gross_universities as organizations

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UNIVERSITIES AS ORGANIZATIONS: A RESEARCHAPPROACH*

E0WAHD G R O S S

University of Washington

This paper provides a test of the useful/ness of a formal organisational model in studying the

structure of univerdties. Nondenom htational umverM ies in the United States were researchedby sending mail questionnaires to administrators and faculty mem bers. T he findings reported

here concem goals, their relation io the power structure, and to o ther characteristics ofuniversities.

There is consensus on the part of administration and faculty on what the goals are and

on what they should be. According to both faculty and administration, the highest goal isand should be protecting the faculty's right to academic freedom. Most of the top go als are

support goals rather than output goa ls, and only one of them involves students. In contrast,three of the four bottom goals refer to students.

Protecting academ ic freedom is more empha sized as a goal in private than in state universi-ties. In the former, the goals revolve around student-expressive matters, but the latter are

more Ukely to emph asise preparing students for useful careers, assisting citizens throughextension, and doing applied research. Student expressive goals are also related positively tothe prestige of the itisUtution, whereas em phasis on student instrumental goals and under-

graduate instruction are related negatively to prestige. The biggest difference in goal struc-tures arises where legislatures and state governme nts are percdved as having greater power,

relative to administrators and faculty.

T TNIVERSITIES are usually not viewed asI j formal organizations. The extant lit-^ ^ erature in the field (Riesman, 1958;

Knapp and Goodrich, 1952; Knapp and

Greenbaum, 1953; Barton, 1961a; Corson,1960; Capen, 1953; Woodbume, 1958)tends to see them in one or both of twomajor ways: (1) as institutions, that is asbeing concemed with performing somethingessential for the sodety, such as educatingthe youth, p>assing on the cultural heritage,providing lines of upward nwbility, and thelike; (2 ) as communities, that is, as pro-viding "homes" or "atmospheres" in whichpersons may set their own goals, such as

self-fulfillment, the pursuit of truth, thedialogue at the two ends of the log,^ and

* This research was supported in part by a grant

from the U. S. Office of Education. Ilie larger study,

of which this paper is a small part, was carried out

by the author and Paul V. Grambsch, Dean of the

School of Business Administration, University of

Bffinnesota.

^ A metaphor of dubious authentidty. According

to most authors, the phrase is attributed to Presi-

dent Garfield who, while a congressman, was said

to have referred to the ideal university as one

"with President Mark Hopkins at one end of a log

other traditional ivory-tower values. It isthose who follow this latter view who feeldisturbed at the "intrusion" of govemmentmoney into the presumably sacred confines

of the university, sacred referring here tothe value of "disinterested pursuit of thetruth."

However, neither of these two approachesseems to have told us much about the uni-versity, though they often reveal how pro-fessors and administrators in the imiversityfeel. Apart from the sheer paudty of re-search, our view is that a part of the reasonis that much of what goes on in universitiesis not "caught" by either model, though

they each explain some things. Perhaps, itwas our judgment, light might be shed onuniversities by seeing them as organizations.In so doing, we do not mean to imply thatthis model should supplant the others, fora single-minded view of universities as "bu-reaucrades" (Cf. Stroup, 1966) is as one-sided as viewing them only as institutions oronly as communities. This paper is an at-tempt to test the usefulness of an organiza-tional model in accotmting for structuralvariables in universities.



UNIVERSITIES AS ORGANIZATIONS 519

NATURE OF TH E ORGANIZATIONAL MODEL ^

As Parsons (1960, Chap . 1 and 1961, pp.

38-41) has noted, the distinctive feature oforganizations that marks them off from otherkinds of sodal S3^tem is that the problemof goal attainment has primacy over allother problems. It is not the presence of agoal (or goals) as such, since all social sys-tems will have, from time to time, goals ofvarious kinds, but rather that the system'sadequacy is judged in terms of its relativesuccess in attaining or moving toward thegoal, or its state of "readiness" to movetoward or orient itself toward such a goal(Cf. Georgopoulos and Tannenbaum, 1957;Price, 1968.). The polar concept is that of"community," illustrated by such systems

as a group of friends, a set of colleaguepeers, a gang, or a nuclear family. Such agroup may develop goals (attacking anothergang, having a baby) but even if it fails inthe attainment of those goals, the groupdoes not necessarily break up. It does breakup when hostilities or cleavages mean thatpersons are no longer at home in one an-other's presence. On the other hand, inorganizations, any failure in goal attainment

(however much the members may enjoy oneanother's company) throws the whole sys-tem into jeopardy.^ Of course the use of asystems approach hardly implies any lessercentrality of organizational goals, for it isthrough goal attainment (or the claim thatsuch is its intent) that the organizationtranslates its inputs into outputs, or at least

2 We shall use the phrase "organizational model"

and the term "organization" without benefit of ad-jectives, such as "formal," "complex" or "large-

scale,^ in order to avoid ha ving to ch oose am ongthem. While we agree with Blau's and Scott's

(1962:6-7) criticism of such terms we do not be-lieve any one adjective avoids the problems theyrefer to.

'T h e d istinction is basicaUy that drawn by

Weber between Vergemmischaftung and VergeseUs-

schaftung, which Hraderson and Parsons translate

in adjective form as "communal" and "associative."

"A social relationship will be called 'communal' if

and so far as the orientation of social action . . .

is based on a subjective feeling of the parties,

whether affectual or traditional, that they belongtogether. A social relationship will, on the other

hand, be called 'associative' if and in so far as the

legitimizes its right to operate and to callon the sodety for its inputs.

In i^ite of the central inq)ortance of"goal" in organizations, it is surprising howlittle attention has been given to developinga dear definition of what is meant by "goal"(Simon, 1964). Etzioni (1964, p. 6) defines

an organizational goal as "a desired state ofaffairs which the organization attempts torealize." But this definitirai immediatelyraises the question, pointed to by many, ofwhose state of affairs it is that is desired.Theoretically, there could be as many desiredstates for the organization as there are per-sons in it, if not more. What appear to begoals from the point of view of the topadministrators may not be goals at all from

the point of view of those further down.But even before one can talk about differ-

ent perceptions of organizational goals, it isessential to distinguish private from organi-zational goals. A private goal consists of afuture state that the individual desires forhimself. Such a notion -Gomes do se to thepsychologist's conception of a motive. Thismeaning may be distinguished from what aparticular person desires for the organization

as a whole (Cartwright and Zander, 1953,pp. 308-311). The latter comes doser to thenotion of an organizational goal, although itstill consists of something that the particularperson wishes and may not at all correspondto the organization's goals. Further, it stillleaves open the question of how one is todetermine an organization's goals when thereare differences of opinion. In a small organi-zation there may not be much difficulty, forthere the top man's personal goals for the

organization are the organization's goals. Itis this simplification which made it p>ossiblefor classical economics to develop the theoryof the firm (as a "person") withoutbeing concemed much about developing aprecise definition of organizational goalwhich was any different tiian the goal ofthe entrepreneur. The firms that the classi-cal economists were talking about were inthe main small ones which had essentially no

greater problem to solve than dedde whatprice to sell its product at and how many



52 0 A ME RICA N SO CIO L O G ICA L RE V IE W

the goals of the organization (Cf. Cyert andMarch, 1963, Chap. 3.). In the case ofideological organizations, where p^'sonalvalues coindde, there may be a dose a)r-respondence between private goals for theorganization and group goals. Yet in generalone cannot assume that private and groupgoals will coindd e. In fact in the typical caseit is safe to say that they will not. It isconsequently necessary to offer a person aninducement to par t idpate (March andSimon, 1958, Chap. 4), so that he attainshis personal goal through the group goal ofthe organization. That is, when the organi-zation attains its group goal, means are pro-vided for taking care of the personal goalsof the persons in it so that they will then

be motivated to part icipate. They must bemotivated to part idpate to the extent thatthey will give up their personal goals (for themoment) for the organization as a wholeshould these differ from organizational goals.Nevertheless in order to avoid any reificationof the concept, it is necessary to emphasizethat goals will always exist in the minds ofcertain persons. That is to say, althoughan organizational goal is not the same thingas a personal goal nor necessarily the same

as the goal that a particular person desiresfor an organization (as distinct from whathe desires for himself), it certainly wouldseem that one kind of evidence on the na-ture of organization goals would consist ofthe statements of particular persons attest-ing what they thought the organization'sgoals were .

Thompson and McEwan (1958) and Par-sons (1960, p. 17) have attempted to definegoals in terms of system linkages. Both have

seen a goal as involving some t ) ^ of outputto a larger sodety. In this sense organiza-tions are always subsystems of larger s)^-tems, the goal of one subsystem being a meansor input of a different subsystem. In the sim-plest case the production of automobile bat-teries is a goal to the firm th at man ufacturesthem but will be a means or input to anautomobile manufacturing firm. Such an ap-proach has the great value of emphasizingthe need to relate organizations to one an-other and to the surroimding sodety.*

Furthermore, when goals are defined in thismanner, i t becomes dear that those withinorganizations have only a limited amountof freedom to set the goals of the organiza-tion. They will be constrained by what out-siders can be persuaded to accept. On theother hand such as emphasis may tend to

underestimate the contribution that rationaldedsion-makers within organizations makein choosing the goals of organisations ratherthan being limited to the demands of themarket.*^ A more serious limitation of theoutput approach follows from the fact thatorganizations have a great many outputs,both intended and unintended, many ofwhich will be no different than ftmctions orconsequences. It becomes a problem to single

out certain kinds of outputs asthe

goals ofthe organization. The importance of by-products in industrial organizations shouldalert the investigator to the danger here.

In spite of the strictures we have sug-gested on the definitions offered thus far,there is no doubt that they all touch on theelements of a definition of goals. Goals willexist in someone's mind and they will involvethe relationship between an organization andthe situation in which it is implicated.

