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2010 ASHE Conference Proposal Division Organization, Administration, & Leadership Format First Choice: Poster Session Second Choice: Roundtable Third Choice: Scholarly Paper Title of Proposal College Presidents with Traditional and Non-Traditional Career Paths: A Comparative Study of Attitudes Toward Faculty Governance Purpose of the Research Demands for accountability, efficiency, and achievement of performance goals are creating pressures for change in how colleges and universities should be governed. Evidence of one such change underway is the increasing number of college and university presidents and other highlevel administrators who come to their positions with little or no academic experience often having served previously as senior-level managers in private, for-profit, and non-profit organizations. The percentage of first-time college presidents whose prior two positions were outside of higher education roughly tripled in the 13-year period from 1995 to 2008, increasing from 3.9% in 1995 (Birnbaum & Umbach, 2001, p. 206) to 11.9 % in 2008 (Hartley & Godin, 2009, p. 4). The purpose of this research is to identify the extent to which attitudes toward faculty governance differ between college and university presidents who come to that office without prior experience, outside of student status, in academe (non-traditional presidents), versus presidents who have a meaningful amount of professional experience in an academic setting prior to becoming president (traditional presidents). If a statistically significant difference in attitudes toward faculty governance is found, the research will attempt to identify variables in the background and experience of nontraditional presidents which are most closely associated with such differences. Faculty governance is an organizational phenomenon for which there are no strong analogues in the structure of non-academic organizations. College presidents who come to the position exclusively from traditional higher education career paths, have experience with, and an acculturation to, the role of faculty governance. College presidents who come to the position with prior experience, for example, as an entrepreneur, or as a senior executive in a for-profit enterprise, may possess different attitudes toward the role of faculty governance. To date, the relationship between college presidents prior non-academic leadership experience and their

attitudes regarding faculty governance has not been explored through empirical or generalizable methods. This research that will endeavor to address four primary questions: 1) To what extent do current U.S college and university presidents have little or no professional experience in an academic setting prior to assuming the role of president? 2) Do college presidents without prior academic experience possess different attitudes toward faculty governance relative to those held by college presidents whose prior career experience has included a significant time period working in an academic setting? 3) If a statistically significant difference in attitudes toward faculty governance is found, which variables in the background and experience of non-traditional presidents are most closely associated with such difference? 4) How does the extent of differences in attitudes toward faculty governance between traditional and non-traditional college presidents compare among different institutional categories in higher education, e.g., community colleges, for-profit colleges, independent non-profit colleges, and research universities? Theoretical or Conceptual Foundation A deep body of literature in the fields of sociology, political science, and organizational theory speaks to the changes that organizations undergo as they mature, and the adaptations that organizations undertake, when under pressure from unfriendly external environments. As organizations mature, they typically undergo changes that lead to bureaucratization (Weber, 1947). Historically, externally-driven reform efforts have led organizations to professionalize their management (Waugh Jr., 2003). For instance, the good government movement of the Progressive Era focused on executive-centered professional management as a cure for institutional corruption, inertia, and administrative inefficiency. Executive-centered management was to ensure accountability by providing leaders with ultimate, identifiable responsibility for their organizations (Stever, 1993). Evidence of externally-driven pressures for change in how colleges and universities are governed is abundant. Economic constraints are forcing a focus on efficiency, productivity, and accountability which may seem inconsistent with the decentralized, consensus-seeking, deliberative process of traditional faculty governance. It is not surprising that the processes of bureaucratization and professionalism inherent in classic Weberian organizational models, when combined with these external pressures, would lead organizations to increasingly turn to hiring from pool of leaders who have had experience and success in executive-centered management thus, the trend toward hiring college presidents from outside of the academy. Viewed from within the classic organizational change model, management

processes developed for non-academic enterprises may reflect values that conflict with the traditional values of college and university governance. This study works within that model to examine the likelihood that college presidents hired from outside of academia bring to the office attitudes that are less accepting of the role of faculty governance than their counterparts who have reached the college presidency via a more traditional academic career path.

