Governance

Governance is how educational institutions, especially not-for-profit colleges and universities, describe the way decisions are made about major organizational matters. Governance arrangements tell people both inside and outside the institution who has been given the responsibility and authority for determining specific things. Shared governance is the term used to emphasize the significant role that faculty traditionally have played in the decision making of educational organizations. Although the governing board, along with the chief executive officer, has ultimate authority for establishing the mission of the organization and maintaining its financial welfare, decision-making responsibility in educational institutions has been more widely delegated than in other organizational structures, particularly for-profit corporations. In distributed learning environments, shared governance [Page 201]often takes place through nontraditional structures or processes (e.g., issue-specific ...