Faculty Decision-Making in Academic Departments of Two-Year Colleges

Book excerpt: The academic department plays a key role in the organizational life of universities and colleges that collectively constitute the complex system of higher education in the United States. Given the pressure for change in academic institutions and the critical role of academic departments in institutional management, there is a need for better understanding of departmental effectiveness, its assessment, and its defining factors. It is of substantial interest to know whether academic departments function in true democratic fashion with distributed authority for decision-making in vital functional areas. It is likewise of interest to know whether involvement of faculty in decision- making in democratic fashion is related to departmental effectiveness. The book attempts to provide answers to these questions based on a quantitative study of facutly decision-making in academic departments of two-year colleges. The findings in this book should be of special interest to administrators and faculty at two-year colleges and professionals in organizational leadership.