The term ivory tower is a euphemism for being out of touch with practical or “real-world” matters. With respect to leadership, the more leaders distance themselves from the experiences of their front-line workers, the more out of touch they can become with the granular-level implications of their decisions. For as much as technology is changing the world of higher education, institutions need to invest not only in new technologies, but also in the “flow of know-how” throughout the entire organization to maximize their capacity for innovation, creativity, and visionary leadership. Institutions of this sort are learning organizations: “systems capable of bringing about their own continuing transformation” (Schon 1973, p. 28).
Unfortunately, rank or position often dictates one’s ability to exert influence within the system. Just look at the language used to describe organizational hierarchy; it is not uncommon to hear phrases like “people at the top” and “people at the bottom” or terms like superior and subordinate. This language distinguishes those with power from those without it and contributes to the creation of an organizational culture in which rank or position determines who has something worthwhile to say, which greatly limits its capacity for continuous growth.
The traditional organizational structure, one in which ideas flow from the top of an ivory tower to the bottom of the educational trenches, is outdated yet seems so pervasive in higher education. Bureaucracy impedes communication between different departments and colleges, hinders collaborative problem-solving, and promotes working in “silos.” How ironic it is to maintain such an organizational structure considering that higher education in a digital world is becoming increasingly democratized; the diffusion of ideas, information, and knowledge across all boundaries, barriers, and borders has never been so achievable in history as it is today.
The “ivory tower mentality” exists wherever leadership, creativity, and know-how is believed to be possessed only by a select few with certain rank or position. A culture in which conflict is viewed as threatening and differences of opinion are feared produces a culture of groupthink. In such an environment, leaders do not emerge, but rather individuals who (rather disingenuously) merely propagate messages they do not believe in because they “come from the top” and pressure “those at the bottom” to fall in line.
Kofman and Senge (as cited in Norbom, 2009) argued that competition, fragmentation, and reactiveness impede an organization’s ability to learn. Competition creates an environment in which individuals are rewarded for looking good rather than being good and in which individual problem-solving is more important than collaboration and teamwork. Fragmentation results from specialization; dividing and separating people into “warring fieldoms.” Reactiveness occurs when so much energy is poured into problem-solving that little time and energy is dedicated to creation and innovation.
In contrast, “learning organizations are organizations in which people continually expand their capacity to create the results that they desire” (Senge, 2006). Teamwork and collaboration are highly valued as well as communication. In such an environment, everyone focuses on the big picture instead of just working in their individual silos. “Such qualities can exist only in an environment that supports openness, acceptance, creativity, and employee participation” (Norbom, 2009)
College and university leaders should aspire to break down barriers between campuses and employees to bring together pockets of excellence that exist within the organization irrespective of rank or position. Give voice to the entire organization and harness the creative power of your greatest resource: the human resource. From academic advisors to college deans, everyone is capable of contributing to the success of the institution and indeed must.
References:
Norbom, H. M. (2009). Informal power, innovative cultures, and online communication use in horizontal organizations. Alliant International University, Los Angeles). ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, , n/a. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/305174573?accountid=35812
Schon, D. A. (1973) Beyond the stable state: Public and private learning in a changing society, Harmondsworth, London: Penguin.
Senge, P. (2006). The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization. New York: Currency Doubleday.
Very well said. The main challenge is that leaders are looking for a solution, a way to do things that will ensure the achievement of the desired goal. But it doesn’t work that way anymore ( if ever!). Teamwork, collaboration, communication, etc. demand continuos work from the leaders to create and maintain the appropriate environment to facilitate and promote the openness, acceptance and participation that will bring the success.
This is a very timely read for me. I just delivered a presentation to my student colleagues in the Masters cohort I am doing a summer intensive with, and I used the work of Adrianna Kezar (2008). She has written extensively and well on higher education within the American context and some of it applies to my Canadian context (though we call it post secondary education here). I focussed on the political aspect of change implementation as undertaken by presidents of colleges. This was not Kezar’s finding in her research and I suppose this came to me because my supervisor had suggested I read Kouves and Posner (2007) sometime last year, but what dawned on me with Kezar (2008) and has come to me again in reading your article was that I realized that the language you refer to here is actually the language of war. Read the following and perhaps you’ll see what I mean:
As an Advisor, I do ‘front-line’ work, but I do not carry a gun. Reorganizations are undertaken with ‘strategic’ and ‘tactical’ thinking. Students have to enrol in a way that fits within the ‘strategic’ enrolment plan. With all of the ‘battles’ that have to be ‘fought’ for students to get to their goals, ‘front-line’ workers often have to ‘pick the hill they want to die on’ so that they can live to ‘fight another day.’
Not everyone speaks this way, of course, but in looking at higher education improvement and leadership literature over the last month, the language of war appears to be a thread that weaves its way through it all. This language of war has, in the case of higher education, crossed over into the language of managers in these amazing institutions of knowledge transmission and generation.
What would it be like if our language was peace-laden?
Kezar, A. (2008). Understanding leadership strategies for addressing the politics of diversity. The Journal of Higher Education,(79)4, 406-441.
Kouves, J.M. & Posner, B.Z. (2007). The leadership challenge. (4th Ed). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Ena – Thanks for sharing your insight and for the great references!
The Common Agenda is specifically designed to support a “movement” approach to change by encouraging the emergence of strategic alliances among individuals and organizations who care about the role of higher education in advancing the ideals of a diverse democratic system through education practices, relationships and service to society.