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Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2002 18:33:21 -0800
To: tomorrows-professor@lists.Stanford.EDU
From: Rick Reis
Subject: TP Msg. #378 MANAGEMENT FADS IN HIGHER EDUCATION - REVIEW
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His basic message is that common, significant elements of sound
management practices exist in all of the planning techniques that
became fads since 1960. They are vision, focused mission, strategic
objectives, assessment of results, flexible adjustment of operations,
and excellent internal and external communications. With talented
management, these elements can provide a foundation for success in
higher education.
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TOMORROW'S PROFESSOR(SM) LISTSERV
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Folks:
The posting below is a review of the book, MANAGEMENT FADS IN HIGHER
EDUCATION: WHERE THEY COME FROM, WHAT THEY DO, WHY THEY FAIL that
appeared in PLANNING FOR HIGHER EDUCATION
[http://www.scup.org/phe.htm] (2), Volume 29, Number 4, Fall 2001 and
is
reprinted with permission. Copyright ©2000-02 The Society for
College and University Planning.
Regards,
Rick Reis
reis@stanford.edu
UP NEXT: The Web's Enormous Potential for Evolution
Tomorrow's Academia
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MANAGEMENT FADS IN HIGHER EDUCATION:
WHERE THEY COME FROM, WHAT THEY DO, WHY THEY FAIL - REVIEW
Reviewed by Boyd D. Collier
The author, Robert Birnbaum, is professor of higher education at the
University of Maryland, College Park, where he teaches and writes
about higher education academic leadership and organization.
Previously, he was vice chancellor of The City University of New
York, vice chancellor of the New Jersey Department of Higher
Education, and chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh. He
is past president of the Association for the Study of Higher
Education. Birnbaum has authored other books on similar subjects,
including How Academic Leadership Works:Understanding Success and
Failure in the College Presidency and How Colleges Work: The
Cybernetics of Academic Organization and Leadership. Both his
academic and administrative experiences qualify him to examine the
subject of management fads as adopted by colleges and universities.
Birnbaum asserts that
[T]his book is primarily about the second academic
management revolution that followed and its effects on
higher education during the four decades between 1960
and 2000. Its focus was on ends rather than means, and
its goal was to produce at the lowest cost goods
desired by customers-that is, to make higher education
more like a business. (xii)
My own reading of this book's intent is that of a mild debunking of
the excesses that occur when irrational exuberance for a new
technique of planning dominates sound, experienced management, hence,
his term "seeking the grail" (p. 3). Two points should be made very
clear. First, contrary to his primary intent statement, Birnbaum
makes repeated comments throughout the book that there has not been
a "managerial revolution" (p. 60). It has been attempted, but failed.
Second, for the most part,
the planning techniques discussed in this
book have been imposed upon higher education by state governments,
coordinating boards, and/or boards of regents. The author clearly
recognizes that universities implemented the management fads
primarily because they were made to do so.
Discussion about how
various forms of regulatory planning techniques made their successful
implementation unlikely was not evident. When businesses decided that
planning innovations were not performing as expected, they were free
to discontinue them. Most universities cannot make a similar decision.
These noted deficiencies notwithstanding, this book is worth reading,
especially for those in higher education who work with planning and
evaluation. The clarity of expression is excellent while providing
an easily flowing citation of support from other writers. In addition
to his own thoughts, Birnbaum provides numerous additional sources of
information about the varied topics at issue.
Management Fads in Higher Education is not a typical planning
treatise, though higher education professionals should be familiar
with the planning techniques Birnbaum lampoons. Birnbaum's
discussions of planning programming budgeting systems,
management by
objectives, zero-based budgeting, strategic planning, benchmarking,
total quality management, and business process reengineering
are
reminiscent of all of the diet programs that people try.
The promoter
of the diet insists that if the dieter just follows instructions,
successful results will follow. But they
rarely do.
I have direct experience with using zero-based budgeting as both a
planning and control instrument. When President Carter was mandating
zero-based budgeting for all federal government agencies, including
military bases, I was making presentations about zero-based budgeting
to members of the Purchasing Management Association and teaching it
in an M.B.A. course. The students in this course included U.S. Air
Force military officers and management
personnel from Texas Instruments. The students made numerous case
studies on implementing zero-based budgeting into an organization.
Their primary observations were that
the required paperwork, as
Birnbaum mentions, was enormous, and zero-based budgeting was not as
much a budget planning technique as an operations review technique.
The Texas Instruments personnel stressed to the class that it should
not use zero-based budgeting organization-wide during any one fiscal
year. Its intent was to focus each year on a few units to force them
into an intensive review of their existing operations and resources
in order to justify their continued existence. By contrast, the U.S.
Air Force officers told us that they received guidelines from
Washington, D.C. to follow the instructions sent to them and
everything would be okay. The reader can guess which organization
used zero-based budgeting successfully.
Birnbaum characterizes management fads in many ways, but he is not
specific about what a management fad is. The definition of "fad" as
a rejected planning innovation occurs most frequently (p. 10). He
considers the planning techniques discussed in the book as rejected
innovations. Less time is spent investigating what continues to
prompt their use or the need for institutions to experiment to
resolve perceived problems of higher education.
The final chapter, "Managing Fads," is particularly informative. It
contains admonitions about management techniques well worth
considering. Yet, even in this final chapter, Birnbaum's intended
message is not clear. Is a management fad something institutions do
because everyone else is doing it, or is a management fad a misuse of
planning techniques? Can planning techniques, when used by
experienced, professional management, bring useful outcomes? Consider
Birnbaum's comments:
The management problems of higher education today are
not the result of fads, but of the social forces that give
rise to fads because of our over reliance on decision
rationality and devotion to efficiency. Fads are the
instruments of these forces. Fads can cause mischief,
but at the same time they offer opportunities for
institutional renewal. They can reinforce the tendency to
turn education into a commodity whose components can
be bought and sold to the highest bidder, but they also
can help institutions reflect on their purposes and
processes. We should be concerned about academic
management fads more for what they represent than for
what they actually do.
Academic management fads are potentially disruptive in
the hands of insecure or inexperienced managers who
adopt them because they do not know what else to do.
Academic management fads are potentially useful when
managers who have internalized the critical norms and
values of their institutions add the kernel of truth in each
fad to their store of knowledge and behavioral
repertoires. (p. 241)
Nonetheless, no book can tell the whole story. Birnbaum's story of
management fads in higher education is a must-read for academic
administrators, regents, and legislators. His basic message is that
common, significant elements of sound management practices exist in
all of the planning techniques that became fads since 1960. They are
vision, focused mission, strategic objectives, assessment of results,
flexible adjustment of operations, and excellent internal and
external communications. With talented management, these elements can
provide a foundation for success in higher education. In writing this
book, Birnbaum has made a substantial contribution to this task.
References
Birnbaum, Robert. 1992. How Academic Leadership Works: Understanding
Success and Failure in the College Presidency. San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass.
Birnbaum, Robert. 1991. How Colleges Work: The Cybernetics of
Academic Organization and Leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
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