An important contribution has been madeby Etzioni (1964, pp. 16-19), in a work inwhich he criticizes the goal approach to thestudy of organizations as being too limited.To define an organization solely in termsof its goal and therefore to judge its effec-tiveness in terms of its degree of success inobtaining that goal is to doom the investi-gator to disappointment. The "metaphysicalpathos" to which Gouldner (1961) has calledattention—namely the pessimism of those

who see men doomed forever to disappoint-ment in their organizational hopes—^Etzionisees as being due to expecting too much.Few organizations succeed in attaining theirgoals to the degree that those in them willwish they could be attained. One typicallymust settle for a good deal less and theleaders of organizations, their hopes high,would seem to be always expecting morethan they will ever receive. Rather thanseeing these limited results as a consequenceof man's inherent limitations or as the basis




for a sad romantic lament on man's small-

ness in the face of his large goals, Etzionitakes the view that the definition itself may

be at fault. He compares organizations toelectric lights and other types of mechanicalequipment which may have very low effi-

dendes. Much of the energy may be lost

in heat Nevertheless no one expresses greatconcem but rather compares one mechanical

gadget to another, and discovers that onemay be twice as effident as another eventhough it is only 10 percent efficient, com-

pared to the other which is 5 percent effi-dent .

THE PKOBLEM OF SUPPORT AND

MAINTENANCE

Etzioni's analogy calls attention to a basicfact about organizations of all kinds: noorganization can spend all of its energies ongoal attainment. At least some of these

energies, and perhaps a great deal, must bespent on activities which cannot easily (if

at all) be shown to be contributing to goalattainment.

One of the first to point this out was Bales(1958) in his studies of task-oriented small

groups under laboratory conditions. He foundthat two major sets of processes were inoperation in these groups. The groups, onbeing assigned a particular task or goal,

would typically begin by giving their atten-tion to the most effident way of moving

towards that goal, which consisted of solu-tions to various problems which he posedto them. Very early, however, it was discov-

ered that other kinds of activities began to

make their appearance. When someonewould make a proposal that a given ap-

proach be tried, others had to agree, disagree,or take no stand, and this activity began todivide the group on the basis of their esti-

mates of the most worthwhile procedures.The consequence of such deavage was the

development of feelings toward one anotheror toward the solutions proposed, irritationat not having one's own views taken prop-

erly into account, as well as ordinary fatigue.It became necessary. Bales found, for thegroup to stop its goal-directed activity and

tivity was necessary, with certain persons

a.ssuming the role of "maintenance engi-neers," as it were, in giving attention to

what Bales came to speak of as "sodal-emotional" needs. Such needs might be takencare of in a phase manner or in other ways.

It has of course been the experience of per-

sons who have worked with conferencegroups and other kinds of task-oriented

groups that some time must always be givento such maintenance activities. For example,all have noticed the tendency of many meet-

ings to begin with informal chit-chat, and toend with laughter or other kinds of activities

which are related to solidarity or to satisfac-tion of various kinds of personal needs.

The paradox may be stated as follows:

an organization must do more than giveattention to goal attainment in order toattain its goals. A useful approach is that

suggested by the Parsonian functional im-peratives (Parsons, 1961). Whether one is

prepared to agree that these and no otherimperatives exist, they do represent an at-tempt, based on Bales' work as a matter

of fact, to state a set of conditions necessaryfor system survival. As such they applydirectly to organizations. It is noteworthy

that only one of the system imperatives isgoal attainment. The names given to theother imi)eratives are, as is now widely

known, adaptation, integration, and pattern-maintenance and tension management. The

import of these categories is that a goodpart of any system's energies must be givenover to activities that do not contribute in

any direct sense to goal attainment butrather are concemed essentially with main-

taining the system itself.®However, it does not carry one far to

seek to dispose of such energies as "used

up" in a manner analogous to wasted smoke

• Daniel Katz and R obert L. Kahn (1966: Chap.

6.) seek to conceptualize such maintenance in terms

of "effidency," or the amoimt of energy used up to

maintain the system. However, as they are quick

to point out, the word "energy" may be misleading

in that it implies an ability to measure inputs in

quantitative terms. Quite apart from diffici^ties ofmeasurement, there is the central fact that much of

an organization's inputs consist not of energies



522 AMERICAN S OCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

coming out the stack of a steam engine,for such a view is the very one Etzioni iscriticizing. It is true that some of the energyof part idpants is given ov^ to support ormaintoiance activities. But i t is idso thecase that such activities may, in the mindsof partidpants, sti l l constitute organiza-tional goals in every sense of the term. Anexample is the problem of what to do withprofit or money as a goal of a business.On the one hand, i t is hard to imagine adiscussion of the goals of a business whichcould go on for very long without theimportance of making money being broughttip as, obviously, "why we are in business."However, as Parsons (1960) has pointedout, an organization caimot legitimize its

existence in sodety simply by makingmoney: it must do something for the so-dety, i .e. , produce some kind of outputwhich can be exchanged for money (or whichcan be used as a claim for tax or philan-thropic money.) In one sense, one couldinsist that "money" is the means used tobuy the inputs necessary to produce theoutput. On the other hand, one could insistthat the output (or product) is the meansused to get the money, which is what the

enterprise is about to begin with. In ourview, Etzioni (19 58 .309 ) prob ably offersthe best solution to this dilemma when hedefines economic organizations as "thosewhose primary aim is to produce goods andservices, to exchange them, or to organizeand manipulate monetary processes."

We would generalize his solution to allorganizations: money is only one kind ofsupport or maintenance activity. Any sup-

port or maintenance activity can be a goalof an organization. For the imiversity, takethe case of one activity which we designated(in our researdi) as a possible organizationgoal as follows: "Ensure the continued con-fidence and hence support of those whocontribute substantially (other than studentsand redpients of services) to the financesand other material resource needs of theuniversity." Such a goal may be rankedmoderately high in a great many universities

and there may be considerable agreemratthat i t deserves this ranking. Persons may

other publications of the university, by theactivities of certain membera of the ad-ministration and perhaps by the general con-cem of the faculty and others to so behavein public situations as to "represent theuniversity" in an honorable manner. Personswho engage in behavior which secures un-favorable public attention may be criticizedby their colleagues as threatening the likeli-hood of attaining this goal. We cannot seeany useful purpose served by insisting thatthis goal is, after all, a means which enablesthe university to then pursue its "output"goals. This is, of course, true but it is noless a goal for all that. Deliberate attentionis given to it for the entire universityand the university must move toward it

in the same way as it moves toward itsgoal of giving direct service or teachingstudents. The same will be true of suchpossible goals as "making sure that theuniversity is run democratically," "protect-ing the faculty's right to academic freedom,"and even "maintaining the character of theuniversity." Indeed, the claim could be thatsome obvious goals are only means them-selves. For instance, only by producingstudents with certain skills (a goal) can

the university continue to "maintain itscharacter." The latter might be consideredthe more basic goal.

We think that the reason for possibleconfusion here is that it is often assumedthat only a goal which is reflected in somevisible or operationally definable outputdeserves the name "goal." It is of coursetrue, as Downs (1967) points out, thatideological elements often get so intimately

intertwined with organizational goal state-ments as to make such statements rela-tively dubious or even useless as operationalguides in the definition of organizationalprocedures. Hence, it is more dependableto look for spedfic outputs that can bepointed to as evidence of what the organiza-tion is really doing, whatever it says it isdoing. However, there remain goal activitieswhich are still goals, even though it is diffi-cult to assign or point to outputs. Their

goal character is attested by the simple factthat part idpants talk about them as inten-




TABLE 1. SAMPLE GOAL QUESTION

One of the great issues in American education has to do with the proper aims or goals of the university.The question is: What are we trying to accomplish? Are we trying to prepare people for jobs, to broadenthem intellectually, or what? Below we have listed a large number of the more commonly claimed aims,intentions or goals of a university. We would Hke you to react to each of these in two different ways:

(1) How important is each aim at this university?

(2) How important should the aim be at this un iversity?

of absolutely of great of medium of little of no don 't knowtop importance importance importance importance importance or can't say

Example: to 9erve

as substitute pa rents Is nShould Be

nn

DD

D DD

A person who had marked the altematives in the manner shown above would be expressing his per-ception that the aim, intention or goal, "to serve as substitute parents," is of medium importance at hisuniversity but that he believes it should be of no importance as an aim, intention, or goal of Ms university.NOTE: "of absolutely top importance" should only be checked if the aim is so important that, if it wereto be removed, the university would be shaken to its very roots and its character changed in a funda-mental way.

quires, for test, further verbal statements,or perhaps rather vague products, such as"the image of the organization."

In our conceptual work, we speak of goalswhich admit of clear outputs as "outputgoals." For the university, these involve theusual goals of teaching, research and com-

mimity service (further subdivided, as shownbelow). Those which do not involve clearoutputs turn out to be what we speak ofas "support goals." These involve a varietyof activities designed to help the organizationsurvive in its environment, those activitieswhich ensure that the university is run indesired ways, those designed to ensure moti-vated partidpation, and those designed toensure the univ ersity's position in the popu la-

tion of universities. Fu rthe r, we found it use-ful to list a large number of goals, assumingthat all of them would be present at a givenuniversity but in differing degrees. The ex-tent of emphasis on given goals would beour measure of the importance of that goal ata university.

DEFINING A UNIVERSITY'S GOALS

A serious problem in studying any or-ganization's goals is that of devising a way

of describing them that will avoid the ususdtendency of partidpants to "gloss" their

tion that something either is or is not anorganization goal). For the case of the

university, we wanted, furthermore, ameasure which was not depende nt on specificmeasurable outputs (which, as noted previ-ously, are only available for some goals).Our solution was the use of the model indi-

cated by the sample question in Table 1.The special features of this approach are:

(1) it does not ask the subject to volunteera goal statement himself. Hence it is ix)s-sible to measure degree of consensus on aparticular goal statement. Asking the subjectto compose a verbal statement invites the"ideological confounding" referred to above.(2) It keeps separate the subject's percep-

tion of what is from his feelings about what

should be. It asks the respondents to serveas informants as it were, and tell the in-vestigators how they see the universityseparately from the question of how theywould like it to be. These are not entirelyseparate, of course, but it was our feelingthat degree of consensus would constitutea partial control on such biases. We deddedto include a goal only if the standard devia-tion of the scored perception was less than1. For over half of the goals we finally used,

the standard deviation is actually 0.80 orless. A given respondent may be cut off



524 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

T A B U 2. UNXvntsmr GOA LS

(A) Output Goals

Ou^>ut goals are those goals of the univer-

sity ^diich are reflected, immediately or in the

future, in some product, service, skill or ori-

entation which win afiect (and is intended to

affect) sodety.

