On voting and other limited decision making techniques
In addition to my other job duties, including teaching and coordinating a music program, I am the chairman of the humanities department at my university. Under the previous chairs, the department usually tried to use some form of voting when it came to making important decisions. Some of the results were satisfactory, but some unhelpful power relationships perpetuated themselves due to the numbers of faculty in specific subdisciplines, and several people lost out routinely.
When I was starting out as chairman, I told the department that I was more interested in building consensus. I’m not far into my tenure as chairman, and I still value consensus highly. But here we are in late October, talking about what positions to request as replacements for departed and retired faculty, and my, are we far away from consensus. And, hold your breath…. voting looks like it’s not going to come close to solving anything either. The votes we’ve had when this issue has come up before, and the inclination to vote now - all of the voting sessions lead to winners and losers, with no one willing to put in the serious effort it takes to build consensus (or, what may be the same thing, to look at all of the various angles of opportunity and liability that the department faces).
I’d like to keep the faculty to the task of forging consensus considering the interests of the department as a whole. But I don’t think I - as a peer leader with some informal authority and a bit of formal authority, but no extensive power - can make them do the work they need to do. I also cannot do the work by myself.
So I may be forced to make the best decision I can, submitting a couple of job descriptions to the vice president after getting input from the department faculty, but without either consensus or a vote. And then inviting the department and/or vice president to ask me to quit the chairmanship if they really want that. Someone else in the position would certainly work differently, but I’m not too sure that the results would be better.