In common with most of the
public services during the last fifty years, higher education has felt enormous
pressure on collective and individual morale, and suffered above average
incidence of the impact of low morale (in, for example, extremely high – or extremely
low – rates of turnover, and in the rates of stress-related illnesses). The
objective causes of such problems are fairly easy to determine, and most can be
traced to the effect of underfunded expansion multiplied by increased external
scrutiny and accountability. Similarly, critics wishing to lay the cause of
increased stress on management practice often ignore the evidence of stressors
that start outside the workplace – or those that are, at least in this era,
shared by other major employment sectors (such as reduced compensation - even in
parity with civil services). None the less, morale is a key component of
internal culture in higher education, and hence needs to be carefully analysed.
Maintaining
the correct balance between quality research and learning/teaching, while the
unit of resource continues to decline inexorably, is one of the key issues
facing us all. The way around is the quality of leadership of the University. Management
is about survival and ensuring the status quo. Leadership is about growth.
Management versus Leadership
There is an important
difference between these two concepts. Stephen Covey, who has made a fortune
out of his books revealing the habits of successful people, put it well when he
said: “Management works in the system, leadership works on the system”.
Higher Education is a
collaborative and structured dialogical encounter across asymmetries of
authority. It is based on candid conversation that does not coincide with
structures of power. How could educators be subordinated subjects of an
educational system and yet become authoritative agents of educational
leadership?
The key function of a Vice-Chancellor
is to lead the University: to harness the social forces within it, to shape and
guide its values, to build a management team, and to inspire it and others
working in the university to take initiatives around a shared vision and a
strategy to implement it. A Vice-Chancellor’s job involves both management and
leadership, but the latter is more important than the former. A Vice-Chancellor
should be an influencer and an enabler rather than a regulator and a controller.
Leadership and Change
Universities are not about
‘change’ – they are temples of knowledge tended by middle-aged men in crushed
trousers who understand the laws of the universe. Universities aren’t part of
society, reflecting the needs of the population – the sun-splashed ivory towers
stand today as they always will. If we close our eyes, it will always be 1947
or 2017!
At the core of such cynicism is
the issue of loyalty. Traditional academics do not regard themselves so much as
working for a
university as working in it.
Asked for information about identity with various causes, they are likely to
express greatest solidarity with the interests of a discipline, a slightly
lower sense of fellow feeling with the (academic) members of a department, and
only then a glimmer of ‘membership’ of the college or university. This value
hierarchy is being assaulted over the past decades from a variety of fronts:
from the changing map of knowledge, with its corrosion of disciplinary
boundaries; from the emerging inter-professionalism of the academic enterprise
– teaching as well as research.
Environment at the University
needs to be one that fosters action to achieve excellence. All actions should
be guided by a set of principle values. Values would ensure ethical actions.
Actions without guiding values run the risk of trampling over the human and
social good even if they produce the outcomes sought. There would need to be
two sets of values – one that guides human collegial interactions and the other
that would guide decisions and actions.
Principal values that the University
needs to uphold in its interactions would be –
- Love (and not poverty
of intimacy)
- Service of others (and not poverty
of spirit)
- Joy (and not poverty
of loneliness)
- Peace (and not poverty
of sanctity of life)
- Critical openness
to reality (not illusions)
- Strength (of morals and
integrity)
- Courage (of soul and
character)
- Faith and Trust (in us or we and
not me or I because we is collective me only)
- Tolerance (to
Cross-cultural differences)
The key values that the university
would need to uphold in all its work would be –
·
Integrity: Everyone is in favour of
integrity, but it is often forgotten that integrity is simply another word for
wholeness. Most professional ethics problems arise not from a calculated
design to act contrary to law, but through the inability to recognize
boundaries and cope with unexpected stresses and pressures.