1. Student-Expresave: Those goals which arereflected in the attempt to change the stu-

dent's identity or character in some funda-

mental way.

1.1 Produce a student wh o, whatever else

may be done to him, has had his in-

tellect cultivated to the maximum.

1.2 Produce a well-rounded student, that

is one whose physical, sodal, moral,

intellectual and esthetic potentialities

have all been cultivated.

1.3 M ake sxire the studen t is perman ently

affected (in mind and spirit) by the

great ideas of the great minds of his-tory.

1.4 Assist students to develop objectivity

about themselves and their beliefs and

hence examine those beliefs critically.

1.5 Develop the inner character of stu-

dents so that they can make sound,

correct moral choices.

2. Student-Instrumental: Those goals which

are reflected in the student's being equipped

to do something spedfic for the sodety into

which he will be entering, or to operate in

a specific way in that sodety.

2.1 Prepare stude nts sped fically for usefulcareers.

2.2 Provide the student with skills, atti-

tudes, contacts, and experiences which

maximize the likelihood of his occupy-

ing a high status in Ufe and a position

of leadership in sodety.

23 Train students in methods of scholar-

ship and/or sdentific research, and/or

creative endeavor.

2.4 Mak e a good consumer of the student

—a person who is elevated culturally,

has good taste, and can make good

consumption choices.2.5 Produce a student wh o is able to per-

form his dtizenship responsibilities ef-

fectively.

3. Research: Those goals which reflect the

dedication to produce new knowledge or

solve problems.

3.1 Carry on pure research.

3.2 Carry on applied research.

4 . Direct Service: Those goals which reflect

ih t provision of services directly to the

population outside of the tmiversity in any

continuing sense (that is, not faculty, full-

time students, or its own staffs). Theseservices are provided because the univer-

sity, as an organization, is better equipped

4.1 Provide spedal training for part-time

adult students, through extension

courses, spedal short courses, corre-

spondence courses, etc.

4.2 Assist dtize ns directly through exten-

sion (H-ograms, advice, consultation,

and the provision of iiseful or neededfacilities and services other than teach-

ing.

4.3 Provide cultural leadership for the

community through university-spon-

sored programs in the arts, public lec-

tures by distinguished persons, athletic

events, and other performances, dis-

plays or celebrations which present the

best of culture, popular or not.

4.4 Serve as a center for the dissemination

of new ideas that will change the so-

dety, whether those ideas are in sd-

ence, literature, the arts, or politics.4.5 Serve as a center for the preservation

of the cultural heritage.

(B ) Adap tation Goals

Those goals which reflect the need for the or-

ganization to come to terms with the environ-

'ment in which it is located. These revolve

about the need to attract students and staff, to

finance the enterprise, secure needed resources,

and validate the activities of the university

with those persons or agendes in a position to

affect them.

1. Ensure the continued confidence and hence

support of those who contribute substan-tially (other than students and redpients

of services) to the finances and other ma-

terial resource needs of the university.

2. Ensure the favorable appraisal of those

who validate the quality of the programs

we offer (validating groups indude accred-

iting bodies, professional sodeties, scholarly

peers at other universities, and re^)ected

persons in intellectual or artistic drdes).

3. Educate to his utmost capadties every high

school graduate who meets basic legal re-

quirements for admisdon.

4. Accommodate only students of high poten-tial in terms of tiie spedfic strengths and

emphases of this university.

5. Orient ourselves to the satisfaction of the

spedal needs and problems of the immedi-

ate geographical region.

6. Keep costs dow n as low as possible through

more effident utilization of tim e, and space,

reduction of course duplication, etc.

7. Hold our staff in the face of inducements

offered by other universities.

(C) Management Goals

Those goals which reflect decisions on who

should run the university, the need to handleconflict, and the establishment of priorities on

which output goals are to be given nuudmum



UNIVERSITIES AS ORGANIZATICMSTS 525

T A BLE 2.—Continued

1. Make sure that salaries, teaching assign-

ments, perquisites and privileges always

reflect the contribution that the person

involved is leaking to his own profes^on

or disdpline.

2. Involve faculty in the government of the

university.3 . Involve students in the govemment of

the imiversity.

4 . Make sure the university is run demo-

cratically insofar as that is feasible.

5. Keep harmony between departments or

divisions of the university when such de-

partments or divisions do not see eye to

eye on important matters.

6. Make sure that salaries, teaching assign-

ments, perquisites and privileges always

reflect the contribution that the person

involved is making to the functioning of

this university.

7. Em phasize undergraduate instruction even

at the e^^nse of the graduate program.

B. Encourage students to go into graduate

work.

9. Ma ke sure the university is rim by those

selected according to their ability to

attain the goals of the university in the

most effident manner p)ossible.

10 . Make sure that on all important issues

(not only curriculum), the ndll of the

full-time faculty shall prevail.

(D ) Mo tivation GoalsThose goals which seek to ensure a high level

of satisfaction on the part of staff and stu-

dents, and which emphasize loyalty to the

university as a whole .

1. Protect the faculty's right to academic

freedom.

2. Make this a place in which faculty have

maximum opportunity to pursue their

careers in a manner satisfactory to them

by their own criteria.

3 . Provide a full round of student activities.

4 . Protect and fadlitate the students' right to

inquire into, investigate, and exaTnine criti-

cally any idea or program that they might

get interested in.

5. Protect and facilitate the students' right toadvocate direct action of a political or so-

dal kind, and any attempts on their part

to organize efforts to attain political or

sodal goals.

6. Develop loyalty on the part of the faculty

and staff to the university, rather than

only to thdr own jobs or professional

concerns.

7. Develop greater pride on the part of fac-

ulty, staff and students in their university

and the things it stands for.

(E ) Positional Goals

Goals which serve to hdp maintain the posi-

tion of this university in terms of the kind of

place it is in comparison to other universities,

an d in the face of attempts or trends which

could change its position.

1. Maintain top quality in all programs we

engage in.

2. Maintain top quality in these programs we

feel to be espedally important (other pro-

grams being, of course, up to acceptable

standards).

3 . Maintain a balanced level of quality across

the whole range of programs we engage in.4 . Keep up-to-date and responsive.

5. Increase the prestige of the university or,

if you believe it is already extremely high,

ensure maintenance of that prestige.

6. Keep this place from becoming something

different from what it is now; that is,

preserve its peculiar emphases and point of

view, its "character."

really is. One can, of course, quote Samuel

Johnson's famous remark that an averageof the opinions of gossips is still gossip, but

we do not believe we are in the presence of

gossip. We do not ask for opinions, but for

perceptions. In effect, we ask Professor X

or Dean Y at the University of A to act

as our eyes. We say: "We cannot come to

the University of A to check on how you

actually spend your time. So we ask you to

look for us and give us a report on what

you have seen." The procedure can, perhaps,be can^)ared to asking several astronomersto a and

is probably closer to the truth than any

other estimate.Finally, the "score" which a given goal

received at a university provided us witha measure of the degree of emphasis it re-

ceives, whether the outputs are clearly visibleor not. In any case, in the last analysis,outputs are not only measures of goals but

of success in goal realization, a factor whichconfounds considerations of effidency and

effectiveness in goal measurement.

Through examination of literature onuniversity goals by the investigators and

and



526 AMERI CAN SOCI OLOGI CAL REVI EW

secured. They are presented there in theorder in whidi we conceptualized them. Onthe questionnaire, the descriptive summarystatements were not, of course, present, andthe goal statements were presented in arandom order.

We make no spedal apology for the lengthof the list of goals. Indeed it is our beliefthat the study of organizations has sufferedfrom an over-simple view of goals. Mostorganizations are characterized as havingbut one goal and many dassifications thatare available in the literature are ba^d onsuch simplified views of organizations. Wesuggest that one of the reasons that suchclassifications have not been more helpful isthat they describe very little about the

organizations that they are meant to compre-hend. A goal structure would seem to bemore descriptive.

Organizations undoubtedly differ in thecomplexity of their goal structures, with uni-versities being among the more complex.Yet every organization must grapple withadaptation, management, motivation, andpositional goals, in addition to its outputgoals. The university in the United States

is probably unique in the number of outputgoals it has, but its support or maintenancegoals may not be particularly complex. Amanufacturing organization may have amuch shorter list of output goals, but per-haps a longer list of support or maintenancegoals, depending on any special managementproblems it may face, difficulties in securingsupplies, or various forms of competition.At the end, its list of goals might turn outto be quite as long as that faced by a uni-

versity.Finally, some might quarrel with the use

of the word "goal" to describe support andmaintenance activities. Of course, manymaintenance and support activities are notorganizational goals. By an organizationalgoal, as stated above, we understand a stateof the organization as a whole toward whichthe organization is moving, as evidenced bystatements persons make (intentions), and

activities in which they engage. The mostobvious organizational goals are, of course,

mind when he speaks of an organization'sgoals. Yet it is possible for anything tobecome an organizational goal, even suchan activity as repairing broken plumbing,provided it is conceived of as an organiza-tional problem. For example, if repeated

breakdowns occurred to the point where itbecame one of stated targets for the nextyear to seek funds to put in a new plumbingsystem, and if persons were then observedto be moving in the direction of savingmoney or diverting it, to make this possible,then a new organizational goal would havebeen created. Goals may and do changeover time, but some kind of adaptation,management, motivation, and positionalgoals will always be present in every or-

ganization.The data on goals were related to a

variety of other measures, espedally thepower structure of universities, as well asmaterials on university characteristics se-cured from other documentary sources, aswill be described below.

M E T H O D S O F D A T A C O L L E C T IO N

The original motivation for the research

extended beyond the simple desire for reli-able knowledge about universities as or-ganizations. As educators ourselves, we wereconcemed by the oft-made claim tiiat thereis a widening gulf in values and interestsbetween academic administrators and mem-bers of the faculty. The resentment of thefaculty at what they feel is administrators'arrogance in thinking of themselves as the"spokesmen for the university," the general

derogation of administration ("He becameassistant to the provost and that was thelast anyone ever heard of him," I 'm onlyan administrator temporarily since no oneelse wanted to do it," or, in the words ofone, who, though Dean of Letters and Sci-ences at the University of Wisconsin atMilwaukee, is definitely not a "former soci-ologist": "Remember that Dean is a 4-letterword"), and the suspidon that administra-tors receive generally higher salaries than

others are often matched by equally un-complimentary sentiments from administra-




and of the scardty of persons willing toserve as "working members of the faculty"(that is, willing to serve on committees con-cemed with administrative matters). Wewere interested in how much substance therewas to the claims tha t such fundamental dif-

ferences existed, how much of it was basedon value differences, and positional differ-ences, and how much on differing concep-tions of proper role, with the faculty oftenconcdving of themselves as the "centralfigures" and the administration as "sup port,"while administrators often conceive of them-selves, in the manner of the high school prin-dpal, as simply a spedal kind of memberof the faculty.

