May-June 2001

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Why Committees Don’t Work: Creating a Structure for Change

By William G. Tierney

For at least a decade, colleges and universities have been under intense pressure to change. In part, the external environment and new competitors have created challenges. But at the same time, new administrators and faculty members have questioned the way the academy conducts its business, and many have sought to improve and reform traditional processes. Deans and provosts, in particular, perhaps because of their interactions with external constituencies, have often asked whether there might be a better way to organize a variety of academic undertakings, including some of those traditionally decided through mechanisms of shared governance. James Duderstadt, the former president of the University of Michigan, has argued that structural flexibility and creativity, rather than permanence and stability, will be most valued in the academic organizations of the future.

The point, of course, must not be that one group gains the flexibility to make the other weak, or that a system of shared governance built up over a century collapses into unilateral decision making by fiat. My argument is that we can create decision-making structures that are more creative, flexible, and responsive to the times in which we work. And my purpose is to focus on the dynamics of organizational change in a system of shared governance in which decision-making processes are frequently unclear. Often, the failure to reform leads to a sense of stasis and cynicism precisely at a time when administrators and faculty members should be thinking about ways to enact improvements and innovations. The apparent absence of significant change has brought the criticism that colleges and universities are not as effective as they could be.

Aborted Change

Over the past four years, I have interviewed over two hundred faculty members, deans, and senior administrators on fifteen four-year campuses about the processes of change. One area of general concern is that too many initiatives fail, that our decision-making structures are not enabling us to change in one way or another. The problems are often not so much about what to do, but how to do it. I have seen more failures of reform efforts than successes.

The reforms proposed at the campuses I visited ranged from improving general education and academic advising, to ameliorating the working conditions of part-time faculty, to implementing post-tenure review. These reforms did not fail because of simpleminded "us versus them" responses in which heavy-handed administrators tried to pull the wool over academic eyes, or intransigent faculty tried to stymie every effort put before them. Rather, many reform efforts were put forth by a handful of administrators and faculty who honestly believed their particular idea would improve their institution. Unfortunately, their ideas were often neither accepted nor rejected. Instead, their proposed innovations remained sequestered in one or another committee or task force and eventually died as the academic clock ran out and new committees came into place.

Reforms usually fail for structural reasons: many colleges and universities do not have clear procedures for making decisions. Over the last generation, many observers of higher education embraced the idea of Michael Cohen and James March, professors of business and organizational behavior, that colleges and universities are "organized anarchies" in which orchestrated change is impossible. I disagree. In institutions that have a genuine, if not particularly well-functioning system of shared governance (as opposed to those that are a sham), the failure to reform is not an intractable problem but a structural problem that can be remedied.

Far too often, academic decision making seems more like a game in a schoolyard, where the participants make up their rules as they go along. A small liberal arts college that I studied invested a great deal of authority in the academic vice president’s office during a year in which that office initiated a reform. But when new faculty leaders convened the following year, they rewrote what had been approved. Similarly, the faculty in a research university appeared to approve of the administration’s ideas about intellectual property in one year, but the same ideas were rebuffed the next year. A provost at a third college commented at the start of the year about how the success of a particular initiative depended on faculty input. But at the end of the year, when the faculty still had not approved what was desired, the administration implemented the idea anyway.

The problems of academic decision making arise partly from the fact that the structure of colleges and universities is what organizational theorist Karl Weick has called "loosely coupled." McDonald’s is a tightly coupled organization. The manager knows how many hamburgers and french fries the workers will produce in a day, and the role of everyone at the franchise is clear; hence, tight coupling exists. Obviously, at a college or university, a president or provost could not articulate with certainty what takes place in a classroom, laboratory, or library. And few would argue that the kind of coupling that exists in a hamburger outlet could—or should—occur in an institution of higher learning. One may be able to specify how many ounces of ground beef and special sauce go into each Big Mac, but not how many pages should be read in each general education course.

The idea of shared governance assumes that a mix of people will participate in structures that encourage joint decision making. In loosely coupled organizations like universities, where no clear or systematic process for reaching decisions exists, the possibility for misunderstanding is significant. But the point is not to try to create a tightly coupled system, for such an attempt would be a fool’s errand. It would be as if we decided to apply the rules of basketball to baseball because we objected to the length of baseball games.

Instead, we need to think about how to improve decision-making processes within a loosely coupled system. If those of us who work in postsecondary institutions refuse to rethink the structures that frame our work or reconsider the organizational cultures that define our lives, we will not be able to meet the increased demands of the twenty-first century.

Roadblocks to Reform

Below I outline what I see as barriers to change, after which I offer suggestions for overcoming these barriers and enacting reform. I observed these five barriers I describe on campuses that failed to enact one reform or another, while I witnessed the strategies for change on campuses that succeeded in implementing academic reforms.

1. People can’t agree on the problem to be solved.

At one institution, for example, someone raised the issue of faculty development. Some people wanted to deal with sabbaticals and others with post-tenure review. That kind of lack of agreement stalls innovation.

