TOWARD STRATEGIC AMBIGUITY: ANTIDOTE TO MANAGERIALISM IN GOVERNANCE

Abstract

This chapter addresses the continuing trend in colleges and universities toward loss of control by faculty over the conduct of academic and institutional affairs and the further deterioration of the ideology of shared governance. The chapter argues for the reinstitutionalization of a fastdisappearing traditional quality of higher education organizations—an ambiguity of institutional goals, culture, organizational structures, authority, and individual responsibilities. This proposed anomalous new strategy/policy would seem to violate long-standing bureaucratic maxims that organizations should be guided by clarity of purpose and rationality in practices and procedures. In this chapter, however, an argument is made for the installation of a more ambiguous institutional academic culture and structure as an important means of preserving and enhancing shared and democratic decision making—the hallmark of academic self-governance and a critical venue for creativity and innovation. The chapter considers how ambiguity and democracy are inextricably linked and why in higher education, ambiguity is needed to support academia’s indispensable democratic modes of governance.