·
Equity: is about equality of
opportunities. The university should be able to create an environment that
provides equal opportunities to all its constituents – equal opportunities to
learners to benefit from what is on offer, equal opportunities to its academics
to perform their jobs and grow professionally and personally, equal
opportunities to all stakeholders to guide and shape the course of evolution of
the university.
·
Fair play: is abidance to the established
standards of decency, honesty, rules, customs and law in conduct of affairs.
The university should be fair and gracious in actions and responses directed
towards all its benefactors, customers and competitors.
Crafting an Enabling
Environment
A supportive environment (soft infrastructure)
is composed of four key elements: the managerial team; systems of decision
making; systems for communicating; and systems for appraising and rewarding
staff.
·
Managerial Team: If the Vice-Chancellor is
going to spend most of his time leading, then he needs to recruit others to do
the managing. He needs to put together a group of managers who have sufficient
coherence to work together as a team, and sufficient competence and power to manage
the change. And having appointed these people, he must delegate as much of the
problem solving, committee chairing and other work to them as possible,
- Systems of Decision Making: To lead change successfully, one needs a
decision-making structure that can respond rapidly to internal and
external initiatives and pressures. This invariably means making the
decision making structures less hierarchal and complex. One needs to
delayer, decentralise, and devolve,
- Systems for Communicating: Many change initiatives fail because the vision
and the strategy are not adequately communicated to the staff whose
commitment and support are crucial to their success. Normal methods of
communication – internal newspapers, meetings with heads of school – are
important, but the “informal” – management-by-walking-about – are the most
important. As John le Carré has observed, “a desk is a dangerous place
from which to view the world”,
- Systems for Appraising and Rewarding Staff: Academics cannot manage by “exhortation”. One needs
to change their behaviour – and, ultimately, attitudes and values – so
that they support, rather than undermine, the vision and the strategy.
Having appraised individuals and units, they need to be motivated by
recognising and rewarding achievement not only by thanks, praise and
status but also by money. Hence some resources need to be allocated –
which will always be scarce – to units and to individuals on a
performance-related basis.
Management of Growth
All Vice-Chancellors need to manage:
·
Federalism: Impress upon the Government
that not all its universities can provide same kinds of outcomes and outputs
and that there would be differential rates of growth amongst different universities
towards realisation of national vision. Persuade the Government to permit a
shortage on the monetary surpluses if the need be, until new recruitment and
development initiatives have begun to yield dividends,
·
Faculty: Enhance the academics’ current
ability to deliver on the vision of the university. Attract talent from all
across the world and simultaneously invest in ‘growing your own’. The faculty
needs to infuse a lot of fresh blood from across the world and become a visible
player in the global labour market for academic talent,
·
Freshers: Recruit students who are
attracted to the vision of the University; without compromising with the need
to serve the local community, recruit the best from all over the world, and
·
Funds: Persuade benefactors of university
to provide financial support, both to reduce the pressure on bottom-line in the
short run and to replace tuition as the primary source of operating revenue.
In
Conclusion:
Excellence is the state or quality of
excelling that earns honour and respect from people. Moments of excellence can
happen by default when the rest fail and only one succeeds. That is not
sustainable excellence or excellence achieved but only a stray episode coming
through a stroke of luck. The university should strive for sustained excellence
at all times rather than some moments of excellence coming through by chance.
Making change work takes
several years because successful change is sustainable change. Changes do not
become sustainable until they are anchored in the culture – the core values –
of the institution, and this does not occur until the changes have been
demonstrated to work and to be superior to the old approaches and methods.
Cultural change comes at the end, not the beginning, of transformation
processes.
But past is where one comes from. It is the future
that one lives in. Rather than wait for the future to unfold, the academic
institutions need to focus on inventing the future.
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This is Part-4 of the series: Leadership and
Management of Institutions of Higher Education
Part-5 of the series follows soon
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Already published-
Part-1: Setting Priorities for Indian Universities
Part-2: A Quick System Check for Indian Universities
Part-3: Designing Growth for Indian Universities
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