John Carl's Relationship With The River Case Study
1. What sources of power do the key players have? What types of power do they have? What influencing tactics are used?
As department chair, John Carl has position power. The case indicates that he has not been department chair for long. If he was promoted from among the faculty, he may have personal power as well. If he was hired from outside the college (and we are told that he has been there a shorter time than most of his faculty), he probably has little personal power among the faculty. In the instance of bringing the department together to establish a policy, he is using legitimate power. During the departmental meeting, Carl is using the consultation-influencing tactic – he feels strongly that there should be a policy, but he hasn’t already decided what the policy should be …show more content…
and seeking input from his faculty.
As a tenured faculty member without an administrative title, Latoya Washington does not have position power – she relies on personal power. Initially, she is probably hoping to use referent power, and win her fellow faculty over to her side based on her relationships with them. Thus, her first influencing tactic is personal appeal. When this isn’t successful, she tries another angle by using rational persuasion, providing facts (although unsubstantiated at least for the moment) and logical arguments to convince her fellow faculty that graduate assistants should be allowed to grade objective exams, or barring that, to convince the department chair that there should be no policy at all.
2. What would you do if you were John Carl?
According to the case, “Carl likes to have policies in place, so that faculty members have guides for their behavior.” After consulting with his superiors, he has determined that there should be a departmental policy on the use of graduate assistants. Graduate assistantships serve two purposes. First, they provide graduate students with meaningful work experience in higher education. The work is generally not high profile or glorious, but is related to the career they are pursuing. Second, they provide faculty with something akin to paraprofessional support in fulfilling their duties. Thus, GA duties are typically ted directly to faculty activities, such as research. Graduate assistants are in a particularly vulnerable position. The faculty who give them work assignments are the same faculty who assign their course grades, and even determine whether they complete their programs. In some cases, GAs are prohibited from holding outside employment, and are dependent on their GA positions for their income. While the hopes is that faculty will make appropriate use of their Gas, there is always a risk that a GA will be asked to pick up dry cleaning, wash a car, or mow a lawn. In order to protect Gas from this type of imposition, establishing a common sense policy on the appropriate use of Gas is a good idea. Asking the faculty to develop the content of the policy as a group signals the faculty that Carl generally trusts their judgment, and is establishing the policy only as a precaution; it is an effective use of the consultation-influencing tactic. Therefore, up to this point Carl has made no serious errors. The fact that Carl was not prepared for the debate over the use of Gas to grade exams suggests that he has missed some political undercurrents among the faculty who have been in the department longer than he has.
Using Gas to grade objective exams seems rather innocuous to receive this much faculty opposition. If I were Carl, I would make discreet inquiries regarding Washington’s relationships with her colleagues to find out if some other conflict is at work. My suspicion would be that Washington’s colleagues perceive her as lazy. In the meantime, I would invite my dean to lunch at a restaurant frequented by my faculty, and over lunch I would casually mention that my announcement regarding the GA policy was not universally popular, and he might hear from one or two disgruntled faculty. This conversation serves three purposes. First, it assures my dean that I will keep him informed about my department and not let him be blindsided. Second, it conveys to the dean that I have my department under control. Finally, the visibility of the lunch reminds my faculty of my connection power, and suggests that the dean will support whatever decision I make concerning the
policy.
3. How would you evaluate Latoya Washington’s actions in this case? Would you have done the same thing? Did she make any mistakes?
