspectives. The first is based on reports by psychologists and sociologists who have... more
This book is for academics who currently are department Chairs or are thinking about becoming one. I am going to look at the Chair’s role from two perspectives. The first is based on reports by psychologists and sociologists who have analyzed small-group leadership. An academic department is a prototypical small group, and I suggest that Chairs can become more effective by adopting evidence-based recommendations about effective leadership in such settings.
The second perspective is based on the discoveries of anthropologists and archeologists who have considered how human leadership was enacted in groups 20,000 years ago. It incorporates some ideas about brains, genes, and memes and proposes how Chairs can become more effective by adopting some of the leadership practices of our Stone Age ancestors.
Suggestions about what Chairs can do to make themselves and their department more successful must be seen in the context of academic institutions’ shared values and traditions. For this reason, I will emphasize the Chair’s role in fulfilling colleges’ social and educational purposes and the interests of those who work within them. Most importantly, I will explore why some Chairs become leaders while others do not and offer common-sense proposals that make leadership more likely. I hope this book will help Chairs and Chairs-in-Waiting to:
• Appreciate how you can influence your colleagues to improve their professional skills within the context of academic morality;
• Understand how different sources of power available to leaders affect what you can do and how you can do it;
• Apply some principles and techniques that should increase your effectiveness in an academic, professional environment;
• Learn how influence can be gained and lost and what you can do over time to maintain influence with your colleagues and within your institution;
• Gain insight into how and why your leadership can promote collegiality, trust, motivation, and accountability in your department;
• Consider the moral as well as the instrumental consequences of your behavior;
• Think about how leadership was enacted in the distant past and how your influence might be increased if you adapted some ancient practices and became a Stone-Age Chair;
• Think about why only a relatively small number of department Chairs become leaders and how you can become one of them.
The second perspective is based on the discoveries of anthropologists and archeologists who have considered how human leadership was enacted in groups 20,000 years ago. It incorporates some ideas about brains, genes, and memes and proposes how Chairs can become more effective by adopting some of the leadership practices of our Stone Age ancestors.
Suggestions about what Chairs can do to make themselves and their department more successful must be seen in the context of academic institutions’ shared values and traditions. For this reason, I will emphasize the Chair’s role in fulfilling colleges’ social and educational purposes and the interests of those who work within them. Most importantly, I will explore why some Chairs become leaders while others do not and offer common-sense proposals that make leadership more likely. I hope this book will help Chairs and Chairs-in-Waiting to:
• Appreciate how you can influence your colleagues to improve their professional skills within the context of academic morality;
• Understand how different sources of power available to leaders affect what you can do and how you can do it;
• Apply some principles and techniques that should increase your effectiveness in an academic, professional environment;
• Learn how influence can be gained and lost and what you can do over time to maintain influence with your colleagues and within your institution;
• Gain insight into how and why your leadership can promote collegiality, trust, motivation, and accountability in your department;
• Consider the moral as well as the instrumental consequences of your behavior;
• Think about how leadership was enacted in the distant past and how your influence might be increased if you adapted some ancient practices and became a Stone-Age Chair;
• Think about why only a relatively small number of department Chairs become leaders and how you can become one of them.
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... Record Details - EJ493241. Title: The Quality Cube: How College Presidents Assess Excellence. Full-Text Availability Options: ... Click on any of the links below to perform a new search. Title: The Quality Cube: How College Presidents... more
... Record Details - EJ493241. Title: The Quality Cube: How College Presidents Assess Excellence. Full-Text Availability Options: ... Click on any of the links below to perform a new search. Title: The Quality Cube: How College Presidents Assess Excellence. ...
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In the preface to Management Fads in Higher Education, Robert Birnbaum names his primary audience "as college and university trustees, presidents, and other managers who constantly find their institutions under pressure to become... more
In the preface to Management Fads in Higher Education, Robert Birnbaum names his primary audience "as college and university trustees, presidents, and other managers who constantly find their institutions under pressure to become more efficient and effective, and for faculty ...
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This paper presents a new conceptual approach to institutional governance, management, and leadership based upon a cybernetic model of organizations. The cybernetic paradigm integrates existing models by suggesting how bureaucratic,... more
This paper presents a new conceptual approach to institutional governance, management, and leadership based upon a cybernetic model of organizations. The cybernetic paradigm integrates existing models by suggesting how bureaucratic, collegial, political, and anarchical subsystems function simultaneously in colleges and universities of all kinds to create self-correcting institutions. The cybernetic paradigm posits that organization control systems can be described in
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Birnbaum first introduces some novel ideas about fads and carefully analyzes the historical development of seven major management systems in higher education: Planning Programming Budgeting System, Management by Objectives, zero base... more
Birnbaum first introduces some novel ideas about fads and carefully analyzes the historical development of seven major management systems in higher education: Planning Programming Budgeting System, Management by Objectives, zero base budgeting, strategic planning, ...
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This study examined the relationship between educational achievement and ethnicity as related to enrollment patterns of Wisconsin high school and college students. The purpose of the study was to identify the points at which minority... more
This study examined the relationship between educational achievement and ethnicity as related to enrollment patterns of Wisconsin high school and college students. The purpose of the study was to identify the points at which minority students . leave the educational system. The data utilized for the study, were. the enrollment data for 1973-74 and 1974-75. Cohort-survival models of Wisconsin students moving through high school, from high school to the University of WisConsin and through the university were used. Ethnic identification was the independent variable. The study had three major findings. Ethnic composition in the school district is itself related to attrition patterns. Minority high school graduates are as likely to attend the University of Wisconsin as are non-minority high scIool graduates. The flcsf bf students through'the university system may indicate higher attri .41nfor some minority groups compared with_non-minority students. The study concluded that uithout a...
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Symbolic and cognitive organizational perspectives were used to analyze a case study of a complete academic bargaining cycle. The researcher, as participant-observer, had access to all bargaining sessions and to both union and... more
Symbolic and cognitive organizational perspectives were used to analyze a case study of a complete academic bargaining cycle. The researcher, as participant-observer, had access to all bargaining sessions and to both union and administration caucuses. Although bargaining is often considered a rational process, this case illuminated the processes and outcomes of negotiation under conditions of loose coupling and bounded rationality. Negotiations showed the three major characteristics of organized anarchies, and had outcomes more symbolic than instrumental. People bargained to get what they wanted, but also bargained so that they wanted what they got; attitudes followed as well as preceded behavior, and although the bargaining was in part goal-directed, goals were also bargain-directed. Bargaining did not affect institutional operations, but it did help participants arrive at more consistent interpretations of institutional life. Includes 17 references.