Another kind of barrier arises when the individuals addressing a problem operate from different premises: they have different assumptions about the kind of information needed to reach a decision. Sabbatical reform requires information about how to improve the conditions for faculty renewal, whereas post-tenure review frequently calls for information about effective ways to evaluate individuals.

Most important, people are often unclear about who makes a final decision. Faculty members may assume that when they make a decision about how a problem should be solved, their decision will be honored. A dean, however, may have a completely different idea and see the faculty’s role as entirely advisory.

2. Time frames and structures are not clear.

Frequently, faculty members assume they have unlimited time to work on a problem. Yet administrators often grow irritated that a problem remains unsolved after an academic year’s worth of meetings. An academic vice president I met, for example, wanted what he considered a modest revision of the standards for promotion and tenure to be implemented by year’s end. But the faculty on the promotion and tenure committee saw the change as major, and when the year ended, nothing had been accomplished.

The problem is particularly vexing if decision making extends beyond an academic year. Typically, faculty do little administrative work in the summer, and when a new academic year begins, new committee members are invariably unaware of the discussions that took place the year before. The result is that new faculty members feel hurried and long-term faculty members and administrators perceive unnecessary delays in the implementation of an idea they already worked on the previous year.

Furthermore, the decision-making structures in loosely coupled organizations are often unclear, exacerbating problems created by a lack of scheduling. Frequently, no one in a particular institution is ever quite sure which constituencies need to be involved in one or another decision, or how decisions are finally made, causing so much confusion and indecision that the innovation attempt grinds to a halt.

On one campus I studied, an attempt to improve faculty development was stymied when so many committees became involved in the undertaking that simply sorting out who was responsible for deciding what overwhelmed the faculty member and administrator who initiated the process. The administrator moved the innovation to the bottom of her "to do" list, and the faculty member gave up and resigned from the committee.

3. There are no evaluative criteria.

When administrators and faculty members form committees to consider educational change, they rarely discuss how to evaluate a proposed innovation. One campus I visited spent several years implementing a new general education curriculum. Those who worked on the innovation saw the implementation of the "experimental" curriculum as a major accomplishment. What they never considered, however, was whether the experiment succeeded. It was as if a scientist in a laboratory won a major grant, attracted a research team to work on the project, and assumed that simply getting the project up and running was sufficient. The processes of decision making and implementation are sometimes so burdensome that trying to get the innovation in place overtakes any sense of whether it resolved the initial problem or provided the best possible solution.

The danger of unclear evaluative measures is twofold. The proposed innovation may actually be detrimental or mediocre, so that the problem will remain unsolved and require reconsideration at some point in the future. Second, as faculty members realize that the change did not help anyone, they become cynical about participating in subsequent reform efforts.

4. Changes are not communicated.

Often, a committee focusing on a reform becomes enmeshed in the issues under review, and the rest of the academic community remains unaware of either the problem or the proposed solutions. Because of the way shared governance works in a loosely coupled system, this lack of awareness will probably doom the proposed innovation. A small university I studied, for example, had revamped its tenure code so that teaching was more significant. Even though those who wanted the change had worked assiduously with the relevant committees, they had neglected to inform the campus of the changes. When the larger community heard about the reforms, there was widespread discontent.

5. The system freezes.

My research indicates that the kinds of failures I have outlined continually repeat themselves, so that those who have worked at reform are less willing to put in time when another effort is suggested. "Why bother?" becomes the refrain.

The result is that the system freezes. Although faculty members may be unhappy with the status quo, they realize that their work toward change will end only in frustration. Collaborative work is shunned because of a history of previous failures. This static culture is particularly worrisome at a time when the academy is under pressure to change.

Five Strategies

Merely understanding what causes cultural stasis does little to resolve matters. Instead, administrators and faculty members need to learn how to overcome barriers to reform. Below I offer five strategies for effecting change that worked at institutions I visited.

1. Foster an atmosphere of agreement.

As I have noted, problems arise when a committee embarks on a project without having clearly defined goals. The charge to a committee should be specific enough for each member to be clear about the committee’s purpose.

I found that reform committees that began with broadly defined issues ended up debating whether a problem existed rather than considering how to resolve it. Instead of charging a committee to look at "faculty development," as in the example noted above, a more narrowly designed assignment might prove more fruitful.

Among the successful committees I observed, initiatives often began with the assumption that a particular practice would change, not whether it should change. There is a fundamental difference between a committee that seeks to create change and one that is a study group. Both kinds of groups are necessary in any organization, but the people involved need to be clear about their charge prior to beginning their work.

My recommendations are twofold. First, groundwork must be done before a charge is placed before a reform committee. A useful analogy might be to a successful capital campaign where the organization’s development office has reached 25 percent of its goal before the start of the campaign. Why begin an initiative if it is sure to fail?

Second, one must be clear about the nature of the task—the committee will then have a better chance of collecting the kind of information it will need to make an effective decision. The point here is that reform committees need a flight path before they take off. The clearer one can be about where a committee is going, the more likely it will be that committee members will develop a plan that enables them to reach their destination. Without such a flight plan, the committee will take off on a risky and directionless adventure.