Washington has been using her GA to grade objective exams, and it is a practice she would like to continue. However, she makes her case poorly in the meeting. One of her arguments is that faculty in other departments and at other universities use GAs in teaching and assessment situations which require far more professional judgment. While this is true, and her colleagues undoubtedly know that it is true, her presentation of the argument strictly as a device to justify her own behavior weakens the point. She weakens her case further by following this with “it’s not fair.” Finally, rather than asserting that the policy should not prohibit using Gas as graders, she contends that there need not be a policy at all – in effect, attempting to dismiss her colleagues’ position by attacking Carl’s. This is a calculated risk; she perceives Carl, as a relatively new administrator, to be a more vulnerable opponent than her fellow tenured faculty. If Carl is an insecure leader, or cannot rely on the support of his dean, the tactic could work. However, it could also result in Washington fighting a war on two fronts. If I had been in Washington’s position, I would have taken steps to slow down the process. As soon as someone suggested prohibiting the use of GAs for exam grading, Washington should have suggested that they take a step back and, instead of using the meeting to outline the policy, use it to develop a statement of philosophy regarding the use of GAs. This would give her an opening to talk about the importance of the GA experience in shaping future faculty, and the value of exposing GAs to the duties they would assume as professors, including research, service, and teaching. She could suggest several activities under the research and service headings to which her colleagues would readily agree. Once they have accepted the premise that a GA position is training for a faculty position, she could introduce the proposition that in terms of the teaching side of their development, GAs also benefit from supervising homework labs as well as correcting exams, particularly in situations where some degree of judgment is required to assign partial credit. Slowing sown the process gives Washington a greater opportunity to employ rational persuasion. Washington’s email to the department is inherently threatening to Carl. She has questioned the ethics and legality of adopting a policy she dislikes, and has stated that she is prepared to take it up the chain. The email is unnecessarily confrontational. While Washington is probably unaware that Carl spoke with his superiors prior to introducing the topic of a policy, she should consider the fact that, in the absence of actual wrongdoing, a dean is unlikely to rule against both a department chair that he appointed and the majority of the faculty in a department based on a single appeal. Thus, a better course of action would have been for Washington to approach Carl after the meeting and suggest that the department agree on a list of peer departments, either on campus or elsewhere, and review their GA policies to see if there were consistencies worth adopting; Washington herself would volunteer to collect and summarize the data. Again, she postponed a decision, giving her time to influence her colleagues through rational persuasion; offered meaningful support to her chair, thus building her referent power; and found a way to introduce her original arguments in a thoughtful and controlled way not easily dismissed.
4. If you were Latoya Washington, and John Carl drafted a policy to which the rest of the department agreed, what would you do?
Theoretically, Washington could appeal the policy to the dean, using some variation on the grounds she attempted to use in the meeting. In her place, I would not file such an appeal, for the reasons I address in Question 5. Washington would need to accept the loss as gracefully as possible and discontinue using GAs to grade objective exams.
5. If you were the dean of the business school, knowing that the vice president does not want to set a college-wide policy, and Latoya Washington appealed to you, what would you do?
The dean appointed Carl as chair of the department. He also gave his tacit approval of Carl’s plan to develop a departmental policy on the use of GAs. Granting Washington’s appeal would undermine Carl; his department would come to see him as ineffective, and his faculty would be more inclined to challenge his authority in the future, which would require the dean to intervene in the department more frequently. In addition, because the dean already supported Carl’s plan for a policy, reversing himself following Washington’s appeal would make him look weak and untrustworthy to his own subordinate. The dean’s long working relationship with Carl, and Carl’s with his faculty, hang in the balance. On the other hand, a dean who ignores or automatically denies a faculty appeal opens himself up to accusations of favoritism or tyranny. In his position, I would review the appeal, then notify Washington that I was providing Carl a copy and giving him two weeks to write his rebuttal. I would privately advise Carl to speak with his faculty individually to ensure that the policy he has written actually has the support of the majority, both tenured and untenured, and that no one feels he or she was coerced into approving it. After I reviewed Carl’s rebuttal, I would meet with Washington privately and tell her that, while I sympathize with her position, the policy is legal and ethical and enjoys majority support, and her appeal is denied. Then I would encourage her to explore options for obtaining the variety of support she needs outside the scope of the departmental policy.
6. What would you have done in Eddie Accorsi’s place? Would your decision have depended on whether Latoya Washington was a friend? Would it have depended on whether you were tenured?
Assuming Accorsi’s motives are pure, he was in a difficult position in the meeting. As a tenure-track faculty member whose future employment depends to some extent, on remaining in his colleagues’ good graces, he would have taken a risk by defending Washington’s position in the meeting. Another explanation for his behavior is possible, however. Accorsi may not have had any opinion at all on the issue under debate. By remaining silent (and implying consent) in the meeting, he maintained his relationship with the majority. By approaching Washington after the meeting to express his support, he did what he could to preserve his relationship with her. In this case, his behavior was dishonest, but also politically savvy. If I were Accorsi, and I genuinely supported Washington’s position, I would have taken essentially the same actions described above for Washington: I would have suggested that we take the time to develop a statement of philosophy regarding the purpose of graduate assistantships; that we benchmark GA policies of other comparable departments; and that we develop a policy that was consistent with best practices elsewhere. His remarks would support Washington without being obviously partisan. This approach would have been appropriate regardless of his personal relationship with Washington or his tenure status.
