PEOPLE's COMMUNITY COLLEGE

Faculty Senate and Bureaucracy: Case of People's Community College

Faculty Senate and Bureaucracy: Case of People's Community College

Introduction

This research paper aims to review the presence of faculty senate models that fit in with the bureaucratic organization which was, in our case, the People's Community College. Being a worker myself at the college, I will evaluate the ways in which the institution's accreditation review will take place. This paper will look at the ways in which shared governance works for the organization and contributes towards the organization's functioning on the whole. Faculty senate remains the most important feature of corporate governance. This paper will evaluate the ways in which bureaucracy may be involved with the college's functions and how these can be overcome in order to maximize the effectiveness of the college's functions.

Shared Governance in Bureaucratic Institutions

The leadership theory offers for postsecondary education within the structure of shared governance, and shared governance itself provides distributed leadership to the entire institution with much valuable criterion. Developing the integrative power of the theories remains constructive for both leadership in education and the field of organizational behavior (OB) (Joseph, 2002).

Bureaucracy (rule of administration) is the perception of administrative activities within specified competencies within a fixed hierarchy. An exaggeration of the bureaucracy is called the "red tape": an excessive bureaucratic action orientation, which rule over the people and it is largely treated as an object. Colloquially, bureaucracy and red tape are often interchangeably used.

In bureaucratic institutions and especially with respect to the People's Community College, we see that the advantages of having a system of shared governance are clearly evident (Ernest, 1992). The characteristics of a bureaucratic organization, as laid down by Max Weber are:

Fixed division of labor

Hierarchy of offices

Rational-legal authority

Interdependent organization

Relatively independent of environment

Unique culture of the academy

Institutional status

Organized anarchical decision-making

Professional and administrative values

Shared governance

Creation of rules to govern performance

Separation of personal from official property and rights

Selection based on qualifications

Clear career paths (Birnbaum, 1988)

The faculty senate at People's Community College provides for the participation of the faculty in committee assignments and other appointments. It authorizes ad hoc committees to be formed for temporal basis that can carry out specified agendas related to the matters of the college. The faculty senate receives reports from all committees of the faculty, from such ad hoc committees as it may establish, and from College officers responsible for the administration of academic support programs ...