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Faculty collective bargaining and the role of the dean
Abstract
An established faculty union affects the administration of an academic institution. To examine how it impacts on the role of the dean, these basic questions were used to guide the study: (1) What are the perspectives of the deans on the impact of faculty collective bargaining on the role of the dean? (A) Faculty personnel policies and procedures? (B) Budget and resource acquisition and allocation? (C) Planning and curricular program development? (2) What views do the deans have for improving the administration of unionized, academic institutions, especially the state colleges and universities? Using a qualitative research method and nine academic deans, I explored the above issues. Tape recorded, in-depth, personal interviews, consisting of open-ended questions, provided the data. The institution's governance documents, academic personnel policies, union contracts, and other publications were reviewed, and information from them used in analyzing and interpreting the data. Some significant results were: (1) Faculty collective bargaining has made deans cautious, careful, conservative and safe in making personnel decisions, and ultimately made the campus less daring, bold, flexible, and innovative. (2) It has contributed to clear, precise, and detailed personnel procedures, limited arbitrariness in decision making, increased faculty involvement and cooperation in certain decisions, and limited them in others. (3) It has curtailed deans' roles in decision making for faculty salary, reduced the percentage of money for merit pay, and limited deans' ability and discretion to use merit pay to reward faculty. (4) It has not contributed to increased time or administrative skills that the majority of the deans require to perform their duties in personnel administration. (5) The financial condition of the institution has the greatest impact on the role the deans play in the budget, while federal/state regulations have the least impact, followed by faculty collective bargaining. (6) Faculty collective bargaining has not caused any shift in the roles and responsibilities of the deans compared with those of the faculty in academic program planning. (7) The academic personnel policy changes implemented before the establishment of the union reduced the impact of faculty collective bargaining on the roles and responsibilities of the deans.
Subject Area
Educational administration|Higher education|Labor relations
Recommended Citation
Nwabeke, Christopher Akujuo, "Faculty collective bargaining and the role of the dean" (1992). Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest. AAI9233123.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI9233123