Mary F. Powers

Making Participatory Management Work Mary F. Powers

In making major budget cuts at colleges and universities because of the world-wide recession, legislators and board members with business experience may not understand how to change campus programs wisely. Avoiding wrong decisions and long-term, unanticipated consequences requires structured, broad-based input and buy-in by affected constituencies. Especially when major reductions in programs are required, extensive participation in decisions to bring about needed changes must be sought by administrators to help all parties to adjust to new realities and bring their best thinking to bear in reshaping the future of the institution and its budget priorities. Participatory management can bring wider opinion, more information, and more sophisticated analysis of alternatives to decision making, increase support for decisions once they have been made, and make implementation of decisions easier. Although participatory decision making may appear to be slow moving and its procedures can be cumbersome, decisions made in a supposedly quicker authoritarian mode may never be implemented, in which case speaking of time saved becomes meaningless. Making Participatory Management Work, published originally by Jossey-Bass (now part of Wiley) in 1983, was among the first book-length works on using participatory management in a higher education setting. It appeared at a time when faculty senates had become common but on many campuses had limited impact on institutional decision making, and when many administrators remained hierarchical despite a national trend in academe toward increasingly collegial, less top-down decision making. Principles advocated in the book are especially important today when many legislators are focused on balancing budgets, not investing in higher education and research, and disruptive technologies have changed the economy, employment opportunities, and curriculum needs of many students. Trustees and regents, and lawmakers at the state and federal levels may have little understanding of the problems that have resulted for colleges and universities and how to address them. Powers and Powers show in step-by-step detail how decisions are reached through group consultation and how groups with different goals can be persuaded to cooperate for the good of the institution. They analyze the leadership attitudes and skills needed to make participatory management effective; clarify how leaders can work efficiently with different types of governance bodies; and describe how participatory management deals with specific issues, such as budget and program planning, and structural reorganization. In addition, the Powers consider some of the ethical dilemmas involved in consultive decision making and review both the strengths and drawbacks of participatory management. The model advocated in the book emphasizes that the key first step of defining the problem is often overlooked in many participatory decision making efforts and may account for their inefficiency and their failure. Further steps required include analysis of alternatives, and drafting and circulating position papers. Strategies for referral to governance bodies must be wisely chosen, and their deliberative processes must be respected. Even after final approval by governance bodies, plans and policies must be evaluated to ensure that unanticipated consequences are addressed. At the end, the pragmatic question must be asked: Have we dealt with the problem?