Because of these interests, we deliberatelydedded to limit our attention to educationalorganizations highly likely to exhibit a rangeof conditions of such conflict and difference.One could find many schools, e.g., a small,church-controlled liberal arts school for menonly, in which there may be almost com-plete consensus on organizational goals andvalues. Hence, we deliberately exduded allcolleges which were dominated by somesingle point of view or a commitment to

a uniform task which is of such a natureas to severely limit the goal variation thatcan exist. Not included in our original plans,therefore, were church-controlled schools,liberal arts colleges, teacher's colleges, andtechnical training institutions.

Our population consisted of the nonde-nominational'^ universities in the UnitedStates. It is these universities, with theirgraduate and professional schools, thatseemed certain to exhibit the kind of goalvariation we were interested in. It is furtherin this kind of educational institutions thatthe "support functions" are claimed to haveincreased greatly and in which administra-tors are often accused of having attainedpositions of considerable power. The univer-sities are also distinguished by the impor-tance in them of the graduate school and,for our purposes, a graduate school is neces-

study also included 10 denominational(mostly Catholic) universities, which fulfilled our

sary to provide assurance that the goal ofresearch will be well represented in the imi-versity.

The institutions were selected on the basisof the following criteria:

1. The Ph.D. degree must be granted in at

least three of four fields (humanities, biologi-cal sciences, physical sciences, and socialsciences).2. Ph.D. degrees granted in the two leastemphasized fields must come to ten percentor more of the total degrees conferred. Thisprovision was designed to overcome any undueconcentration in one field, and thus help in-sure the kind of diversity of goals that wewere interested in.3. There must be a liberal arts undergraduateschool or college with three or more profes-sional schools.4. The institution must have conferred ten ormore degrees during the years 1962-1963.This conservative rule enabled us to keep thenumber of universities studied to manageablesize in view of the lai^e number of new uni-versities that have appeared in recent years.

We secured the data for making the abovedecisions from American Colleges and Uni-

versities, ninth edition, 1964 (appendix IVand VI).»"^It tumed out that there were seventyuniversities defined in this way, and wedecided to include all but two of them.The two exceptions were the University ofMinnesota and the University of Washing-ton, since these were the home institutionsof the investigators. They were excludedbecause of the involvement of the investi-gators in them and because the Universityof Minnesota was used for pretesting pur-poses. The list of universities tumed out

to be substantially equivalent to that usedby Berelson (1960, pp. 280-281), withdenominational, technical, and starred uni-versities excluded, except for the additionof a small number of universities whichhave attained university status since thetime at which his list was drawn up.

The securing of accurate data on numbersof faculty and administrators at the 68 uni-versities proved to be an exceedingly diffi-

* Purdue University tumed out to be an excep-tion. It was not dassified as a university by the



528 A M E R I C A N S O C I O L O G I C A L R E V I E W

cult ta ^ , owing to inadequades of catalogueinformation (multiple listings, variations inindusiveness, mixing in of part-time withfull-time, problems of "clinical staff," mem-bers of institutes, laboratories, and othersemi-autonomous portions of universities,

overseas branches, and so forth), descriptionof duties, date of materials and other prob-lems. We had to telephone university officersand friends at particular universities tosecure many of these data. Finally, on thebasis of the best information we were ableto get, there were, in the spring of 1964when our study began, the following num-bers in the 68 universities: 8,828 administra-tors and 67,560 faculty. Although the focusof the research was on administrators, wedesired a sample of faculty to serve as abasis of comparison, particularly with refer-ence to the question of whether administra-tors differed, as a group, from faculty, butalso to examine differential career pattems,self-conceptions, and other variables notbeing reported on in this paper. Because ofthe desire to make rather detailed compari-sons among administrators, we attemptedto get all of the academic administrators.®

On the other hand, since we planned onlyvery broad groupings among the faculty(e.g., sodal sdences, humanities, etc.), wefelt that a 10% sample would suffice. Hence,the total number surveyed consisted of 8,828

administrators ®̂ plus 6,756 faculty mem-bers, for a total of 15,584.

* Fo r example, since we d esired to com pare dean s

of medical schools with deans of pharmacy schools,

and since there were only about 50 of each in the

total population of schools, and allowing also forthe likelihood of incomplete response, the actual

numbers we end up with might easily be, say, 25

of each. W e could hardly operate wit h a smaller

number and make any sort of general statements

about such positions. Hence, any sampling would

have reduced such numbers too much to have been

of any use. Of course, most of our examined re-

lationships involve m uch larger categories. A gain,

we are not here reporting on such finer categories.

10 Th e term "adm inistrator" is, in general, re-

stricted to academic administrators only (exduding,

for example, persons involved in buildings and

grounds, room scheduling, dean of students office,student residences and dining halb, and the like).

However, many coding problems were presented

The questiomiaire was very long (300questions, requiring a minimum of 1 ^ hoursto fill out, and often—sonM of the respon-dents wrote—requiring 3 hours), and facedthe usual problems of mailed questionnaires.A variety of devices was used to stimulate

re^K>nse: (1) the enlistment of the endorse-ment or assistance of accrediting bodies andprofessional sod eties ; (2) an earlier study ofDeans of Business Administration at 101imiversities resulted in offers from approxi-mately one-half of the deans to stimulateinterest at their own universities; (3) thepresident of the University of Minnesotaat the time (Meredith Wilson) wrote toall presidents of member universities of theAmerican Assodation of Universities thatfell in our sample (approximately one-halfof them) asking for their assistance. In addi-tion, it must be remembered that we werecontacting a highly literate, questionnaire-sophisticated group, on a subject of direct,immediate interest to them—^their own jobs.It is also, a subject, as we have said, onwhich there are few data of any validity.We therefore offered the quid pro quo of acopy of the findings, if desired, or at least

the general results which would later bepublished. (To our dismay we received wellover 1500 requests.) Offsetting such obviousinterest is the dear fact that this groupis continually the target of surveyors, to thepoint, we were told by several, that theirs^r eta ries had standard instructions to fileall questionnaires unless otherwise advisedahead of time.^^ Our final response rate forthe entire questiomiaire of usable replieswas 50.9 percent for administrators and40.4 percent for the faculty. A short formof the questionnaire, deeding only withcareers, was sent out to non-r^pondents.It resulted in a total response rate for thatportion of the questionnaire of approxi-

in the sample and hoped his responses to the back-

ground questions on the questionnaire would clarify

his status. Unfortunately, this procedure depended

on h is filling out the questionnaire. O ne result was

that our original estimates of numbers of adminis-

trators (and faculty) had later to be revised. Theywere not far off, however.

^^ O ne p ru de n t of a college not on our list wrote




matdy 76 percent. A variety of tests wasen q^ ye d to t&t the likelihood of bias. Theyleft us with confidence that the responsegroup was not appreciably biased at leastwith reference to dimensions of interest tous. The main reason for the lower than de-

sirable re:^x)nse rate (actually high by usualmail questionnaire standards) appears to bethe length of the questionnaire.^

MAJOS FINDINGS

The following findings are limited onlyto the goal analysis, the relationship of goalsto the power structure, and the implicationsof those findings for the empirical charac-terization of universities in organizational

terms.In Table 3, an overall, composite ranking

of the 47 goals at all 68 universities ispresented. The scores there are based onunweighted means. However, subsequentanalyses of the same goals making use of

various weights (response rate, treating uni-versities equally, use of single scores forentire university) produce no importantshifts in goal position. As presented in Table

3, however, they do reflect the somewhatlower response rate of faculty; that is, theyreflect soipewhat more the perceptions andviews of administrators. The column labelled"is" refers to the ranking of goals on theportion of the question (as illustrated in

Table 1) that represented the answers tothe "is" row (the respondent's report onhis perception of how important the goal infact is); the column labelled "should," in

tum, refers to the ranking in terms of re-

spondent's conception of how important hethought the goal should be.

As can be seen, the top goal at the 68universities is p>ercdved as being that ofprotecting acad&mic freedom. Furthermore,not only do the respondents see it as in factthe top goal, but they believe that it should

be the top goal. As will be shown below,this finding is of the first importance inour ability to characterize universities in

organizational terms. It should further benoted that if we had elected to restrict our

attention only to the usual ou^ut goals(teaching, research, service), we would neverhave made this discovery since we wouldnot have thought of "protecting academicfreedom" a s a goal.

Paying attention, for the moment, only

to the " is" list (that is the goals as listed onthe table), one can characterize the "top"and "bottom" goals by the simple deviceof ranging the actual average scores in a

TABLE 3 . R ANKIXG OF THE GOALS OF

AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES

"Is"

1

2

34

5

678

9

1011

12

13

14

1516

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

2829

30

31

32

33

34

3536

37

38

39

40

4142

Goal

Acad FreedomU Prestige

Top Qual ImpEnsur ConfidenceKeep up to DateTrain ScholarshipPure ResearchTo p Qual AllM ntn Fav ApprslEnsure U GoalsDissem IdeasApplied ResearchStud CareersStud InteUect

Ho ld Our StaffComm Cult LdshpStud InquireEncour Grad WkPreserve HeritageStud G ood CitznWell Round StudMax O pprtunityStud ObjectivityKeep Costs DownFac U GovtReward ProfStud Activities

Stud SuccessRun U DemoAffect Stud PermAssist CitizensJust Rewd InstDevlp Pride UnivSat Area NeedsM ntn B al QualtyWill of FacSpedal T rainingStud CharacterEduc to UtmostAccp Good Stud OnlyStud Pol RightsDevlp Fac Lylty

"Should"

1

11

726

6

2

164

34

9

530

323

1828

1027

20

14

1725

8

35

1921

43

3322

15

36

13

23

4231

2438

1237

39

4029




single distribution, marking the distributionoff in standard deviation units (from theoverall mean), and asking which goals fellin the top standard deviation (of 6) andwhich in the bottom.

