5 ms·

Naive response: Throw out the bureaucrats. Leave those with subject knowledge. Tell them to do their work to the best of their ability? Stop measuring things. T

Naive response: Throw out the bureaucrats. Leave those with subject knowledge. Tell them to do their work to the best of their ability? Stop measuring things. Talk to them once in a while.

BoorishBears 10y ago
What about the bureaucrats with tenure?
- pdimitar 10y ago
  Your question contains a good chunk of our entire world's economic and bureaucratic problems -- namely people in power with the emotional intelligence and experience of a chihuahua.
dagw 10y ago
Throw out the bureaucrats. Leave those with subject knowledge. My wife works in academia and all the 'managers' in her research department are experienced researchers that often split their time between management and research. And it just does not work according to her. They don't understand the job of a manager, deem it less important than their research duties and basically see dealing with 'minor' personnel issues as a waste of their time. To run any organization of a non-trivial size requires some structure and bureaucracy. And you need people to understand, set up and own those structures.
- madez 10y ago
  Maybe the personnel issues are sometimes indeed minor and a waste of time. What are the symptoms your wife is observing?
  - dagw 10y ago
    Minor stuff like spending 3 weeks "unemployed" and without a salary because her boss couldn't be arsed/was too busy to sort out the paperwork, grant money almost getting lost in the shuffle, stuff like that. And even if you perceive a personnel issue as genuinely minor and you genuinely do consider it a waste of time, telling someone that problems they perceive as genuine are so insignificant to you that you don't even want to consider them, despite that being part of your job, is a great way to build resentment and destroy teams. A good manager should be able to quickly and efficiently handle minor issues without making people feel ignored and insignificant.
    - metaphorm 10y ago
      you're making the case for an administrative assistant, which is a very different role and set of responsibilities than a team of executives or managers.
      - bshanks 10y ago
        No, this is not the solution; I've seen this sort of thing happen in academia even with professors with assistants (thankfully my own professors have never been like this). For example, the administrative assistant presents the professor with an employee timesheet that needs to be signed in order for some employee to be paid, and the professor says, "thanks, I'm busy now, just leave that here and don't bother me again" and then doesn't sign it, causing the employee not to be paid on time. The administrative assistant does not have the authority to sign it himself and does not have the authority to tell the professor what to do (and may be fired by the professor if they make themselves a bother by trying to nudge the professor into doing the paperwork). The problem here is not that the professor is too disorganized, the problem is that some professors either don't perceive managerial tasks as important, or they view their managerial duties as impositions.
        metaphorm 10y ago
        well, the problem is professors lack the motivation or ability to properly to administrative tasks so somebody else needs to do them instead. however, installing a massive and expensive and authoritarian bureaucracy seems like an extremely bad solution as well and yet that is what we've got. I'm suggesting that that bureaucracy ought to be dismantled and be replaced by a smaller number of more focused administrators who have the authority to do administrative work (i.e. are allowed to sign the payroll) but are not members of the managerial class that is strangling the life out of the academy.
        bshanks 10y ago
        I like your suggestion. Yes, separate the job of professor from that of administrator; enhance research independence at all levels by reducing administrative power over the professor from above, and reducing the administrative role of the professor on those below them. I note that, if they have the authority to supervise employees and allocate budgets, then under many systems this administrator would be called a manager rather than an assistant (which is appropriate b/c this person would be a peer, rather than a subordinate, of the professor). I imagine that the admin would administer the budgets that were formerly administered by the professor, and other researchers who work in the lab would report to the admin rather than to the professor (the admin would consult with the professor over hiring/firing but would not be required to take their advice). The independence of the individual professor is enhanced but, due to the loss of full control of the budget and hiring/firing, their power over other non-professor-level researchers in the lab is decreased.
- pdimitar 10y ago
  Really though, what is there in an university that justifies a dedicated team of managers? One person in power (say, the dean) is enough to make sure grants are coming on time, and negotiate those beforehand. They need one accountant to make sure salaries, taxes etc. are in the legal bounds and people receive what they were promised. Honest question: what else is needed? Most of the managerial work I've witnessed in an university is easily doable by several slightly complex Excel spreadsheets. It just requires people to be diligent and not overlook the unquestionable need for accountability and visibility. As an additional question -- what exactly is there to "run" in an university?
  - dagw 10y ago
    Really though, what is there in an university that justifies a dedicated team of managers? The same thing there is in any company with several thousand employees (let's not even start to consider the administrative hassle of dealing with several thousand students). Probably a lot more actually, since very few companies are doing research in oriental languages, nano technology, abstract algebra and contemporary music at the same time.
    - pdimitar 10y ago
      You might be right, but my girlfriend currently is a "leader" of her group in the university -- she's responsible to bring the student's "grade books" (sorry, my English fails me here) to the proper administration, she creates polls for the freely choosable disciplines, makes calendar events for the occasional meets etc. Takes her 2-3 hours a week and is FAR more efficient than the awfully rigid systems I come from, 15 years ago. Self-organization is a powerful phenomena. It can't solve everything for sure, but a good balance between it plus a smaller bureaucracy has in my eyes shown a strong promise for the future.
    - tnecniv 10y ago
      Not to mention some of these places have billion dollar annual budgets.
  - BeetleB 10y ago
unfamiliar 10y ago
Who's going to do this whole "throw out the bureaucrats" thing? Because as far as I can tell, bureaucrats are in charge of those decisions.
- geodel 10y ago
  Put educationists and researchers in charge. They are never biased, hold dogmatic beliefs or politically motivated. So they will do just fine.
stinkytaco 10y ago
How do you determine they have subject knowledge? Without measuring, I mean?

