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Arresting Decline in Shared Governance: Towards a Flexible Model for Academic Participation
Author(s) -
Lapworth Susan
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
higher education quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.976
H-Index - 42
eISSN - 1468-2273
pISSN - 0951-5224
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-2273.2004.00275.x
Subject(s) - corporate governance , autonomy , work (physics) , shared governance , control (management) , public relations , core (optical fiber) , sociology , political science , public administration , management , economics , law , engineering , mechanical engineering , telecommunications
This paper considers tensions between ‘corporate’ models of governance focused on the governing body and more traditional, ‘consensual’ academic approaches. It argues that despite these tensions, a decline in the role of the academic community in matters of institutional governance (‘shared governance’) is neither desirable nor inevitable, and that successful academic participation is possible through a combination of the corporate and consensual modes. Tracing a decline in academic participation from its height in the 1970s, the paper evaluates the problematic nature of more recent corporate approaches to university governance and the work of Dearlove (1997), (2002) and Deem is used to reflect on ‘tensions between the logic of managerial control and the conventions of professional autonomy’ (Deem, 1998, p. 52). The paper ends by offering a broad and flexible model for successful shared governance, drawing on the role of academic departments and Clark’s strengthened steering core (1998).