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Books/Livres

 

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‘Such drifting . . . in the end is likely to be suicidal’

George Keller. Academic Strateyy:
The Management Revolution tn America.
The Johns Hopkins University Press,
Baltimore and London, 1983. $8.95
paperback, $18.50 hardcover.

 

SES AI EMRE EIS RIE, 1
W. M. Sibley

It is a central thesis of this book that a
veritable revolution in management is
underway on college and universily
sumpuses in the United States, as
academic institutions “take action against
their rising: sea of troubles and, by adtil
strategy, calm them”. In Keller's view
“what is remarkable (p. viii) is that the
chief weapon in this response is modern
financial and stralegic management, a tool
designed largely by business organizations
to cope with marketplace threats and
opportunities”.

Conjoined with this revolution in
management are equally significant
changes in planning. Older forms of
planning, mechanical and deterministic in
naLure, and based on “highly rational
administrative science’, are being dis-
placed by ‘participatory strategic decision
making’, which Lakes advantage of the
expertise and entrepreneurial Lalents o!
uhiversity facully. ‘Through the medium
of a number of interesting case histories,
Keller illustrates these two theses and
their corollaries in lively fashion and in
considerable wealth of detail. [Le writes
from a background of some twenty-five
years of university experience, both as a
professor and administrator, and brings
to his analysis the added benefit of
insights subsequently gained from an
extensive consulting practice.

Keller's account of these new styles of
planning and management can be reduced
(] hope not unfairly) to five major themes
or components. The first and most
fundamental theme is that American
colleges and universities are now faced
with the need to compete. “The specter of
decline and bankruptey” (p. 3) is hauntings
higcher education. The environinent (p. 64)
has turned “from solicitous and supportive
to censorious and cold-blooded. Regula:
Lions ure being imposed, appropriations
are being slashed.’ The environment miy
contain opportunities, but it also holds
major threats. Student numbers are due to
decline and major crises in financing: will
result, Pacully raiding will intensify.
Traditional institutions of higher learniu,:

December 1985

face massive and formidable competition
from ‘“noncollege and nonuniversity higher
education’. In such a grim context,
strategic planning and management must,
above everything else, concentrate on the
fate of the institution, on its very survival.
The fundamental aim of strategic planning
(p. 152) must be ‘‘a Darwinian one of
linking the forward direction of your
organization with the movement of
historical forces in the environment’.
Strong leadership is essential. Indeed
(p. 75) “to have a strategy is to put your own
intelligence, foresight and will in charge
instead of outside forces and disordered
concerns”.

Any successful leader must know how
to ‘scan the environment”’’ — a process
which is Lhe second component in strategic
planning. Here various techniques are
being employed — as yet crude and
imperfect but nonetheless essential if
organizations are to have antennae which
can sense Lhe rapidly changing environ-
ment. Risk cannot be totally eliminated,
but it is imperative to have some means
of forecusting such factors as technological
change and its implications; the future of
the economy; demographic trends; politico-
legal developments; and socio-cultural
changes.

Thirdly, institutions must assess
themselves, in a far more searching and
rigorous manner than ever before. Like
other corporate entities, they must ask
themselves such questions as: What
business are we really in’? What special role
do we plav? What comparative advantages
do we possess over similar places? What
are our traditions, values and aspirations?
What are our strengths and weaknesses?
and how do we capitalize upon our
strengths? The central aim of such
strateyic thinking is to place the unit ina
distinelive position, so that it has its own
market niche and is clearly differentiated
from others in its competitive league.

The fourth theme is that of quality.
Academic quality, Keller affirms, ‘‘will be
an especially huge concern in the next
decade or two". Quality throughout an
institution's operations is a condition of
survival and a ‘‘must”' for academic
manaicement. Quality cannot be imposed;
it must be elicited. However (p. 134), ‘lack
of quality should be sternly and surgically
dealt with”. In the drive towards quality,
conLinuing rejuvenation of faculty in the
period ahead is a matter of supreme
urgency.

Finally, existing forms of university

 

governance and management stand in need
of radical reform. Institutions can no
longer be content to remain as the
“organized anarchies” portrayed in the
analysis of Cohen and March, practicing
the ‘‘garbage can model” o1 decision
making. What is required is a much more
active, change-oriented management style.
The era of “laissez-faire campus adminis-
tration is over’ (p. 26) and “the era of
academic strategy has begun’’.

Faculty collegialism, which typically
creates a disastrous stand-off between
would-be administrative leaders and their
academic staff, is a major impediment to
change. As for academic unions, their fight
is for better pay and working conditions
rather than for the strength and vitality
of their institutions. Keller sees aun acute
need (p. 36) ‘to restore clear authority in
some fresh form to American higher
education". There must be a reassertion
of the priority of institutional values over
those of the academic profession. Iirtic-
ipation and consultation will stili be
essential; but in the last analysis the
president (or some other very scnior leader)
must be able to make the necessary final
decisions. Just how this restoration of
authority to university presideits is to be
achieved, however, in the face of deeply
entrenched collegial power, or adversarial
modes of collective bargaining. or indeed
hoth together, is a problem that Keller's
analysis really dovs not resolve,

Given the indiscriminate and rather
tiresome application of the term “strategy”
in so much current lilerature on planning:
and management, we should be yrateful
that here is a Lhoughtful and informed
work which gives Lo thal Lerm some
genuine cognitive instead of merely
emotive loading. This is a hook which can
be read with great profit, if only for the
significant case studies it contains, which
provide some stimulating examples of
entrepreneurial initiative and success,

At the same time, one wonders whether
“strategic planning’ of the type Keller
depicts really entails substantially new
modes of thinking or managing. intelligent
planners surely have always had cnough
sense to “scan the environment. to look

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University Affairs 15