As department chair, John Carl has position power. The case indicates that he has not been department chair for long. If he was promoted from among the faculty, he may have personal power as well. If he was hired from outside the college (and we are told that he has been there a shorter time than most of his faculty), he probably has little personal power among the faculty. In the instance of bringing the department together to establish a policy, he is using legitimate power. During the departmental meeting, Carl is using the consultation-influencing tactic – he feels strongly that there should be a policy, but he hasn’t already decided what the policy should be …show more content…
and seeking input from his faculty.
As a tenured faculty member without an administrative title, Latoya Washington does not have position power – she relies on personal power. Initially, she is probably hoping to use referent power, and win her fellow faculty over to her side based on her relationships with them. Thus, her first influencing tactic is personal appeal. When this isn’t successful, she tries another angle by using rational persuasion, providing facts (although unsubstantiated at least for the moment) and logical arguments to convince her fellow faculty that graduate assistants should be allowed to grade objective exams, or barring that, to convince the department chair that there should be no policy at all.
2. What would you do if you were John Carl?
According to the case, “Carl likes to have policies in place, so that faculty members have guides for their behavior.” After consulting with his superiors, he has determined that there should be a departmental policy on the use of graduate assistants. Graduate assistantships serve two purposes. First, they provide graduate students with meaningful work experience in higher education. The work is generally not high profile or glorious, but is related to the career they are pursuing. Second, they provide faculty with something akin to paraprofessional support in fulfilling their duties. Thus, GA duties are typically ted directly to faculty activities, such as research. Graduate assistants are in a particularly vulnerable position. The faculty who give them work assignments are the same faculty who assign their course grades, and even determine whether they complete their programs. In some cases, GAs are prohibited from holding outside employment, and are dependent on their GA positions for their income. While the hopes is that faculty will make appropriate use of their Gas, there is always a risk that a GA will be asked to pick up dry cleaning, wash a car, or mow a lawn. In order to protect Gas from this type of imposition, establishing a common sense policy on the appropriate use of Gas is a good idea. Asking the faculty to develop the content of the policy as a group signals the faculty that Carl generally trusts their judgment, and is establishing the policy only as a precaution; it is an effective use of the consultation-influencing tactic. Therefore, up to this point Carl has made no serious errors. The fact that Carl was not prepared for the debate over the use of Gas to grade exams suggests that he has missed some political undercurrents among the faculty who have been in the department longer than he has.
Using Gas to grade objective exams seems rather innocuous to receive this much faculty opposition. If I were Carl, I would make discreet inquiries regarding Washington’s relationships with her colleagues to find out if some other conflict is at work. My suspicion would be that Washington’s colleagues perceive her as lazy. In the meantime, I would invite my dean to lunch at a restaurant frequented by my faculty, and over lunch I would casually mention that my announcement regarding the GA policy was not universally popular, and he might hear from one or two disgruntled faculty. This conversation serves three purposes. First, it assures my dean that I will keep him informed about my department and not let him be blindsided. Second, it conveys to the dean that I have my department under control. Finally, the visibility of the lunch reminds my faculty of my connection power, and suggests that the dean will support whatever decision I make concerning the
policy.
3. How would you evaluate Latoya Washington’s actions in this case? Would you have done the same thing? Did she make any mistakes?
