A theory of the university organisation as diarchy: understanding how deans and faculty managers in Australian universities work together across academic and administrative domains

Deposited with permission of the author. © 2005 Amanda (Maddy) McMaster.Changes in higher education have given rise to new management roles in Australian universities. These include the emergence of the professional university administrator and new responsibilities for senior staff such as deans and faculty managers. The thesis contends that these changes have led to increased role conflict between administrative and academic staff and the evolution of dual authority structures in universities. It demonstrates that existing theories are not adequate to explain practices, relationships, and roles in contemporary universities. The study proposes a new theory of the university organisation as a diarchy. This theory is derived from an analysis of interviews with deans and faculty managers in seven Australian universities. The theoretical framework used for this part of the study, the layered systems model, emphasises the need to consider multiple perspectives in any organisational analysis. The empirical study finds evidence from multiple sources to support the existence of the diarchy: an administrative and an academic domain with distinct assumptions about the nature of work, structures and processes, and the basis of authority. The diarchy is most evident in informal structures such as the working relationships between pairs of deans and faculty managers. The study finds that partnerships between these pairs vary in ways not related to their formal responsibilities nor the particular faculty or university environment. Three models are identified: the nested partnership, the conjoint partnership, and the segmented partnership. There is a positive correlation between identification of deans and faculty managers with either the administrative or academic domain and the partnership style of a particular pair. The findings of the study provide new insights into the debate about collegial and managerialist models of universities, and suggest strategies that could be used by universities to support the professionalisation of administrators and to shape work cultures to align with institutional goals