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The purpose of this study is to explore unionization’s impact on university department chairs for academic human resource decision-making in terms of faculty hiring; re-employment, promotion and tenure; other faculty evaluation decisions; and discipline and discharge.

The subjects were department chairs with more than one year of experience in institutions with faculty bargaining units in the USA. Half of the department chairs were members of the bargaining unit and half were not members of the bargaining unit. T-test and Chi square statistics were used to examine and compare 136 chair responses.

While there were significant differences between the groups when making all academic human resource decisions based on role affiliation, there was a weak identification as a bargaining unit member. There was no difference between groups when determining how the participants perceived the process rules, and the majority of the responses indicated membership in the union does not complicate making academic human resource decisions.

Based on these findings, this study provides the first empirical evidence against a long-held administrative belief department chairs should not be unionized as they will side with union colleagues in difficult academic human resource cases. The findings of this study also produce three key recommendations for practice and faculty development.

University department efficiency evaluation is a performance assessment on how departments use their resources to attain their goals. The most widely used tool in measuring the efficiency of academic departments in data envelopment analysis (DEA) deals with crisp data, which may be, often, imprecise, vague, missing or predicted. Current literature offers various approaches to addressing these uncertainties by introducing fuzzy set theory within the basic DEA framework. However, current fuzzy DEA approaches fail to handle missing data, particularly in output values, which are prevalent in real-life evaluation. Thus, this study aims to augment these limitations by offering a fuzzy DEA variation.

This paper proposes a more flexible approach by introducing the fuzzy preference programming – DEA (FPP-DEA), where the outputs are expressed as fuzzy numbers and the inputs are conveyed in their actual crisp values. A case study in one of the top higher education institutions in the Philippines was conducted to elucidate the proposed FPP-DEA with fuzzy outputs.

Due to its high discriminating power, the proposed model is more constricted in reporting the efficiency scores such that there are lesser reported efficient departments. Although the proposed model can still calculate efficiency no matter how much missing and unavailable, and uncertain data, more comprehensive data accessibility would return an accurate and precise efficiency score.

This study offers a fuzzy DEA formulation via FPP, which can handle missing, unavailable and imprecise data for output values.

The purpose of this study is to use the power of organization cybernetics (OC) to design a flexible viable academic department that is at the risk of losing its viability because of the complexity of the educational environment.

The proposed framework is developed based on Beer’s OC and the viable system model (VSM). This study adopts the guidelines for applying the VSM described by Stafford Beer and José Pérez Ríos.

The framework presents a comprehensive explanation of the essential functions of a viable academic department. In addition, it determines the basis for an inclusive redesign that can be used to maintain the department’s identity and viability as well.

Although there are many studies applying the framework of the VSM, in an educational context, most of them limited its usage to the evaluation of the viability of academic departments. They did not use the power of OC to design for systemic viability. Accordingly, the application of OC and the VSM, for the sake of designing a viable academic department, can be considered as highly original.

Describes a study which examined expectations for academic leadership of, and sharing of authority by, departmental heads in a community college, a technical institute, and a university in Alberta, Canada. Information was obtained from questionnaires completed by 20 deans, 123 incumbent department heads, and 17 faculty association executive members; and also from interviews with 17 department heads and three senior administrators. Several substantial differences were noted in the information provided by respondents classified by position and type of institution.

The purpose of this study is to analyse how academic staff cope with the new culture of performance measurement and assessment in universities. In particular, the study aims to shed light on how external pressures related to measurement of research performance are translated into organisational and individual academic responses within the university and the extent to which these responses are related specifically to the operational features of performance measurement systems (PMS).

The study is based on a case study conducted in an Italian public university and based on interviews with a cross-disciplinary sample of faculty members.

The study provides insights into how linking financial incentives and career progression to research performance metrics at the system and organisational levels may have important reorientation effects on individual behaviours and epistemic consequences for the academic work.