The top goals, then, tum out to be:

1. protect the faculty's right to academicfreedom2. increase the prestige of the university3. maintain top quality in those programs wefeel to be especially important4. insure the continued confidence and sup-pwrt of those who contribute substantially tothe finances and other material resource needsof the university5. keep up-to-date and responsive6. train students in methods of scholarship

and/or scientific research and/or creative en-deavor7. cany on pure research

At the other end, the bottom goals are seen

to be:

44 . emphasize undergraduate instruction evenat the expense of the graduate program45. involve students in the govemment of theuniversity46. keep this place from becoming somethingdifferent from what it is now

47. make a good consumer of the studentWhat is most striking about the list of

top goals is that practically all of them arewhat we have called support goals and onlyone of them in any way involves students.Even that one refers to training studentsfor research or other creative endeavorswhich is, after all, closely associated withwhat the professors consider to be importantand represents a possible output to them,

or to tlie academic field. This squares withthe goal of carrying on pure research, whichis also rated very high. The singular scarcityof any emphasis on goals that have anythingto do with students is all the more remark-able in view of the fact that of our totalof 47 goals among which respondents couldchoose, 18 involved direct reference tostudents in some way. Thus there was ampleopportunity, and a result so striking as thiscould hardly have been produced by chance

or by a sampling bias.Supporting this general finding is the fact

sistent then with the finding that pure re-seardi and preparing students for research orcreative careers are emphasized as top goalsin American universities.

No particular pattem among the supportgoals is evident among the top goals al-

though three of them are positional (increas-ing prestige of the university, maintainingtop quality in programs felt to be important,aiKl keeping upnto-date and responsive). Asa general finding one can say that Americanuniversities, taken collectively, emphasizeonly pure research as an output, but put itseventh to a variety of other goals whichare more concemed with the position ofone's own university and the programs thatit offers and with ^ o r t s to maintain a high

quality at the university. At the very topthey put academic freedom as a goal. Sucha goal appears to be of first importance inAmerican universities and refers to the im-portance in them of autonomy from outsideinterference of any kind. One must remem-ber also that these findings do not referto what people think ought to be the case,but rather to their perceptions of the waythings are. The administrators and faculty

at American universities believe that actu-ally, right now, universities do protect thefaculty's right to academic freedom morethan they do any one of 46 other possi-bilities.

What Persons Feel the Top and Bottom

Goals Ought to Be. We utilized the sameprocedure in selecting a top and a bottomgroup)—one standard deviation in the dis-tribution of means at the top, and onestandard deviation at the bottom. When wedid so, we found the following to be thosegoals that persons felt ought to be at thetop in the American imiversity:

1. protect the faculty's rigbt to academicfreedom2. train students in methods of scholarshipand/or sdoitific research, and/or creativeendeavor3. produce a student who, whatever else maybe done to him has had his intellect cultivated

to the maximum4. maintain top quality in all programs weengage in



UNI VERSI TI ES AS ORGANI ZATI ONS 531

7. maintain top quality in those programs wefed to be e^>ecially important8. assist students to develop objectivity abouttheniselves and their beliefs and hence ex-amine those beliefs critically9. make sure the university is run by thoseselected according to their ability to attain

the goals of the university in the most effi-dent manner possible

On the other hand, those goals felt to belongat the very bottom are :

45. make a good consumer of the student46. involve students in the govemment of theuniversity47. keep this place from becoming somethingdifferent from what it is now

When we examine this distribution we see

that although students come out a littlebetter, the student goals are far from beingprominent. Persons felt that the faculty'sright to academic freedom not only wasthe most important goal (as shown above)but that it ought to be the most importantgoal. In this list, however, two student goalscame in second and third places: one referredto the same goal as had occurred in theprevious table (training students in researchand related activities); in addition personsfelt that the goal dealing with cultivatingthe student's mind deserved a high amountof emphasis (although it was not perceivedas in fact given that emphasis). In otherwords, respondents' conception of the waythings ought to be is different from the waythey actually are. In thdr view more atten-tion should be given to cultivating the stu-dent intellect than is in fact being given.

One other student goal also was present

in this top group of nine, namely the goaldealing with assisting students to developobjectivity about themselves. This goal,which did not rank high among the goalsactually being emphasized was felt to beone which ought to be emphasized.

At the other end there was a feeling thatinvolving students in the govemment of theuniversity ought to be of very little im-portance. It would seem that those studentsseeking a greater share in decision-makingpower at the university will not receivemuch support from administrators and

ment of the university either. In general,then, students as a group are not felt to beparticularly imp>ortant, nor is there anystrong feeling that the situation in thatrespect is different from what it ought tobe (with one or two exertions—training

a student in research and cultivating hisintellect, and assisting him to develop ob-jectivity about himself). Nor is there evi-dence, either in what the goals are or whatthey should be, to suggest that it is animportant goal of the university to preparea student for a useful career, to assist himin upward mobility, to assist him to be agood consumer, or to become a good dti-zen.^^

Goal Congruence. In the case of sevengoals, there is congruence between the actualposition and the position that persons feelthey ought to be in. Four goals are per-ceived to be important and our respondentsfeel they ought to be important. These are:

1. protect the faculty's right to academicfreedom2. maintain top quality in those programs wefeel to be especially important3. keep up-to-date and responsive

4. train students in methods of scbolarshipand/or scientific research and/or creativeendeavor

The following three are at the bottom andour respondents feel that that is where theybelong:

1. make a good consumer of the student2. keep this place from becoming somethingdifferent from what it is now3. involve students in tbe government of theimiversity

On the whole the above is rather impres-sive evidence that, at least at the top andbottom, there is a fairly strong sentimentthat things are the way they ought to be.Four out of the seven top "is" goals andfour out of the nine top "should" goalsare congruent with one another. Practicallyall of the goals at the bottom are congruentwith one another.

the above discussion the term "rank" hasbeen used loosely to refer to what is, strict^ speak-



532 AM ERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

Th is generally happy ^* situation does notseem to prevail throughout the distributioa.One way of examining the lack of generalcongruence is through "sins of goal com-mission" and "sins of goal omission." Thatis we can compare those goals which seem

to be out of line with one another on thetwo scales. For exaixq)le the goal, "to develoployalty on the part of faculty and staff tothe university, rather than to their ownjobs or professional concerns," is very lowon the list of the way goals are perceivedto actually be (being actually 6th fromthe bottom). On the other hand, when welook at the list of what persons think goalsought to be we find that this goal is con-

siderably higher up (19th from the b ottom ).Such goals, which persons feel ought to begiven more attention than they are beinggiven ("sins of goal omission") include inorder of discrepancy of ranks:

1. produce a student who, whatever else isdone to him, has had his intellect cultivatedto the maximum2. make sure that salaries, teaching assign-ments, and perquisites alwa)^ reflect thecontribution that the person involved is mak-

ing to the functioning of the university.3. assist students to develop objectivity aboutthemselves and thdr beliefs and hence toexamine those beliefs critically4. make sure the student is permanently af-fected by the great ideas of the great mindsof history5. develop Io3ralty on the part of the facultyand staff to the university, rather than totheir own jobs or professional concems

Looking over this list we see a relative dis-satisfaction with goals which tend to be

pushed to one side when the personal am-bitions and the research careers of the facultybecome dominant interest. There seems tobe some feeling that top faculty (who arelikely to be most mobile) do not have suffi-dent loyalty to the university. In the second

^^''Happy'* in the sense implied in the Durk-

heimian conception of sodal integration as a state

of a society in which jieople do willing^ what they

must do. For an organization, such a state is ap-

proximated when the actual goals are what mem-bers think they should he. It is obvious that we are

speaking only of administrators and faculty. We

neglected goal, there is probably being ex-pressed a feeling on the part of parsons whoserve on committees and attempt to do theirjobs that they are not suffidently well recog-nized. We also see the familiar plaint ol theliberal arts person that not enough attention

is being given to the student's mind or tothe attempt to get the student to developinsight into himself.

The "sins of goal commission" involvegoals felt to be emphasized too much. Thosegoals, in order of discrepancy of ranks, are:

1. insure the favorable appraisal of those whovalidate the quality of the programs we offer2. insure the continued confidence and sup-port of those who contribute substantially tothe finances and other material resource needsof the university3. prepare students specifically for usefulcareers4. cany on applied research5. provide a full round of student activities

We see that although providing a fullround of student activities is not emphasizedas a goal (as we can see again by looking atTable 3), nevertheless there is a feelingthat it is emphasized more than it o u ^ t to

be. In addition persons resent the apparentemphasis on the need to satisfy outsideorganizations that validate programs. Thereis similar resistance to what might be con-strued as pressure from the outside in theemphasis on canying on applied research.On the whole these are entirely consistentwith the emphasis that we have alreadynoticed on academic freedom, and on theneeds and the concerns of the faculty andtheir own professional careers. In addition

we note again that the only way in whichstudents come into the picture here is that,while there is a general feeling that notmuch attention is being paid to them orshould be, that in one area at least, mainlyproviding a full round of student activities,the relatively little attention paid is toomuch.

GOALS AND GLOBAL VAS IABLES

In the attempt to secure further informa-

tion on the utility of goal characterization




TABLE 4 . ILLUSTRATIVE TABLE SHOW ING RE LATION-

S H I P B E T W E E N D EG R E E o r E M P H A S I S O N

FREEDOM AND TYPE

P CONTROL

LowMediumHigh

Total

Gamma=.627.