2. Define roles and time frames.

Good ideas frequently flounder because the process of developing them was somehow flawed. A committee was not consulted, a dean was not involved, a deadline passed, and the opportunity vanished. Outlining who is responsible for what topic and how the issues will move through the process is a helpful way to inform all those involved. Similarly, people need to know when a vote will occur at the very outset of their deliberations. Far too often, prolonged filibusters by those who disagree doom an idea that the vast majority supports. The only danger to outlining when decisions will be made and when votes will happen occurs when the process is defined but not followed.

When groups start obsessing about the decision-making processes, it is incumbent on the individuals in charge to follow the established process as closely as possible. As with air travel, deviations from a predetermined flight path only cause worry among those involved, and may in fact be dangerous.

3. Seek comparative data.

Institutions benefit from understanding how other colleges and universities carry out particular tasks and reach specific decisions. A college that is implementing service learning in its undergraduate curriculum, for example, will benefit if it seeks models from other institutions. When decision making occurs in a vacuum, committees spend time debating issues that may already have been discussed on another campus. We would never begin a research project or undertake an experiment without first doing a literature review and discovering what others have written or decided about our topic. We should do the same when it comes to understanding particular projects on our campuses.

4. Ensure good communications.

Providing timely and adequate information to colleagues who are not involved in the reform process is often the most difficult issue to tackle. One of the most frequent comments I heard from administrators whose initiatives had failed was that they had tried to inform the campus, especially the faculty, but faculty members were not interested until it was too late to change anything. When the faculty discovered what had been proposed, they created roadblocks. The problem was not with hurried administrators or sluggish faculty, but with inadequate communication. As I noted earlier, a proposal on one campus to give teaching more prominence in the tenure and promotion process floundered and died partly because the campus community had not been informed about the reform.

Campus reformers can try at least three specific things to keep administrators and faculty informed and on board with a particular innovation. First, at a time when Listservs and Web sites are commonplace, any idea that has significant implications for a campus ought to be conveyed in multiple venues.

Second, if, as I have recommended, an atmosphere of agreement has been created, individuals will more easily buy into the decision-making structure. One major challenge for any campus is to develop among members of its community an understanding of how decisions are made. Involvement is usually stronger in a system that has clear organizational processes, because individuals feel that their voices count, even if not all of their ideas are accepted.

Third, a reform committee should limit itself to a definable number of initiatives. Attempting to initiate a laundry list of reforms in one academic year creates the conditions for a faculty to reject ideas that they did not even know were under consideration.

5. Encourage an innovation-friendly culture.

The preceding suggestions have pertained to ways to avoid stasis. The point, of course, is not only to create an organizational culture in which rigid adherence to the status quo is absent, but also to foster one that embraces thoughtful reform. An organization’s culture is not merely made up of the structures that define how systems function and decisions get made. Organizational culture also has to do with the manner in which people work and communicate with one another. A culture of respect and innovation occurs not simply by way of an inclusive organizational chart, but also through the interactions of individuals and groups on a daily basis, and the meanings people make of those interactions.

Organizational change ought not to be so overwhelming that everyone is exhausted by the process and unwilling to attempt another change in the foreseeable future. Instead, efforts at change should be looked forward to with optimism. Of necessity, an ambitious organization in the twenty-first century needs to have an innovative culture in which individuals and groups respect one another.

The way to foster such a culture is threefold. First, when one sets in motion the kinds of changes I have discussed here, participants are likely to see reform not as efforts that waste everyone’s time but rather as tasks that accomplish particular objectives and goals.

Second, an innovator must convey a consistent message. Reform is not a one-time undertaking, but a continuous process. Once the campus accomplishes a task, it needs to maintain awareness about how the innovation might be improved while also moving on to new tasks.

Third, people need to be rewarded for their efforts if a college wants to be seen as committed to innovation rather than the status quo. All too often, someone comes up with a new idea and the general tenor of the conversation is to point out why the idea will not work rather than to try to figure out how it might succeed. Other times, a new idea is implemented, but the reformers do not receive any accolades for having guided the idea to fruition. The result is that innovators become exhausted and learn that new ideas are not welcome.

The importance of creating an innovation-friendly climate cannot be underestimated. Significant changes are going to happen in academe regardless of what a faculty or an administration desires. A responsive campus encourages and implements innovation.

Moreover, genuine shared governance is necessary for sustained, successful reform. Sure, one or another group or individual might be able to push through a single innovation, but if the culture is poisoned by the effort, then additional changes will fail. At a time when multiple voices are calling for change in academe, we need to reinstill or develop a culture of respect and innovation on our campuses. Shared governance is the sine qua non of such a culture. The meeting last fall in Washington, D.C., of academic deans and faculty members sponsored by the AAUP and the American Conference of Academic Deans set the tone for both sides’ interpreting this meaning-making culture together. As we enter the twenty-first century, the caring for, and nurturing of, the institution’s overarching culture by all its decision makers will advance a climate for overall change and invigorate the campus community with a sense of renewed purpose.