The study is based on interviews, so one limitation is related to the risk of researcher and interviewee personal bias. Moreover, this study is focused on one single case of a specific university setting, which cannot be fully representative of the experiences of others.

The study contributes to the literature on management accounting by exploring the factors that might explain why the unintended effects of PMS on academics’ behaviour reported by several studies might occur. From a practitioner’s point of view, it shows features of PMS that may produce unintended effects on academic activities. It also highlights the need to rethink PMS for the evaluation of university performance through the involvement of different stakeholders.

The paper provides details of the size and scope of construction research carried out in a number of architecture, civil engineering and building related departments in British universities. After considering the level of funding, the type of research projects undertaken and the resulting outputs, especially how these benefit industry, the paper focuses on the careers of academics and researchers and the way in which research is organized at university, departmental and team levels. Finally, the paper suggests that whilst the construction research community in universities has many strengths, there is a danger that in responding to recent opportunities it may overreach itself. The end result may be disappointing for all parties involved. Some of the factors which would contribute to an effective approach to the development of links between universities and industry are discussed.

This study aims to benchmark Chinese TEFL academics’ research productivities, as a way to identify and, subsequently, address research productivity issues. This study investigated 182 Chinese TEFL academics’ research outputs and perceptions about research across three Chinese higher education institutions using a literature‐based survey. ANOVA, t‐tests and descriptive statistics were used to analyse data from and between the three institutions. Findings indicated that more than 70 per cent of the TEFL academics had produced no research in 10 of the 12 research output fields during 2004‐2008. The English Language and Literature Department in the national university outperformed all other departments at the three institutes for most of the research output categories. While a majority of the participants seemed to hold positive perceptions about research, t‐tests and ANOVA indicated that their research perceptions were significantly different across institutes and departments. Developing TEFL research capacity requires tertiary institutions to provide research‐learning opportunities.

The purpose of this study was to determine not-yet-tenured university library faculty members’ views of 27 methods their department chair may use to support and enhance the faculty member's professional development. The methods were derived from earlier qualitative research on department chairs in higher education. While academic teaching department chair roles have been the subject of the research literature for many years, little research has addressed library faculty perceptions of the department chair's role. The survey instrument used consisted of two parts: (1) a demographics section, consisting of five questions; and (2) a researcher-developed survey of faculty perceptions of the department chairs’ role in faculty development. Survey participants were asked to rate the importance of methods chairs may use in enhancing the professional activities of faculty. According to the not-yet-tenured library faculty members responding to this study, a chair engaging in the most important practices to enhance their faculty's professional development would be one who utilizes good communication, while acting as an administrative advocate.

This paper aims to examine the influence of academics who are members of the profession on academic institutions.

An analytic autoethnography of the influence of accounting academics who are members of the profession on South African universities, supported by publicly available information, such as policy and other documents, web sites, and published material; documentation the authors are able to gather as participants; and formal and informal interviews the authors conduct with academic managers.

The paper finds that profession-identifying academics create and maintain rules and structures within academe, rules and structures that suit the profession. Managers who are members of the profession identify more closely with the profession than with their university. The analysis reveals the mechanics of this influence, as well as the consequences.

The paper contributes to theory by synthesizing the creation of profession-inspired institutions framework and the maintenance of an institutions framework into a single framework. It also applies the theory by providing an example of a profession creating and maintaining institutionalization in an adjacent institution. The findings have implications for academia in cases where academic staff members are members of professional bodies, such as engineering and law faculties. The insights highlighted here may also be of interest to Australasian, UK and US accounting academics, because the literature contains evidence of pressures from professional bodies there.

This paper reports an investigation into climate of an academic department of an English polytechnic. Background discussion is provided on “departmental” and climate concepts and the research approach and perspective employed for the investigation detailed. To collate and summarize “climate” data, a climate “cobweb” model is presented and then employed to examine and sum the data to form a multi‐faceted climate picture of the department.