State20

13

9

42

Type of Control

Private

39

14

26

Total

23

22

23

68

universities in terms of the following"global"" components: type of control(state or private), prestige, degree of em-phasis on graduate work, volume of con-tract research, size (measured in two ways:number of faculty and number of students),and location (regional, and rural vs. urban).Of these the most productive by far ofstrong relationships were type of controland prestige. The others were considerablyless productive (some, in fact, being onlyproductive because they were related totype of control or prestige). Most interest-

ingly size (measured by either of the twoindices we used) was found to be almostcompletely imrelated to any goals.^* Table4 is illustrative of the type of analysissimmied up in the gammas (Goodman andKruskal, 1954 and 1963) in the tables whichfollow. In Table 4, state and private uni-versities are compared with reference to their

^^ As the term is used by Lazarsfeld and Menzel

(1961 ) . See also Allen H. Barton (1961b) for i l lus-

trations from available research.^' Th e role of size, as a determ inant of organ iza-

t ional variation, is the subject of some controversy

at present. See, for example, Blau, Heydebrand and

Stauffer (1966) and Hall , Haas, and Johnson

(1967). I do not believe that our non-findings on

size are evidence one way or another on this con-

troversy. We did get a large range: the smallest

university had about 3500 students, the largest well

over 40,000. It may be, however, that there is a

"crit ical mass" phenomenon operating such that,

once a university passes, say, 2,500, further in-

creases are not correlated with other variations.Or perhaps a "university" in the full sense (by our

definition) requires some Tninimum number which

degree of empha.sis on academic freedom.To make this possible, the average scoreof each university on that goal is calculated,and the scores for all 68 imiversities ar-ranged in order from low to high. The dis-tribution is then cut into approximate thirds,

with each third being labelled "low,""medium" or "high." As can be seen, protect-ing academic freedom is emphasized as agoal to a markedly greater extent in privatethan in state universities: over half of pri-vate universities fall in the "high" third,whereas almost half of the state universitiesfall in the "low" third. A quite high gammaindicates that our impression from inspec-tion is supported by t ha t measure of strengthof association. Furthermore, the gamma issignificant at the 5% level, as is the casefor all the gammas reported in this paper.^^The number of relationships is, in all cases,far beyond what chance would lead one toexpect.

Goa ls Related to Type of Control. T hesample relationship examined in Table 4deals with the question of whether one goal,protecting academic freedom, is related totype of control (state as compared to pri-

va te ) . In Table 5, the findings from thecomparison for all goals are presented. Thegoals are grouped in the categories describedabove. As can be seen, 24 out of the 47comparisons m ade are significantly differentin emphasis at the two kinds of university,with gammas as shown. These gammas arelarge, suggesting large differences betweenthe goals of private and state universities.In private universities the goals emphasized

revolve about student-expressive matterssuch as the student intellect, affecting the

" Use was made of the description in Goodman

and Kruskal (1963) of tests of significance for the

measures described. Actually, the test of significance

we used is the conservative one proposed in that

artide, based on an upper bound for the variance

of the sampling distribution. It was programmed for

calculation on an IBM 7090-7094 computer so that

it could be read as a z-score. Gamma was used since

we did not feel that actual scores, being no more

than averages, represented any more predsion than

ranks. Gamma, in particular, served us well since

our data were ordinal and since we had a large



S34 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

TABLE 5. GOALS RELATED TO T m OF CONTROL

Private

Stud Intellect

Affect Stud Perm

Stud Objectivity

Train Scholarship

Dissem Ideas

Accp Good Stud Only

Ensur Confidnce

Encour Grad Wk

Acad Freedom

Max Opportunity

Stud Inquire

Keep Up to D ate

Pres CharacterU Prestige

Size ofRelationship

(G amma)

(.788)(.784)

(.741)

(.500)

(.531)

(.874)

(.548)

(.602)

(.627)

(.535)

(.566)

(.552)

(.573)(.647)

Student-Expressive

Student-Instrumental

Direct Service

Research

Adaptation

Management

Motivat ion

Positional

State

Stud Careers

Assist Citizens

Applied Research

Educ to Utmost

Sat Area Needs

Keep Costs Down

Keep Harmony

Stud Univ GvtUndergrad Inst

Stud Activities

Size of

Relationship

(G amma)

(.603)

(.837)

(.552)

(.941)

(.718)

(.626)

(.688)

(.801)

(.599)

(.602)

Student permanently with the great ideas,and helping the student to develop objec-tivity about himself (no expressive goalsdistinguish the state universities at all),training the student in methods of scholar-ship and creative research, serving as acenter for the dissemination of ideas forthe surrounding area, and encouraginggraduate work. In contrast, state universitiesemphasize to a distinctly greater extent thanthe private universities preparing the stu-dents for useful careers, assisting dtizensthrough extension and doing applied re-search. Academic freedom, although it ishigh everywhere turns out to be particularlyhigh in the private universities reflectingtheir ability to maintain a greater degreeof autonomy. Note that we are not speaking

of how persons would like things to be buthow they perceive that things actually are.

on involving students in the govemmentof the university and providing a full roundof student activities. One sees here a greaterdegree of responsiveness to students in adirect sense.

The private universities emphasize theneeds of the faculty in the form of emphasis

on making the university into a place inwhich faculty have maximum opportunityto pursue their careers in a matter satis-factory to them by their own criteria; theyalso emphasize the positional goals of keep-ing up to date, preserving the distinctivediaracter of the imiversity, and increasingor maintaining their prestige.

One of the striking differences is the ex-tent to which the goal of accepting goodstudents only is emphasized in private uni-

versities and by contrast the goal of educat-bag to their utmost whoever can get in the




that it is in the state university tbat there isemphasis on satisfying the needs of thelocal area and keeping costs down as wellas keq)ing harmony within the university.

On the whole, the data presented herestrongly suggest that state and private uni-

versities differ from one another in typeof goals. The daim of some students ofthe university that the differences betweenprivate and state universities are disappear-ing as both respond to public needs andfederal research grants, is not supported.Other data, not being reported here, furthersupport tbis condusion. Those data maketbe comparison in terms of power structure,values of faculty and administrators, intemal

organizational structure, and tbe back-grounds of personal.^^

18 The data of Table 5 and the other tables pre-

sented below report only on a type of comparison

which w e called "across" analys is. We refer here to

comparisons in which each university is compared,

on a particular goal, with all other universities. For

example, in Table 4, if the mean for the academic

freedom goal is 3.4 at the University of A and 4.2

at the University of B, then we say it is "higher"

at B than at A. A second kind of analysis refers to

the order of emphasis of all 47 goals at a givenuniversity. For example, the mean for academic

freedom at the University of A is low in comparison

to University of B. However, if all the 47 goals are

arranged in order at the University of A, then the

goal of academic freedom might tum out to be

among the top goals there. The analysis can be

compared to speaking of a child's score on some

achievement test, such as the Iowa, making use of

national norms. As is well known, children in states

such as Minnesota or Washington do very well, in

part because they are being compared with Negro

children in the southem states. A second kind of

comparison is how they do with reference to oneanother, in their own state. Then the child who

scored "higfa" may turn out to have only a modest

score.

The second type of analysis, which we called

"within," tended to support the "across" analysis

but with interesting differences which it is impos-

sible to rqx>rt here. For example, "academic free-

dom" and "keeiHng harmony" disappear as find-

ings. The reason however is that, practically every-

where, academic freedom is ranked in the top third

of goals at each university, and keeping harmony

is ranked in the bottom third. Hence they tum outto be constants and do not show up as findings.

In effect this means that, ahhou;^ universities

Goals and University Prestige. Tbe secondmost '^productive" variable was tbat of"quality." We made use of several measuresof "quality": (1) a measure of "reputationwitb peers," or prestige, (2 ) a measure basedon size and quality of library resources, and

(3) a measure based on publications andotber creative products of tbe faculty. Alltbree tum out to be bigbly related to oneanotber.^® We sball report on our findingsusing tbe first measure only .

Tbat measure was based on data providedfor us by tbe American Coundl on Educa-tion.2® Essentially, tbose data involve rat-ings made by peers of departments tbattbey were familiar witb. Our measure makes

use of tbose ratings, weigbted by numberof areas in wbicb a given university awards

—A bigb proportion of our goals was foundto be significantly related to prestige. It isone of tbe most distinctive cbaracteristicsof a university and may well be tbe onetbing tbat marks it off from all otber kindsof organizations. By tbis we mean tbat auniversity is judged not only in terms ofany products tbat may come out of it

(trained students, broadened dtizens, solu-tions to researcb problems) nor only in termsof some job tbat it does for tbe sodety(sodalization of tbe j^oung, providingcultural leadersbip, symbolizing sodetalvalues), but to a great extent in terms ofbow it is seen by otbers. Universities arean excellent example of wbat Caplow (1964,Cbap. 6) bas called an "organizational set,"in wbicb members watcb tbe members of

otber units in tbe set for any sign of adecline or rise in quality. Altbougb it maycertainly be questioned wbetber reputationor prestige is equivalent to "quality," tbemembers of sets believe tbey can detectit or at least detect any cbange in it. In

»̂ Partly this is due to the fact that we classified

universities on four quality levels only. In effect,

this resulted in an eUte group of nine, a second-

level group of nine, a third-level group of 21, and

the remainder of 29. However, Cartter (1966) made

use of actual ''average scores" and found a Pear-

sonian correlation of .794 between his measure of




T A B L E 6 . P SE SH G E A N D UmvEssirr GOALS

Student-Expressive

Stud Intellect

Affect Stud Perm

Stiui ObjectivityStudent-Instrumental

Stud TasteTrain Scholarship

Stud CareersDirect Service

Dissem Ideas

Preserve Heritage

Assist Citizens

Research

Pure Research

Adaptation

Sat Area Needs

Keep Costs Down

Iffntn Fav ApprslAccp Good Stud Only

Management

Encour Grad Wk

Reward Prof

Undrgrad Inst

Motivat ion

Acad Freedom

Opportunity

U Prestige

Top Qual Imp

Gamma

0.5160.4730.703

—0.5530.730

—0.504

0.7990.651

—0. 455

0.891

—0.628—0.448—0.583

0.556

0.7090.772

—0.697

0.4960.6570.6910.756

tbat sense, reputation is a measure of per-

ception of quality, if not quality itself. Tbebasic findings are presented in Table 6.

Wben we look at tbose universities tbatare in tbe top tbird—ûniversities tbat migbtfairly be called tbe great American univer-sities—we find a distinctive pattem of goalsat sucb universities. Tbey are universitieswbicb do empbasize student expressive goals.In tbem attention is given to producing astudent wbo bas bad bis intellect cultivatedto tbe maximum, wbo bas been p>ermanentlyaffected in mind and iîrit by tbe greatideas of tbe great minds of bistory, andwbo bas been assisted to develop objectivityabout bimself and examine bis own beliefscritically. However tbe most prestigious uni-versities do not give any more attentiontban any otber universities to producing tbewell-rounded student, nor to developing tbeinner character of students. Tbis does notmean that tbese goals are neglected, but

rather tbat tbey ^mply are not given anymore spedal attention tban they are given

a weU-rounded student, tben be bas tbesame cbance at sucb a university as bedoes at any otber university. On tiie ^ o l etberefore, tbis adds iq> to a resounding votein favor of tbe top prestige universities.

