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<FONT FACE="Verdana">Dear All, just to thank Dion for his contributions to the list in terms of both subject matter for us and life support for it, I was recently looking for something in Handy’s E<I>mpty Raincoat </I>when I found a section I’d quite forgotten about:<BR>
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[<B>Subsidiarity</B>] was last restated in a papal encyclical, Quadragesimo Anno, in 1941: ‘It is an injustice, a grave evil and a disturbance of right order for a large and higher organization to arrogate to itself functions which can be performed efficiently by smaller and lower bodies . . .’ Strong words. I translate them more simply – stealing people’s responsibilities is wrong. You could also define subsidiarity as ‘reverse delegation’ – the delegation by the parts to the centre. (Handy 1994:115)<BR>
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I felt that this is precisely what’s gone wrong with the management of universities: we’ve shifted from what Handy refers to a ‘reverse delegation’ in the period 1975 – 1990 BC (Before Corporatisation), to having our responsibilities stolen (AD – After Disempowerment).<BR>
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In this chapter on subsidarity, Handy forcefully argues that it is the only way for a corporation to function efficiently, effectively and sustainably, but we now operate in a ‘delegated’ structure where management delegates to the academic units most of the services it used to provide to assist teaching, learning and research, whilst keeping an ever higher percentage of the University’s income for its ‘corporate’ activities such as monitoring compliance with the strategies it has imposed for the delivery of teaching, learning and research.<BR>
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Handy, C. (1994) <I>The empty raincoat: Making sense of the future</I>. London: Hutchinson.<BR>
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<FONT COLOR="#950095"><FONT FACE="Arial"><B>-- <BR>
Dr David Tripp, Associate Professor in Education<BR>
Phone: +61 (0)8 9360 6647<BR>
Fax: +61 (0)8 9360 6296<BR>
Room 4-14 Education and Humanities Building<BR>
[Use west entrance and visitors’ end of carpark 4]<BR>
Murdoch University, Murdoch, Western Australia 6150<BR>
http://www.murdoch.edu.au/ <BR>
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