Faculty Experiences of the Rules they Write: Departmental Bylaws, Governance Narratives, and Transparency

• In Event: 50220 - Section on Organizations, Occupations, and Work Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 4: Careers in Higher Education

Abstract

A classic organizational sociology question is how written rules contrast with workplace behavior. We put a new spin on an old question by examining it in the context of professions—a workplace where members write their own rules to govern themselves. Normally, the gaps between formal rules and informal behavior reflect hierarchy—bosses write the rules and workers don’t follow them—but what happens when professionals write their own rules? Our study of faculty at a highly unionized public research university examines 59 departments’ bylaws and compares the written documents to faculty experiences of shared governance, with narratives collected in focus groups and individual interviews with 107 faculty members. We look at patterns among relatively more bottom-up and top-down departmental bylaws, and those in-between. By bottom-up, we refer to rules that appear more focused on democratic inclusion, and by top-down, we refer to rules that appear more hierarchical in nature. Initial analysis reveals gaps between the written rules and experience of faculty governance in both bottom-up and top-down bylaws types, but that the negative experiences differ. When bylaws are more bottom-up, a lack of transparent decision-making is often described as backroom deals and cabal-driven. When bylaws are more top-down, the lack of transparent decision-making is often described as authoritarian. Positive faculty governance experiences also seem related to the bylaws types such that inclusion in bottom-up bylaws departments looks like open access to information, and in top-down bylaws departments as transparent responsibilities. In other words, faculty see weaknesses both in more bureaucratic and more feminist/democratic style department organizing. The paper concludes by considering in-between bylaws departments for practices that may balance more extreme approaches.

Authors

• Laurel Smith-Doerr, University of Massachusetts-Amherst

• Joya Misra, University of Massachusetts-Amherst

• Joanna Beth Riccitelli, University of Massachusetts - Amherst

• Ethel L. Mickey, California State Univ-San Bernardino