Studoit instrumental goals are not im-portant except in a negative sense. Outside

of tbe predictable goal of training studentsin scbolarsbip and researdi, tbe only in-strumental goals tbat come tbrougb arethose of making a good consumer of tbestudent and preparing bim for a usefulcareer, but tbese tum out to be correlatednegatively witb prestige. Tbis means tbatthey are positively de-empbasized in tbebetter universities, wbicb in tum means tbat

they would be emphasized in tbe pooreruniversities. Of course tbis does not meantbat tbere is any necessary causal relation-sbip between prei>aring students for usefulcareers, for example, and prestige. A uni-versity does not attain top prestige by ig-noring tbe attenq)t to prepare students foruseful careers. Cto tbe contrary, we wouldguess tbat tbe top universities simply donot bave to worry about tbe careers of tbeirstudents, perbaps because of tbeir selectivityof students. (Note tbat tbe goal of accept-ing good students only is positively cor-related witb prestige, gamma=0.556). Ontbe otber bandi tbe fact tbat tbere is a nega-tive relationsbip ratber tban no relationsbip

at aU implies tbat tbis goal is always oflittle importance. Again we empbasize tbatwe are talking about bow goals are felt tobe, not bow people at tbe university feeltbey ougbt to be. In tbese universities in

otber words botb administrators andfaculty feel tbat tbis is a goal tbat is posi-tively pusbed into tbe backgroimd in com-parison to otber un iversities.

Tbere is a similar lack of concem forsatisfying a constituency in tbe nâtiverelationsbip seen in tbe direct service goalof assisting dtizens and in tbe adaptationgoals of satisf3ring tbe area's needs, keq>ingcosts down and maintaining tbe favorablei^praisal of validating groups.

It is striking tbat tbe goal of




miiui is to be affected in wa)^ other thanthrou^ undergraduate instruction. The em-phasis on pure research as well as otherindications suggest to us that student ex-pressive goals are to be reached primarOythrough encouraging the student to do re-search, through his exposure to outstandingprofessors and through his taking charge ofa great deal of his education himself.

When we tum to the positive gammas,we see that the great universities are thoseconcemed with disseminating new ideas,preserving the cultural heritage, trainingpeople in scholarship and research, doingpure research, encouraging graduate study,seeing to it that professors are rewarded

according to their contribution to thdr dis-dplines, protecting academic freedom andproviding a maximum opportunity for pro-fessors to develop in ways that they thinkthey should develop, insisting on a student'sright to inquire into things that interesthim, and in most of the position goals (keep-ing up to date, maintaining quality in sillthings, and mqmtaining or increasing theprestige of the institution.) This last wouldlead us to believe that the prestige is notsinq)ly something that lasts and lasts, butmust be worked at all the time. There ismore concem about prestige in the greatuniversities than there is in the lesser ones,who may be on the make.

Power and University Goals. One of themotives for undertaking the research, aswas stated above, was concem for theclaimed split between faculty and adminis-tration, and for data on whether differences

in power of the two groups might not beaffecting the goals of the university. Tothat end, we developed measures of powerand related them to goab, as well as globalvariables. We shall report only on the directrelationship between power and goals thatwe found.

We secured a measure of power by adapt-ing a tedmique used (cf. Tannenbaum andKahn, 1958; Tannenbaum, 1961, 1962) in

studies of labor unions. The domain ofpower was restricted to "the major goals

T A B L E 7 . W H O M A K X T K E B I G D E O S I O N S

President

RegentsVice President

Deans of Profess SchoobDean of Grad Sch

Dea n of Liberal ArtsFaculty

Chairmen

LegislatorsFederal GovtState Govt

Large Private Donors

Alimini

StudentsCitizens of SUte

Parents

Mean Score

4 .654 .37

4 . 1 2

3 .623 .593 . 5 6

3 .313 . 1 9

2 .94

2 . 7 92.72

2 .69

2 .612.37

2 .08

1.91

or "no say at all." The positions and cate-gories were: regents (or trustees), legislators,sources of large private grants or endow-ments, federal govemment agendes or of-fices, state govemment agendes or offices,the president, the vice-presidents (or pro-vosts), dean of the graduate school, deanof liberal arts, deans of professional schoolsas a group, chairmen of departments (con-

sidered as a group ), the faculty (as a group ),the students (as a group), parents of stu-dents (as a group), the dtizens of the state(as a group), alumni (as a group).^ Themajor findings, across all universities, arepresented in Table 7.

The findings recorded in Table 7 are in-teresting in several respects. Some personsmight be surprised that the regents score ashigh as they do (regents themselves usuallywere) since they rarely do more than rubber-stamp the dedsions of the president. Butthey do select the president and are often

*^ The question itself had a large heading: WHOMAKE THE BIG DECISIONS. Then the foHowing

paragraph appeared: T h in k again of the kind of

{dace this university is; that is, what its major

goals or distinctive emphases are. Below are listed

a number of poations and agendes. In each case,

indicate by a check mark in the appropriate space

hew muck say you believe persons in those positions

have in affeding the major goals of the university.

Note we are asking only about the university as awhole. A man might have a lot of say in his own



53S AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

perceived as a rather shadowy, mysteriousgroup. This perception applies mainly to thefaculty, hardly at all to higher administra-tors. Those with a conspiratorial view of thepower structure (who see large private don-ors, alumni, influential dtizens and the likepulling strings from behind) do not receivemudi support from the findings, as can beseen from the low ranking of such personsor groups. Of course we only have percep-tions of power, but the perceptions repre-sent the consensus of a large group of per-sons well-situated to perceive power, andinduding, surely, a large proportion of themajor powerholders themselves.*^

Our major concem here is only to note

the position of the faculty in comparisonto the administrators. As can be seen, thefaculty are ranked in general below all ad-ministrators, with the single exception ofchairmen (and a chairman, some believe, isafter all only a primus inter pares). The un-ease and concem of faculty on the question

space limitations forbid detailed dis-

cussion of Table 7, a brief comment on the position

of "Legislators" and "SUte (k)v't" is necessary be-

cause of the findings to be presented in Table 9.

As can be seen in Tab le 7̂ these two powerholdingcategoric occupy a middle position. Our first

thought was that that position might be an average

of a low position for those categories in private

universities and a high position for them in state

imiversities. When a multivariate analysis was per-

formed to examine this possibility, it was found

that "Legislators" was indeed low at private uni-

versities (second from the bottom), and "State

Gov't," t h o u ^ lower, was not as much affected

(though it was in the bottom third). In state uni-

versities, "State Gov't" was somewhat higher

(thou^ stm in the bottom half). "Legislators"

was, however, definitely higher (just above amiddle position, hut still below aU administrators

except Liberal Arts Deans and Chairmen). It is

also worth noting that at both imyate and state

univeraties, the cat^ories of "Legislators" and

"State Ciov't" both had very high standard devia-

tions (very dose to ID at private univerdties and

over ljO at state universities, in contrast to a

figure for i»esidents of 0.58 at private universities

and 0.63 at state univeraties). In fact, the standard

deviations for these two powerholding categories

were h i ^ ^ tha n any others at state onivn-sities,

and excrrrifd only hy "private endowments" at

imvate univenities. Such diq>ers>on suggests a kckof consensus. As a matter of fact, we found a rela-

of who is running the university hence re-ceive support from this finding. However, itis probiU)ly doubtful that most faculty areworrini about power as such. Their concemis usually whether the power is being usedin thd r interest or not. We made a numberof tests of degree of consensus on the partof faculty and administrators on values, atti-tudes toward university goals, and variousother measures. In particular, with regard touniversity goals, our findings suggest thattl^re is a striking consensus on the part ofadministrators and faculty on what the goalsare and on what they should be. By andlarge the split which many people have be-come alanned about, and which to some ex-

tent was one of the reasons for our beginningthis study, does not find support from ourdata. The faculty and administrators tend tosee eye-to-eye. This result held both whenwe made gross comparisons of the faculty asa group with all administrators as a groupand when we broke this down more finelyand related the rank of the administrator tothe point of view. That is, higher adminis-trators tend to agree with the faculty quiteas much as do lower administrators or chair-

men. In sum, the findings show tha t althoughit is true that administrators in general havemore power to affect the big decisions thando members of the faculty, they apparentlysee eye-to-eye with the faculty; conse-quently one might infer they will use thisgreater power to further the goals of thefaculty, since they seem to share the sameconceptions as the faculty about what thegoals ought to be. However, this is only aninference.

