Micropolitics in a university: A case study of conflict between the academic senate and administration over campus parking policies.

摘要

This exploratory case study examines politicized interaction between the Academic Senate and administration over parking policies at the State University, Summerville (SUS). Qualitative research methods were used to emphasize the participants' (versus the researchers' or other theoreticians') perspectives, which in turn drove the direction of analysis and construction of analytical tools. The primary data sources were documents and interviews. In general, the former provided historical details necessary for the reconstruction of the story line, while both provided insights on what happened and why. Although the analysis and findings presented throughout this study were grounded in descriptive data, they illuminated successively more abstracted relationships. In the final chapter, a simple, explanatory model is presented that may act as a potential springboard for broader generalizations and future research efforts.; The constitutionally established, dual-track "shared governance" system in which parking policies were fashioned acted as the primary point of interface between the Senate's bottom-up/representative and administration's top-down/non-representative governance systems. This point of interface marked the key "fault line" cleaving the Senate and administration into policy making groups with divergent, and often mutually exclusive, values and interests. Although Senate and administration political strategies were comprised of at least several components, their chief strategic instrument seemed to be the manner in which they defined the preeminent topics driving the parking dispute. In general, the group framing the dispute around issues that were more comprehensive and consistent with their respective group values: garnered more participants on their behalf, presented their position with more passion and, concomitantly, applied more pressure on their opponents. As long as this group maintained such an escalated context or a credible escalatory threat in its absence, policy changes usually were implemented in their favor.; The analysis and findings from this research hopefully illuminated useful concepts and methodological tools that may be applied in future research on organizations comprised of representative and non-representative governance systems. This may be particularly useful given the increasingly more frequent calls from all sectors of society for more democratic organizations and policy making processes.