"We’re controlled by ideas and norms

that have outlived their usefulness."

Until recently, in the absence of competition, with little demand for improved quality, and where market share was static but secure, most American industrial, commercial, and educational organizations got along with very little adaptation. The existence of an organizational structure itself insured survival, and the members of the organization began to perform so as to allow no changes that would harm the organization. For most people in most organizations, that mean no changes at all. In fact, throughout America most organizations began to define themselves internally as structures for protecting themselves against change. For individual employees, the implicit goal became that of protecting themselves and the organization against change. Instead of being concerned or motivated to make things happen, they worked to make sure nothing happened. Ordinary employees, then, were expected to "do their jobs" in a routine manner, and supervisors monitored the organization for signs of change or innovation. Quality control was exercised as suppression of deviation in procedure rather than detection of product variation. Performance generally meant conformity rather than creativity.

For organizations like churches and universities which did not have large cash flows or which were dependent upon significant levels of voluntary giving and a perceived uniformity of customer satisfaction, organizational function became more conservative than in the industrial and commercial sectors. Church organizations and universities not only changed very slowly; they began to develop an organizational rationale of resistance to change and began to model this stance as a social benefit to a society that was beginning to exhibit increasing rates of change. In a place like Sewanee, a very high premium was attached to conserving the organization, hence to not changing it. Since institutional survival historically had been precarious, change always brought the risk of threat and loss. Sewanee became very good at not changing.

In fact for most of its Twentieth Century history, Sewanee has changed very little. Despite some growth in size it has remained an organizationally conservative institution, and its employees have matured as workers in a workplace which could be characterized as a culture of anti-change. As the external societal conditions of churches and universities have undergone significant transformation in America in recent decades, however, competition for a diminished share and demand for higher quality have risen sharply. Organizational capacity to respond to competition by market adaptation and quality improvement require the ability to change in positive ways so as to improve the organization and meet expectations. Healthy organizations not only change to meet specific market needs; the best organizations begin to develop a culture of performance that is change oriented. This does not mean that organizational character is abandoned but rather that the organization perceives the impact of its dependence upon a dynamic market. Organizational survival then becomes a function of preserving structure while incorporating sufficient innovation to remain competitive in a dynamic market.

Because the culture of anti-change has been so entrenched at Sewanee, the University has entered a very challenging time for all American organizations--but especially for American educational institutions--with little of the awareness or skills among its employees that allow it to adapt and change to meet demand or market. In fact, it has entered a time of heightened quality expectations by its customers in a dynamic market with a battery of faculty members and middle managers who are committed not only to conserving the organization but to combating change in every form. Such employees--whether faculty or staff--tend to view organizational change as both personal and institutional threats. Where they have forms of organizational power such as budgetary control or process control, they have characteristically acted to suppress change.

Because of the relative simplicity of the University’s internal structure and the historical tendency for staff and faculty alike to remain in their jobs for decades, the organization has acquired a character of "governance by dragons"--people who use their role as protectors of an unchanging tradition to intimidate harbingers of change. These employees become typical managerial "bottlenecks" and effectively choke off change. For decades the commonest bureaucratic attitude encountered within the organization has been "why it can’t be done." In some instances the manager is not so much a dragon but rather is benignly inept, but because of institutional inability to be proactive for positive change and to leave employees in place if they are "doing their job" such persons can be around for decades while their division or office ossifies and stagnates.

Sewanee is now competing in a national market for a diminished share among customers with very high quality expectations. These expectations of high quality are applied to the classroom, residential and social environments, student services, and career choice. Response to the demand represented by these students and their parents who are asked to pay increasingly higher sums for this education means that the institution must aggressively control costs, maximize performance, and adapt to market expectations. These goals are daunting for any organization in a competitive environment, yet many American corporations--both for profit and not-for-profit--have undergone organizational transformation and created structures and corporate cultures of proactive positive change as the means of survival in dynamic market conditions.

Currently Sewanee is where many American corporations were 25 to 30 years ago. Facing increasing international competition, saddled with stagnant organizational structures, staffed by entrenched bureaucracies and a privileged or protected workforce, these corporations faced the prospect of mounting losses, increasing non-competitiveness, and eventual corporate demise. Many American corporations were lost, particularly those dependent upon "protected" but archaic technologies. Other corporations, however, met the challenge of dynamic conditions and the demand for quality, innovation and service by creating new organizational attitudes and structures to effect positive and responsive change.

As the character of these adaptive American corporations has been chronicled by Ed Deming, Peter Drucker, and others certain organizational features have begun to emerge among the renewed corporations:

The organizations that have managed to generate these internal conditions are among the healthiest and most exciting in the American economy. They are not only productive in economic terms but breed strong employee allegiance because of the rewards and excitement of working for them. Quality has risen in these corporations because of employee enthusiasm. Drucker observes that some not-for-profit corporations have become models of this kind of organizational renewal, especially where the organization is necessarily dependent upon significant levels of volunteer support or contributions.

Unfortunately, Sewanee is poised on the cusp of a rapidly changing world with the rigid attitudes of industrial culture still in place. Employee job satisfaction particularly among younger faculty and staff personnel is uneven; many staff employees live with a continuing fear of reprisal for innovation or deviation; team work and cooperation is conspicuously absent from the corporate culture; many older faculty--who are passing their attitudes along to newer faculty--are so hardened in their opposition to change that they oppose change even when it is in their best interest; and institutional quality of product is uneven. Despite touted standards of excellence in instruction and performance, the physical plant, the offices and their processes, student support services, and the classrooms and their forms of instruction are often out-dated, poorly maintained and performance is lack-luster.

Sewanee faces the most challenging time in its history with an out-of-date management structure, inappropriate attitudes, and a critical absence of adaptive infrastructure. Yet we continue to focus here upon management by organizational structure, tolerance of defects and dysfunction, archaic lines of communication, and we continue to govern students, staff, and faculty alike by inoculations of fear rather than by elicitations of responsibility and rewards for high performance. Unfortunately, the changes in personnel and structure which are now necessary to allow the organization to adapt will in the short term probably heighten fear and breed opposition and resentment unless top and middle managers can find ways of identifying and rewarding quality performance and of creating goal-oriented enthusiasm for institutional mission. Sewanee does not have good corporate culture for making these changes.

Sewanee is an organization generally lacking the corporate dynamic for engendering continuous quality improvement through product improvement or increased employee motivation. Absence of effective personnel management combined with administrative reliance upon a chain-of-command approach fragments corporate mission into a series of disconnected jobs staffed by employees who are uninspired to improve or are intimidated from taking action. The long-term behavioral effect of the symbiotic relation between managers and employees here becomes a dysfunctional paternalism that is organizationally inefficient and psychologically debilitating to the whole corporation. Change in this unhealthy corporate culture will require a renewal of administrative vision and the entire transformation of personnel management philosophy.

"The goal of a well-run adhocracy is not

a good report. It’s change."

Gerald L. Smith

Sewanee, Tennessee

February, 1995