Higher education system governance: an exploratory study of presidential decision making in the kentucky community and technical college system

Environmental Constraints

Birnbaum (1988) describes models of governance, suggesting that no single model is helpful for understanding governance. Instead, local history, values, and environmental contexts vary across colleges and campuses, a concept that stands in contrast to structural theories that have aimed to develop a typology of governance (Kezar and Eckel, 2004). As illustrated in analysis, environment constraints permeated presidential decision making in KCTCS.

The emergence of various environmental constraints, including internal and external agencies, suggests that the system and colleges must be flexible in decision making. Maintaining organizational certainty and efficiency is particularly helpful in uncertain and turbulent environments, and elements of the bureaucratic model can offer organizations more certainty and efficiency (Birnbaum, 1988). Having standard operating procedures, as Birnbaum (1988) defines them, allows the system and colleges to continue their work despite turbulent environments.
In several decision areas, the Board of Regents, CPE, and the state legislature impact the decision making process. For instance, state funding for higher education affected decision making related to setting tuition. The fact that the colleges represent semi-autonomous units makes them more responsive to environmental changes, so in this
regard, authority belonging to the college presidents provides for more flexibility and responsiveness, and further accounts for local differences among the colleges.
Coupling refers to the extent to which subsystems within a system are connected (Birnbaum, 1988). Tight and loose coupling are relative terms, but if subsystems share common variables and these variables are among the most important in those subsystems, then the subsystems are likely to be relatively tightly coupled. Whereas the system appears tightly coupled to the state based qualitative analysis, the colleges appear loosely coupled to the system and to one another. This is evident in the fact that survey participants perceived differently the location of decision making for decision areas asked about on the survey. In other words, differences in the perceived location of decision making among survey participants could suggest that the colleges are each coupled to the system to a different extent or that the variables they share differ in their significance.
Loose coupling allows colleges to be more responsive to changes in the environment, and flexibility emerged in presidential decision making. Still, this flexibility emerged in contention with alignment in decisions across the system and colleges.
The need for flexibility emerged in presidential decision making, and policy parameters provided flexibility to an extent. However, flexibility in decision making emerged in contention with alignment across the system. In bureaucratic organization, a turbulent environment requires a more complex, flexible structure (Birnbaum, 1988).
Tension between flexibility and alignment in decision making emerged because the system and colleges are driven by policy and procedure, but they also face environmental constraints that require flexibility. The extent of environmental influences on the part of the Board of Regents, boards of directors, CPE, the legislature, and the community at
large on decision making was evident. The importance of policy and procedure in decision making illustrates a bureaucratic structure, but when coupled with environmental constraints, tension between flexibility and alignment arise as it did for presidents in KCTCS.
Presidential decision making in KCTCS faces multiple environmental constraints, both internal and external to the organization. Birnbaum (1988) refers to organizational constraints that limit the power and flexibility of presidents. Environmental constraints evidenced in this study included multiple governance structures, and involvement and influence of stakeholders. Moreover, leadership constraints included bifurcated academic and administrative structures, greater involvement of trustees because of legal authority granted to them in policy, and increased bureaucracy as a result of dual administrative structures belonging to the system and individual colleges. These constraints require flexibility in decision making, which was evident in the findings; however, organizational certainty and efficiency provided by policy, as well as defined roles and responsibilities, helped guide decision making, which is critical in uncertain and turbulent environments.