The Non-Management Side of Academic Administration

HOSE of us at the center of non-profit or for-profit organizations in the United States seldom expound on the challenges of our work. Why? For one, many administrators view their responsibility as doing their job, not analyzing it. From this perspective, the level of contemplation necessary for reflective insight is better achieved in the post administrative phase, better known as retirement. There is an added benefit to such delay; in retirement, those who are the subject of any less-than-positive comments will not be able to respond. Indeed, posthumous publication adds to this strategic advantage, though it has an obvious downside if it comes too early. The University of Toledo Symposium is a welcome exception. It affords acting deans—by which I mean deans who are now doing the job—the ability to step back and reflect on what it is they do, why they do it, and why it may or may not be successful. Over the years, this symposium has published the work of a wide variety of administrators offering examples of the issues they have addressed, the knotty problems they have resolved, and the joys—and challenges—of their line of work. There has been some theory implicit in this discussion, but for the most part, the articles have explored the trials and tribulations of running an institution from the vantage point of someone faced with balancing a myriad of constituencies pressing their particular vision—and advantage. In this piece, which will be far less useful and far more muddled than the others in this symposium, I wish to step back and muse about the role of being an academic administrator, including but not limited to a law school dean, and how it compares with running other types of institutions, especially for-profit organizations. I will not draw from my own experience (I will thus eliminate the possibility of retaliation!). Rather, I would like to take this opportunity to explore the nature of the jobs academic administrators face, and why and how they are often qualitatively different from the jobs other managers in society face. Along the way, I would like to explain a conundrum that many others have observed and commented on: why full time academics, as well as lawyers, keep being selected for these positions, even though they often lack any of the traditional managerial experience. I will also comment on the difficulty nonprofit administrators face in performing their jobs well, but, at the same time, and not unrelatedly, the problem of establishing any clear standard of accountability and evaluating success or failure.