Naive response: Throw out the bureaucrats. Leave those with subject knowledge. Tell them to do their work to the best of their ability? Stop measuring things. Talk to them once in a while.

BoorishBears 10y ago

What about the bureaucrats with tenure?

pdimitar 10y ago
Your question contains a good chunk of our entire world's economic and bureaucratic problems -- namely people in power with the emotional intelligence and experience of a chihuahua.

dagw 10y ago

Throw out the bureaucrats. Leave those with subject knowledge. My wife works in academia and all the 'managers' in her research department are experienced researchers that often split their time between management and research. And it just does not work according to her. They don't understand the job of a manager, deem it less important than their research duties and basically see dealing with 'minor' personnel issues as a waste of their time. To run any organization of a non-trivial size requires some structure and bureaucracy. And you need people to understand, set up and own those structures.

madez 10y ago
Maybe the personnel issues are sometimes indeed minor and a waste of time. What are the symptoms your wife is observing?
- dagw 10y ago
  Minor stuff like spending 3 weeks "unemployed" and without a salary because her boss couldn't be arsed/was too busy to sort out the paperwork, grant money almost getting lost in the shuffle, stuff like that. And even if you perceive a personnel issue as genuinely minor and you genuinely do consider it a waste of time, telling someone that problems they perceive as genuine are so insignificant to you that you don't even want to consider them, despite that being part of your job, is a great way to build resentment and destroy teams. A good manager should be able to quickly and efficiently handle minor issues without making people feel ignored and insignificant.
  - metaphorm 10y ago
    you're making the case for an administrative assistant, which is a very different role and set of responsibilities than a team of executives or managers.
    - bshanks 10y ago
      No, this is not the solution; I've seen this sort of thing happen in academia even with professors with assistants (thankfully my own professors have never been like this). For example, the administrative assistant presents the professor with an employee timesheet that needs to be signed in order for some employee to be paid, and the professor says, "thanks, I'm busy now, just leave that here and don't bother me again" and then doesn't sign it, causing the employee not to be paid on time. The administrative assistant does not have the authority to sign it himself and does not have the authority to tell the professor what to do (and may be fired by the professor if they make themselves a bother by trying to nudge the professor into doing the paperwork). The problem here is not that the professor is too disorganized, the problem is that some professors either don't perceive managerial tasks as important, or they view their managerial duties as impositions.
      - metaphorm 10y ago
        well, the problem is professors lack the motivation or ability to properly to administrative tasks so somebody else needs to do them instead. however, installing a massive and expensive and authoritarian bureaucracy seems like an extremely bad solution as well and yet that is what we've got. I'm suggesting that that bureaucracy ought to be dismantled and be replaced by a smaller number of more focused administrators who have the authority to do administrative work (i.e. are allowed to sign the payroll) but are not members of the managerial class that is strangling the life out of the academy.
        bshanks 10y ago
        I like your suggestion. Yes, separate the job of professor from that of administrator; enhance research independence at all levels by reducing administrative power over the professor from above, and reducing the administrative role of the professor on those below them. I note that, if they have the authority to supervise employees and allocate budgets, then under many systems this administrator would be called a manager rather than an assistant (which is appropriate b/c this person would be a peer, rather than a subordinate, of the professor). I imagine that the admin would administer the budgets that were formerly administered by the professor, and other researchers who work in the lab would report to the admin rather than to the professor (the admin would consult with the professor over hiring/firing but would not be required to take their advice). The independence of the individual professor is enhanced but, due to the loss of full control of the budget and hiring/firing, their power over other non-professor-level researchers in the lab is decreased.
pdimitar 10y ago
Really though, what is there in an university that justifies a dedicated team of managers? One person in power (say, the dean) is enough to make sure grants are coming on time, and negotiate those beforehand. They need one accountant to make sure salaries, taxes etc. are in the legal bounds and people receive what they were promised. Honest question: what else is needed? Most of the managerial work I've witnessed in an university is easily doable by several slightly complex Excel spreadsheets. It just requires people to be diligent and not overlook the unquestionable need for accountability and visibility. As an additional question -- what exactly is there to "run" in an university?
- dagw 10y ago
  Really though, what is there in an university that justifies a dedicated team of managers? The same thing there is in any company with several thousand employees (let's not even start to consider the administrative hassle of dealing with several thousand students). Probably a lot more actually, since very few companies are doing research in oriental languages, nano technology, abstract algebra and contemporary music at the same time.
  - pdimitar 10y ago
    You might be right, but my girlfriend currently is a "leader" of her group in the university -- she's responsible to bring the student's "grade books" (sorry, my English fails me here) to the proper administration, she creates polls for the freely choosable disciplines, makes calendar events for the occasional meets etc. Takes her 2-3 hours a week and is FAR more efficient than the awfully rigid systems I come from, 15 years ago. Self-organization is a powerful phenomena. It can't solve everything for sure, but a good balance between it plus a smaller bureaucracy has in my eyes shown a strong promise for the future.
  - tnecniv 10y ago
    Not to mention some of these places have billion dollar annual budgets.
- BeetleB 10y ago

unfamiliar 10y ago

Who's going to do this whole "throw out the bureaucrats" thing? Because as far as I can tell, bureaucrats are in charge of those decisions.

geodel 10y ago
Put educationists and researchers in charge. They are never biased, hold dogmatic beliefs or politically motivated. So they will do just fine.

stinkytaco 10y ago

How do you determine they have subject knowledge? Without measuring, I mean?