Collegiality

Modern forms of governing universities favor efficiency and rationality—governing forms found in private sector corporations and public sector organizations. In this environment, many academics have raised concerns that traditional forms, particularly collegial modes of governance, are being eliminated, while bureaucracy and managerialism have come to dominate higher education organizations.

Historically, collegiality originates from times when all professors of a faculty or university would, like members of a guild, regularly met to discuss scientific endeavors and the operations of the university. At the beginning of the 20th century, Max Weber updated this understanding of collegiality, and it is his work that formed the basis for the reasoning of Kerstin Sahlin and Ulla Eriksson-Zetterquist (2016). As explained by Weber, collegiality is used to limit the authority of a ...