If leaders make a real difference, institutions should change as leaders change. Data collected from colleges and universities between 1970 and 1980 indicated that scores on the Institutional Functioning Inventory did not change when their presidents were replaced. Some implications of these findings for understanding organizational leadership are…

A survey of 469 colleges and universities assessed the degree to which colleges and universities have adopted total quality management (TQM) or continuous quality improvement (CQI) techniques. Results suggest use of TQM/CQI is lower than predicted, at about 13% of institutions. Variations in extent of use of the approach are discussed. (MSE)

Suggests that management fads in higher education go through a predictable five-stage process, including creation, narrative evolution, time lag, narrative devolution, and resolution of dissonance. Finds that in the process of "virtual" adoption academic institutions may endorse management innovations for their symbolic benefits but isolate them…

A study is reported that found no significant relationship between unionization and changes in campus climate as described by faculty scores on the Institutional Functioning Inventory. Scores from 1980 are compared with those of a decade earlier for 18 unionized and 18 nonunionized campuses. (Author/MLW)

A comparative case study of 32 institutions of higher education indicated that 75 percent of newly appointed presidents, but only 25 percent of presidents with longer terms of office, enjoyed full faculty support. The tenure trajectories of exemplary, modal, and failed presidents are described, and presidents are encouraged to remain enthusiastic…

Calculating the productivity of a college or university is more complex than determining a machine's productivity. Sixteen rational, cultural, political, and cognitive constraints that influence institutional productivity are outlined and their mediation by institutional culture and history is noted. (MSE)

The search for a leader is seen as a symbolic process through which institutional goals are discovered, political influence is negotiated, organizational values and myths are confirmed, uncertainty is reduced, and processes of choice are simplified. (Author/MLW)

Interviews with 32 presidents of diverse colleges and universities revealed three basic views of quality: meritocratic, social, and individualistic. It is proposed that these three views correspond to different dimensions of quality and that, to achieve quality in one dimension, institutions may have to make trade-offs in the others. (MSE)

The idea that different meanings of "quality" in higher education (meritocratic, social, and individualistic) may influence the assessments of college presidents of their institutions is explored. These three dimensions are combined in a model that allows a more complex view of institutional quality. (MSE)

Catastrophe theory, a mathematical technique for studying discontinuous processes such as sudden and dramatic changes in the behavior of a system as a consequence of small changes in controlling factors, is discussed. The "cusp catastrophe" is used to create a three-dimensional model. (Author/MLW)

Academic senates remain an important feature of higher education governance even though they have been criticized as being ineffective. Senates are examined from the perspective of alternative organizational models, and it is suggested that the functions of the senate are best understood by considering colleges as symbolic systems. (Author/MLW)

A survey of board chairmen, presidents, academic vice presidents, and faculty senate or union presidents investigated (1) their expressed goals, (2) the extent of their agreement (consistency) or disagreement (diversity), (3) organizational characteristics associated with consistency or diversity, and (4) how campus constituents see presidents as…

A program of planned organizational change based on the interventions of a neutral third party used organizational development and dispute resolution techniques to alter the structure and process of academic negotiations. Analysis indicates that the interventions had no impact on campus climate but did significantly imnprove campus bargaining…

The effectiveness of an academic leader in higher education may depend less on getting the community to follow the leader's vision and more on his/her influencing the community to face its problems. Effective leadership is informed more by judgment and experience than by science; if higher education persists in using business techniques, it will…

This study reviewed the literature to trace the evolution and life cycles of seven management techniques related to higher education. The seven case studies involved analysis of a selected sample of periodical, monograph, and technical literature from 1960 to the present. The literature base on each management technique was reviewed in reference…