The final type of analysis to which wetum is one in which we related the goals ofimiversities to the power structure. Thequestion is: whatever the administrators saidabout the university and what it ought tobe, how in fact do they behave when theyget the power? For example, what are imi-versities like in which, say, deans of pro-lessional schools have a lot of power as com-pared to those in which the faculty do? If

they are different, then we may say that,whatever the professicmal sdiool deans may




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TABLE 9. GOALS RELATED TO RELATIVE POWER: LEGISLATURE AND STATE GOVERNMENT *

Type of Goals

Type of Powerholder

Legislature State Govemment

Student-Expressive

Student-Instrumental

Direct Service

Research

Adaptation

Management

Motivation

Position

Stud Intellect (—.704)Stud Objectivity (—.628)Affect Stud Perm (—.674)

Train Scholarship (—.473)Stud Careers (.566)

Dissem Ideas (—.482)Preserve Heritage (—.496)Assist Citizens (.692)

(—Pure Research)

Accp Good Stud Only (—.782)Keep Costs Down (.546)Sat Area Needs (.602)Educ to Utmost (.804)

Encour Grad Wk (—.540)Keep Harmony (.531)Stud U Govt (.567)Undergrad Inst (.605)

Acad Freedom (—.654)Max Opportunity (—.588)Stud Inquire (—.560)Stud Activities (.501)

( - T o p Qual All)(—TopCJualImp)U Prestige (- .65 6)Pres Character (—.482)

StudlnteUect (—.695)Stud Objectivity (—.676)Affect Stud Perm (—.717)Stud Character (—.445)

Train Scholarship (—.602)Stud Careers (.514)

Dissem Ideas (—.528)Preserve Heritage (—.496)Assist Citizens (.480)

(—Pure Research)

Accp Good Stud Only (—.627)Keep Costs Down (.476)Sat Area Needs (.506)Educ toUtmost (.554)

Encour Grad Wk (—.615)Keep Harmony (.444)Stud U Govt (.532)Undergrad Inst (.496)

Acad Freedom (—.583)Max Opportunity (—.547)Stud Inquire (—.577)

(—Top Qual Imp)Up to Date (—.483)U Prestige (—.529)

* Goals followed by decimal figures (Gammas) are those attaining the 5% level of significance (or bet-

ter) only. In those cases where the level of significance wasvery close to the 5% level (usually off by thesecond dedmal place only), the goal is listed in parentheses without any stated gamma, but with thedirec-tion shown by a minus sign, or its absence (for a plus).

together. What we have done is brought to-

gether those findings which are sufficiently

strong to rule out chance findings. In the

first colunm in Table 8 (with the heading of

Faculty) are listed those goals which are

emphasized in those places where the faculty

are perceived to have most power. That

is , we took the replies on the question deal-

ing with faculty pyerceived power, calculated

pwrts that the higher the average score ac-

corded the faculty as a power group, the

more likely is the goal of cultivating the stu-

dent's intellect to be emphasized. The figure

in parentheses is the gamma. Occasionally,

a goal came very close to reaching signifi-

cance (off by only a point or two in the

second decimal). Those goals are listed in

parentheses without a gamma, but with the



U N I V E R S I T I E S A S O R G A N I Z A T I O N S 541

more power (than at other universities),and similarly for deans of liberal arts andof professional schools.

If we read down the column headed"Faculty," we can characterize those uni-versities where the faculty have (compara-

tively) more power than at other univer-sities. At such places, the intellect of thestudent is emphasized and the importanceof the student's developing objectively abouthimself is also emp hasized. Stu den ts are tobe trained in methods of scholarship,whereas student taste and student careersare to be de-emphasized. D irect service con-sists essentially of serving as a center forideas, and preserving the cultural heritage,

and not the land-grant goals. Pure ratherthan applied research is emphasized, andfurthermore, when the faculty have power,they tend to be elitist in tr3dng to selectstudents. As could be expected, the will ofthe faculty is one of the important goals andstrong effort is made to see to it that theuniversity is run democratically and thatprofessors themselves have a good deal tosay about running the university. Pre-

dictably, academic freedom is a major goaland the rights of students to inquire andeven advocate whatever they think impor-tant is emphasized. The professors are con-cemed with making sure that the institu-tion is up-to-date and that high quality ismaintained. They are not concemed withkeeping costs down . Th is finding is not q uiteso obvious as appears at first glance becausewe are not talking here about the professors'

opinions about what ought to be done butrather about what happens at universitiesin which faculty are perceived as having ahigh amount of power compared to the wayin which they are perceived at other uni-versities. Universities in which professorsare so perceived, we are saying, are univer-sities in which there is little concern with theuniversity goal of keeping costs down.

When we look at the next colunm (inwhich the power of the chairmen in relationto university goals is examined), what comesthrough strongly is that practically the

same direction (negative). This generalfinding also holds up when one examines thesituation for Deans of Liberal Arts and

Deans of Professional Schools. Although insome cases some goals drop out, we find nocases of reversals, that is, situations where

a goal is positive for one powerholder andnegative for another. For example, placeswhere deans of professional schools arepowerful are places which tend to selectonly good students; the same thing is trueof places where deans of liberal arts arepowerful and where chairmen are powerfuland where the faculty are powerful. So isthe case with emphasis on graduate work,protecting acadenuc freedom, maximum op-

portunity for the professor and so forth. Thenumber of relationships is not as high butin general reversals do not occur.

It is when we turn to the relationship be-tween legislatures and university goals, andstate govemment and university goals(Table 9), that a real difference occurs andhere we get almost a complete reversal fromthe structure that tends to obtain whenfaculty and deans have power. Thus for ex-

ample when the faculty have power the goalof student intellect receives strong emphasis.When legislatures have power, it is positivelyde-emphasized with a very high gamma."Develop student objectivity" is similarlyreversed when one looks at places wherefaculty have power. Such is also the case fortraining scholarship and research, studentcareers, disseminating ideas, preserving theheritage, accepting good students only, keep-ing costs down, maximum opportunity forthe professors, student right to inquire, and,perhaps most disturbing, protecting academicfreedom. For all of these goals there is acomplete reversal of their relationship whenlegislatures have power as compared to thesituation when faculty have power. Thesituation is similar where state govemmentsare perceived as having power.

What these findings seem to add up to isthat, in view of the consistency between theviews and values of faculty as compared toadministrators that we pointed to earlier,




What does make a difference is when legis-latures and state govemment are perceivedas having power compared to other univer-sities where they are perceived as havingless. It is in these universities that the goal

structure really changes. In sum, the facultyand administrators find themselves in agree-ment, and with the kind of goal structurethat both of them seem to find comfortable,at least it is the same goal structure whetherone is talking about whether administratorsor faculty are powerful. The split is betweenthe university and outside infiuences particu-larly the state legislature and state govem-ment. Note too that these are local influences.We did not secure findings for the influence

of the federal government or for sources ofendowment funds. On the whole these resultssupport the general picture that was sug-gested by our finding that academic freedomwas the most important of all the goals ofAmerican universities. This suggests the im-portance to them of autonomy in doing theirjob as they see it. When that autonomy isseverely breached, as it is apparently whenstate govemment or legislators begin to playa significant role in the power structure ofa university, the goals of the universitychange in a profound way and it becomessomething very different.^"*

** W ha t, finally, of the effect of th e m ostpowerful man of all, the president? Here ourfindings are paradoxical and not what manywould have predicted. We found that whenwe made comparisons between those univer-sities in which the president was perceived

2* The results of the multivariate analysis dis-cussed in Footnote 23 support this interpretation.It was reported there that "Legislators" was rankedconsiderably higher in state universities than inprivate universities, and "State Gov't" was rankedsomewhat higher. Our earlier findings on differencesin goal structure between state and private univer-sities parallel the findings now being reported, and,in fact, it appears that a considerable part of thedifference is due predsely to the stronger positionof the state legislature and government in theireffect on the university. Quite obviously state uni-

versities would be expected to have more difficultymaintaining their autonomy against such power-holders than would private universities. This result

as very powerful and those in which he wasperceived as less powerful, there were al-most no differences in the goal structures ofsuch universities. This might be interpretedas meaning that the power of the president

did not make a difference in the goal struc-ture of the university, a conclusion we foundhard to accept, precisely because he wasconsidered to be the leading p)owerholder.Why should the power of persons perceivedas having less power, such as deans of pro-fessional schools or the faculty, make a dif-ference when the differences in the power ofthe president do not? This result appears tobe a statistical artifact, but an interestingone. It says something about the power of

presidents. When we arrange the averagescores that presidents receive, the lowestscore is 4.28 and the highest is 4.92. Thismeans t ha t the presid ents, alone of all power-holders, occupy the unique position thateverywhere they were perceived as havingvery high power, well over 4.00 on a fivepoint scale. When we split the distributioninto thirds even this was not sufficient toproduce any variation. This means that theresimply is little variation between a personwhose average score was 4.28 and a personwhose average score was higher than that.They were all crowded over to the right endof the scale. Consequently our finding thatthe variations in the power of the presidentdo not make any difference in the structureof university goals is simply a way of sayingall presidents are so powerful that, even whenone divides the presidents into the very verypowerful, as distinguished from the very

powerful, no meaningful differences in goalstructure emerge because even the leastpowerful are very powerful indeed. In order,therefore, to examine the effect of differencesin the power of presidents it is apparentlynecessary to move to a different kind of or-ganization than the university as we havedefined it. The president we have in the uni-versities that we have studied is apparentlyso much a part of the structure of such uni-versities that his impact cannot be detected

in the general goal structure that universi-ties share with one another.




Bales, Robert F.

1958 "Task roles and social roles in problem-

solving groups." Pp. 437-447 in Eleanor F.

Maccoby, Theodore M. Newcomb, and

Eugene L. Hartley (eds.). Readings in

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POLITICAL INTEGRATION AS AN ALTERNATIVE TOIND EPE ND EN CE IN TH E FRENCH ANTILLES *

A R VIN W . M U R C H

Yale University

Unlike the neighboring British West Indies and the vast m ajority of the world's colonial pos-

sessions, after World Wa r II, the French Antilles (Martinique arid Guadeloup e) have no tmoun ted a popular independence movem ent in modern times. Instead, they have moved

toward closer political integration with France. The French Antilles thus seem to contradict

one of the basic trends of modern history— the spread of nationalism. In order to explain this

apparent an omaly, the French Antilles are compare d w ith the newly-independen t British

West Indies, recently studied by W endell Bell and his associates. Using Bell's research methods,

62 French AntiUean leaders were interviewed in depth. These interviews indicated that Antil-

lean leaders continued to remain loyal to France largely because they were reaso nably satisfied

with the extension of human rights achieved u nder French administration. In effect, this

represents a "converse case" proof of Bell's proposition that mode rn nationalism, tends to be

generated by the desire to rectify an unsatisfactory level of local equality. The evidence sug-

gests that AntiUean nationalism also was inhibited by the strong impact of metropolitan

(French) culture and institutions on the Antilles, and by the perceived unfeasibility of political

independence for these islands.

THE era of m odern Wes tem history hasquite properly been called the Age ofNationalism. In recent decades, the

drive toward national sovereignty has ac-celerated, and become world-wide in scope.Since World War II, some 50 new nation-states have come into existence, and today

* Tbis is a revised version of a section of tbe au-

tbor's unpublished doctoral dissertation, (Murcb,

the nation-state is the dominant form ofpolitical organization on every continent.This spectacular appeal may give national-ism the appearance of an inevitable forcethat must triumph everywhere. Yet excep-tions remain which stubbornly contradictthis view. A case in point are the FrenchAntiUean islands of Martinique and Guade-

loupe. Unlike the neighboring British WestIndies, the French Antilles have not chosen

gross_universities as organizations

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