[Husker] Callahan's system, changes never clicked with Huskers (fwd)

[Mike Nolan]

> Mike, this reminds me of my unanswered question...Why does the A.D. report 
> to someone who is not in a position to make thorough assessments of the 
> A.D.'s performance?

Isn't that true of other administrative units that report to the 
Chancellor's office as well?  

I think you also misunderstand the Chancellor's traditional role in
an academic institution.  You think he's in charge.  (I'd use a smiley
here, but it isn't funny, it's the truth.)

Universities tend to consist of a somewhat hierarchical set of fiefdoms.

Historically the person with the least secure seat has been the 
Chancellor.  (Compare how many Chancellors UNL has had over the past 30
years with how many deans of, say, the College of Architecture.)

As a result, 'thorough assessments' of performance are not done, unseating 
the lord of each fief is a difficult task, most chancellors quickly
learn not to even try it and concentrate their efforts elsewhere.  Say
what you want about Perlman, but he isn't a dummy.

UNL is by no means the only academic institution with this problem, read
Henry Kissinger's stories of his days at Harvard, about which he once
said "University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so
small."

And the problems aren't unique to academic institutions, either.  Look
at organizations like Hewlett-Packard, a very well run company that had
to fire its CEO a few years back.  (She was a woman, which undoubtably
exacerbated her problems there.)  Look at Enron, at GE, at Apple, at 
Microsoft, etc.  

When I was in grad school I took several courses in organizational theory,
the professor used to use academic institutions as teaching examples of
how messed up organizations can get.  It may come as no surprise, but 
that professor is no longer at UNL.
--
Mike Nolan