FACULTY WORK: MOVING BEYOND THE PARADOX OF AUTONOMY AND COLLABORATION Mark A. Hower A DISSERTATION Submitted to the Ph.D. in Leadership and Change Program at Antioch University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy January, 2012 This is to certify that the Dissertation entitled: EXPLORING FACULTY WORK: MOVING BEYOND THE PARADOX OF AUTONOMY AND COLLABORATION prepared by Mark A. Hower is approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of in Leadership and Change. Approved by: Chair, Jon F. Wergin, Ph.D. date ________________________________________________________________________ Committee Member, Alan E. Guskin, Ph.D. date ________________________________________________________________________ Committee Member, Carol Baron, Ph.D. date ________________________________________________________________________ External Reader, Ann E. Austin, Ph.D. date ©Copyright by Mark A. Hower, 2012 All Rights Reserved Acknowledgment My heart has been filled by the kindness and support extended to me while engaged in this dissertation. Though words alone cannot fully convey the gratitude I feel, I wish to try nevertheless. First, I am grateful to the faculty, staff, and administrators who participated in this study or helped make it possible. Thank you for taking time to provide such thoughtful responses and for your encouragement of my work. Dr. John Wergin, I am deeply grateful for the thoughtful guidance you provided as chair of my dissertation committee. Your passion for research is contagious. I have grown as a person and scholar through your deft ability to both challenge and affirm. Thank you also for the gracious space to explore, learn from missteps, and find my own voice. Dr. Al Guskin, thank you for your encouraging mentorship from the first days in Yellow Springs. Your discernment, generosity, and ability to identify practical next steps proved essential to my learning. I am further indebted to you for your role in inspiring the dream that became the Peace Corps. My life has been profoundly shaped by that vision. Dr. Carol Baron, thank you for helping to bring order and clarity into my thinking and writing. Your perceptive observations and questions encouraged me to reflect on my assumptions and to sharpen my focus. Your delight in inquiry and your ready laughter helped transform this often hard, serious work into moments of joyful celebration. I want to thank a broader community as well. First, thank you Shelley, Debi, Raquel, Kathryn, Joye, and Charlotte for the commitment to authenticity and learning i that you each brought our student group. Thank you too, Rhoda and Stan, for your friendship and for being my collaborative partners on more than one academic project. Shana, you have been a trailblazer for my own academic journey. Thank you. Thanks also for your generous help in coding the interview records. Colleagues in the Center for Creative Change, thank you for your friendship and for stepping in to support me in ways I may never fully know. Betsy, Karyn, Shana, Barbara, Jonathan, Kate, Britt, Don, Sadru, B.J., Farouk, Shelly, Heidi, Lisa and Leslie, you are all amazing, and my life has been enriched by our shared work. Dr. Laurien Alexandre, thank you for demonstrating the power of caring and collaborative leadership in an academic setting. It has been a gift to witness you at work and to be a student in your program. Thank you Kelly and Roslyn (who was Rosie when this process began) for the many ways you supported and encouraged me. I missed many family events and considerable time with you both, and I nevertheless felt your love always. ii Abstract Freedom to pursue one’s intellectual interests, known as professional autonomy, is a valued and longstanding faculty tradition. Profound changes in society and the academy, however, suggest new values may be emerging. Collaboration, for example, is increasingly vital to success outside of the academy, and faculty culture, long an individualistic domain, may be shifting in response. This multiple case study explores how faculty members experience the relationship between professional autonomy and collaboration within the context of their department work. Faculty members in four departments were interviewed and both qualitative and simple quantitative data collected. The study found faculty members satisfied with the autonomy they experienced. Collaborative practices were evident, though faculty generally expressed a desire for increased collaboration with colleagues. The interviews also suggested attributes of a collaborative department, one in which collaboration is a more intentional element of the unit practice and design. The electronic version of the Dissertation is at the open-access Ohiolink ETD Center, http:www.ohiolink.edu/etd. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgment i Abstract iii Table of Contents iv List of Tables vi List of Figures vii Chapter I: Collaboration: A Shift in Context 1 Definitions 4 Purpose of the Study 7 Research Questions 12 Positioning 13 Overview of Dissertation Chapters 14 Chapter II: Review of the Literature 16 Introduction 16 Changing Context 17 The Context of Groups and Teams 29 Social Construction 44 Faculty and Academic Culture 52 The Power of Paradox 60 Barriers to Faculty Collaboration 67 Uncertainty and Change 79 Summary 84 Chapter III: Methodology 89 Multiple Case Study 89 Knowledge Claims 90 Strategy of Inquiry 90 Academic Units as the Bounded System 92 Participating Sites 92 The Phenomenon of Study: The Quintain 93 Data Collection 94 Data Analysis 98 Case Reports 100 Validity 101 Researcher Bias and Instrumentation 101 Summary 103 Chapter IV: Studies of Four Academic Units 105 Introduction to Interviews 105 Case Study 1: Mid Atlantic State Social Science 106 Case Study 2: Northeast Liberal Arts Humanities 121 Case Study 3: Northeast Liberal Arts Natural Sciences 131 Case Study 4: Midwest Regional Professional Studies 143 iv Chapter V: Analysis and Discussion 156 Overview 156 Potential Correlates Influencing Collaboration 167 Collaboration and Leadership 174 Implications for Leadership and Change 184 Collaboration Continuum 185 Envisioning a Collaborative Department 188 Eight Attributes of a Collaborative Department 188 Overview of What was Learned 193 Adaptive Challenge 196 Four Guiding Principles 197 Building Collaborative Practices into the Academic Unit 200 Recommendations for Further Research 202 Appendix 204 Appendix A: Trends Shaping Higher Education 205 Appendix B: Five Key Elements of Effective Teams 206 Appendix C: Summary of Team Characteristics 208 References 212 v List of Tables Table 2.1 Four Challenges in Higher Ed. 22 Table 2.2 H. S. Graduates Enrollment in College 25 Table 2.3 Women Enrolled in Higher Ed. 25 Table 2.4 Team Authority and Management Matrix 41 Table 2.5 Perceptions of Role Efficacy in Higher Ed. 75 Table 3.1 Study Sites 93 Table 4.1 Faculty Ratings: Mid Atlantic Social Science 113 Table 4.2 Faculty Ratings: Northeast Liberal Arts Humanities 129 Table 4.3 Faculty Ratings: Northeast Liberal Arts Natural Sciences 137 Table 4.4 Faculty Ratings: Midwest Regional Professional Studies 151 Table 5.1 Autonomy and Collaboration in Four Academic Units 163 Table 5.2 Collaboration and Gender 168 Table 5.3 Collaboration and Professional Enculturation 170 Table 5.4 Culture and Diversity as a Lens to Collaboration 172 Table 5.5 Initiatives Requiring Faculty Collaboration 183 Table A 1 Trends Shaping Higher Education 205 Table C 1 Characteristics of Effective Teams: Larson and LaFasto 208 Table C 2 Wheelan’s Ten Keys of Productive Teams 209 Table C 3 Parker’s Characteristics of Effective Teams 210 Table C 4 McGregor’s Eleven Characteristics of Effective Teams 211 vi List of Figures Figure 3.1 Script for Faculty Interviews 95 Figure 4.1 Collaboration and Autonomy: Mid Atlantic Social Science 114 Figure 4.2 Collaboration and Autonomy: NE Liberal Arts Humanities 130 Figure 4.3 Collaboration and Autonomy: NE Liberal Arts Natural Sciences 138 Figure 4.4 Collaboration and Autonomy: Midwest Professional Studies 152 Figure 5.1 Practices of Collaboration 159 Figure 5.2 Collaboration and Autonomy in Four Academic Units 164 Figure 5.3 Collaboration Continuum 185 Figure 5.4 Guidelines for Collaboration 201 vii 1 Chapter I: Collaboration: A Shift in Context Teams and other forms of collaborative groups have become regular elements of organizational life in America, yet these remain relatively uncommon phenomena in the academy, especially within the culture and experience of faculty. In the private sector, however, teams are simply a standard form and structure for addressing a wide range of challenges and work. A 1993 study of Fortune 1000 companies found that 91% use work teams, and 68% reported that at least some of their work teams were self-managing (Levi, 2007). Also, by 1997, S. Cohen and Bailey (1997) report that 85% of companies with 100 or more employees were using some form of work teams. In broad terms, as the American economy has shifted away from an industrial model to a postmodern, knowledge economy, everything from the structure of the workplace to the skill set of employees has needed to shift. Increasingly, collaboration is understood to be essential to the success of enterprises across sectors and throughout society. In Group Dynamics for Teams, Daniel Levi (2007) points out that workplaces have been shifting from work patterns that emphasize predictable, routine work, to jobs and work that tend to be far less predictable or routine. He explains: “Non-routine jobs involve more complexity, interdependence, uncertainty, variety, and change than do routine jobs. Jobs of this type are difficult to manage in traditional work systems, but are well suited for teamwork” (Levi, 2007, p. 10). Keith Sawyer (2007) further explains: A long research tradition shows that when solving complex, non-routine problems, groups are more effective when they’re composed of people who have a variety of skills, knowledge, and perspective. Homogenous groups might work well if everything stays pretty much the same; they might even be more efficient.