Methodology The methodology employed in this study will include an online survey of current US college and university presidents and statistical analysis of the survey results as described below. 1) Identification of traditional college presidents and non-traditional college presidents. A survey instrument will be developed to identify the amount of prior full-time managerial, staff, or faculty experience, in an academic setting, that each respondent president had before assuming office. The survey will also include questions about the age, gender, ideological orientation, type of prior experience for instance, for-profit, non-profit, entrepreneurial - size of prior non-academic employer, time in prior positions and other attributes that may be associated with differences in presidents attitudes toward faculty governance. The survey will be deployed to a large sample of the roughly 6,000 U.S. college and university presidents. Traditional presidents will be defined as having at least five years of prior academic experience and none of their immediately prior two positions having been outside of higher education. Non-traditional presidents will be defined as having less than one year of prior academic experience and their two immediately prior positions having been outside of higher education. 2) Measurement of college presidents attitudes toward the role of faculty governance The survey instrument will also measure college presidents attitudes toward the role of faculty governance. Using an agree/disagree five-point Likert scaling, the survey will examine presidents attitudes toward various aspects of faculty governance, including, but not limited to, the overall benefit of active faculty governance to institutional well-being, faculty governance as a hindrance to institutional progress, the appropriate role of faculty governance in institutional decision-making in specific areas such as curriculum, strategic planning, budgeting, financial management, hiring and

promotion, and non-academic functions, such as physical facilities, and intercollegiate athletics. 3) Statistical testing will be conducted to determine the extent to which attitudes toward faculty governance differ between traditional college presidents and non-traditional college presidents. The methodology will control for other variables, such as time in position, gender, ideological orientation, that may be correlated with presidents attitudes toward faculty governance. 4) If a statistically significant difference in attitudes toward faculty governance between traditional and non-traditional college presidents is found, linear regression analysis will be applied to examine which additional survey variables, among those noted above, in the background and experience of non-traditional presidents, are most closely associated with such difference. 5) Cross-tabulation and further statistical analysis will be employed to determine how the extent of differences in attitudes toward faculty governance between traditional and non-traditional college presidents compares among different institutional categories in higher education, based on Carnegie classification. Implications If this study does show differences in attitudes toward faculty governance between traditional and non-traditional college presidents, further, more thickly-descriptive, qualitative studies of these attitudes would shed additional light on the nature of these differences. If non-traditional college presidents do indeed bring to the office a set of attitudes hostile to the traditional role of faculty governance in the administration of their institutions, this will likely have implications for the president, the hiring board or external authority, and the faculty. Non-traditional presidents will need to be cognizant of potential value conflicts and control issues that they may face upon assuming leadership. When considering non-traditional candidates for the presidential role, external authorities and hiring boards may need to weigh any preferences for an executive-centered leader who will run the college like a business, against the likelihood of a potentially disruptive clash of values with the faculty over the culture of governance. Faculty might benefit from understanding how a new president from a non-traditional background may be likely to view the facultys role in the governance of the institution, so as to anticipate and frame the cultural gap and develop a constructive plan for engagement with the incoming leadership. For all three parties, the anticipation of attitudinal differences toward faculty governance on the part of non-traditional presidents, could raise opportunities for planned

communication, training, and professional development strategies that might ease the process of leadership change for all involved.

References Birnbaum, R., & Umbach, P. D. (2001). Scholar, steward, spanner, stranger: The four career paths of college presidents. The Review of Higher Education, 24, 203-217. Retrieved from http://www.eric.ed.gov Hartley, H. V., & Godin, E. E. (2009). Career patterns of the presidents of independent colleges and universities. Washington, DC: Council of Independent Colleges. Stever, J. A. (1993). The growth and decline of executive-centered intergovernmental management. Publius: The Journal of Federalism, 23, 71-84. Retrieved from http://www.publius.oxfordjournals.org/archive/ Waugh Jr., W. L. (2003). Issues in university governance: More professional and less academic. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science , 585, 84-96. doi: 10.1177/0002716202238568 Weber, M. (1947). The theory of social and economic organization. London: Collier Macmillan Publishers.