Washington has been using her GA to grade objective exams, and it is a practice she would like to continue. However, she makes her case poorly in the meeting. One of her arguments is that faculty in other departments and at other universities use GAs in teaching and assessment situations which require far more professional judgment. While this is true, and her colleagues undoubtedly know that it is true, her presentation of the argument strictly as a device to justify her own behavior weakens the point. She weakens her case further by following this with “it’s not fair.” Finally, rather than asserting that the policy should not prohibit using Gas as graders, she contends that there need not be a policy at all – in effect, attempting to dismiss her colleagues’ position by attacking Carl’s. This is a calculated risk; she perceives Carl, as a relatively new administrator, to be a more vulnerable opponent than her fellow tenured faculty. If Carl is an insecure leader, or cannot rely on the support of his dean, the tactic could work. However, it could also result in Washington fighting a war on two fronts. If I had been in Washington’s position, I would have taken steps to slow down the process. As soon as someone suggested prohibiting the use of GAs for exam grading, Washington should have suggested that they take a step back and, instead of using the meeting to outline the policy, use it to develop a statement of philosophy regarding the use of GAs. This would give her an opening to talk about the importance of the GA experience in shaping future faculty, and the value of exposing GAs to the duties they would assume as professors, including research, service, and teaching. She could suggest several activities under the research and service headings to which her colleagues would readily agree. Once they have accepted the premise that a GA position is training for a faculty position, she could introduce the proposition that in terms of the teaching side of their development, GAs also benefit from supervising homework labs as well as correcting exams, particularly in situations where some degree of judgment is required to assign partial credit. Slowing sown the process gives Washington a greater opportunity to employ rational persuasion. Washington’s email to the department is inherently threatening to Carl. She has questioned the ethics and legality of adopting a policy she dislikes, and has stated that she is prepared to take it up the chain. The email is unnecessarily confrontational. While Washington is probably unaware that Carl spoke with his superiors prior to introducing the topic of a policy, she should consider the fact that, in the absence of actual wrongdoing, a dean is unlikely to rule against both a department chair that he appointed and the majority of the faculty in a department based on a single appeal. Thus, a better course of action would have been for Washington to approach Carl after the meeting and suggest that the department agree on a list of peer departments, either on campus or elsewhere, and review their GA policies to see if there were consistencies worth adopting; Washington herself would volunteer to collect and summarize the data. Again, she postponed a decision, giving her time to influence her colleagues through rational persuasion; offered meaningful support to her chair, thus building her referent power; and found a way to introduce her original arguments in a thoughtful and controlled way not easily dismissed.
4. If you were Latoya Washington, and John Carl drafted a policy to which the rest of the department agreed, what would you do?
Theoretically, Washington could appeal the policy to the dean, using some variation on the grounds she attempted to use in the meeting. In her place, I would not file such an appeal, for the reasons I address in Question 5. Washington would need to accept the loss as gracefully as possible and discontinue using GAs to grade objective exams.
5. If you were the dean of the business school, knowing that the vice president does not want to set a college-wide policy, and Latoya Washington appealed to you, what would you do?
The dean appointed Carl as chair of the department. He also gave his tacit approval of Carl’s plan to develop a departmental policy on the use of GAs. Granting Washington’s appeal would undermine Carl; his department would come to see him as ineffective, and his faculty would be more inclined to challenge his authority in the future, which would require the dean to intervene in the department more frequently. In addition, because the dean already supported Carl’s plan for a policy, reversing himself following Washington’s appeal would make him look weak and untrustworthy to his own subordinate. The dean’s long working relationship with Carl, and Carl’s with his faculty, hang in the balance. On the other hand, a dean who ignores or automatically denies a faculty appeal opens himself up to accusations of favoritism or tyranny. In his position, I would review the appeal, then notify Washington that I was providing Carl a copy and giving him two weeks to write his rebuttal. I would privately advise Carl to speak with his faculty individually to ensure that the policy he has written actually has the support of the majority, both tenured and untenured, and that no one feels he or she was coerced into approving it. After I reviewed Carl’s rebuttal, I would meet with Washington privately and tell her that, while I sympathize with her position, the policy is legal and ethical and enjoys majority support, and her appeal is denied. Then I would encourage her to explore options for obtaining the variety of support she needs outside the scope of the departmental policy.
6. What would you have done in Eddie Accorsi’s place? Would your decision have depended on whether Latoya Washington was a friend? Would it have depended on whether you were tenured?
Assuming Accorsi’s motives are pure, he was in a difficult position in the meeting. As a tenure-track faculty member whose future employment depends to some extent, on remaining in his colleagues’ good graces, he would have taken a risk by defending Washington’s position in the meeting. Another explanation for his behavior is possible, however. Accorsi may not have had any opinion at all on the issue under debate. By remaining silent (and implying consent) in the meeting, he maintained his relationship with the majority. By approaching Washington after the meeting to express his support, he did what he could to preserve his relationship with her. In this case, his behavior was dishonest, but also politically savvy. If I were Accorsi, and I genuinely supported Washington’s position, I would have taken essentially the same actions described above for Washington: I would have suggested that we take the time to develop a statement of philosophy regarding the purpose of graduate assistantships; that we benchmark GA policies of other comparable departments; and that we develop a policy that was consistent with best practices elsewhere. His remarks would support Washington without being obviously partisan. This approach would have been appropriate regardless of his personal relationship with Washington or his tenure status.