Leadership in the '80s

Book excerpt: Two essays and two commentaries on leadership in higher education in the 1980s are presented. In "Education Administrators and Professionals," Chris Argyris considers the decline of public confidence in institutions and professionals by elaborating the concepts of single-loop (detecting and correcting error without altering underlying values or policies) and double-loop (detection/correction accompanied by changed values or policies) learning. He proposes ways by which academic leaders may unfreeze the predisposition for the status quo that exists in single-loop learning in order to make way for double-loop detection and correction of error that involves the changing of underlying values and policies. In "Managing Universities in the 1980s," Richard M. Cyert focuses on the major problem facing academic administrators. He suggests that it is difficult for faculty to concentrate on maintaining excellence because of the struggle for institutional survival. Uncertainty will prevail with regard to how institutions will reduce their scales of operation, and university presidents will be involved to a greater degree than in the past with conflict resolution at a level of individual problems. Cyert offers strategies indicating how administrators may best manage the complex deescalation problems facing them. In "Leadership: An Attempt to Look at the Future," Gene I. Maeroff summarizes the essays and analyzes discussion by participants in the 1979 Symposium on Leadership, which was sponsored by the Institute for Educational Management. A preface by Stephen K. Bailey assesses the challenges to educational leadership in the past several decades and poses an optimistic argument for the 1980s. (SW)