The University as Organized Anarchy

If you work in higher education (or another large nonprofit), do you encounter situations in which your institution's decision-making seems unpredictable or intractable? You may be working in an "organized anarchy," an organizational model described by observers of higher education as far back as the 1970s.

For our March 8th and 22nd Itana calls the higher education architecture community is discussing a paper on this topic by Matthew House, Enterprise IT Architect at Washington University in St. Louis, titled A Career in Organized Anarchy: Building Interpersonal Relationships in Higher Education (also available for download here) [1]. Matt's paper and presentation wonderfully connect our community with scholarly thinking on this topic.

For me, Matt's research has triggered a lot of thinking about business architecture and change leadership in higher education, including questions like:

• Are there systemic reasons why change leadership (supported by business architecture) faces special challenges in higher education?
• What are the particular responsibilities of a leader or architect in an organization with very limited intentionality?
• What tools does an architect or leader have for working in this context?

I'd like to offer a few blog posts to inspire further discussion and I hope everyone will join in with their own thoughts -- especially on the Itana mailing list, which you can join here. I strongly recommend you start with Matt's paper, which is very concise and packed with great concepts.

So what is an "organized anarchy"?

In 2016, Kenneth P. Ruscio, then President of Washington and Lee University, described his job like this:

“College and university presidents preside, if that word can be used, over ‘organized anarchies,’ … Goals are shifting. The boundaries of the organization are constantly being redrawn. The referees are sometimes making up the rules as the game progresses … solutions chase problems and problems chase solutions. Decisions are opportunities. They come about when various problems attach themselves to various solutions in complicated, unpredictable and sometimes mysterious ways.” [2]

Now that is a pretty remarkable statement for the leader of a venerable institution. Anarchy? Making up the rules?! Decisions are mysterious?!! Strong words, but the situation may sound familiar to you, and it is recognized by scholarly observers of higher education.

The term "organized anarchy" was coined in 1974 in a book by Michael Cohen and James March [3] to describe institutions of higher education with "many autonomous actors operating with bounded rationality in an environment with ambiguous goals, an unclear link, between cause and effect, and fluid participation with the activities and subgroups of the organization." [1] Cohen and March identified five properties of decision-making in this kind of organization, which Matt summarized for us as:

• Most issues, most of the time, have low salience for most people;
• The total system has high inertia;
• Any decision can become a garbage can for almost any problem;
• The processes of choice are easily subject to overload; and
• The organization has a weak information base. [1]

Put another way, I've sometimes described it to peers (before reading about this research) as the "near-zero accountability" organization. A place where people often just walk away from what they don't feel strongly about, can often set aside larger organizational goals (unless they become absolutely critical), and often aren't challenged to inform the choices they make on behalf of the organization.

If that sounds familiar, read on.

Who cares? And what is our responsibility?

Seeing our context systematically described this way is first of all a kind of mental relief to those of us who have worked in higher education for many years, trying to bring about planned change and finding it surprisingly slow going. Over the last 20 years I've regularly had conversations with newer employees (from other industries) in which I reassure them that no, they're not crazy, the environment really is quite unusual. It's reassuring to also affirm that for myself.

More importantly, many of you reading this, and many colleagues I've worked with over the years, are leaders trying to help higher education institutions overcome challenges and change for the better. We feel responsible for some part of the best contributions universities can make to society.

How is that responsibility changed by knowing you work in an organized anarchy -- a place where decisions are often non-deterministic and the institution as a whole has little specific intentionality about advancing its mission and the public interest? This is a professional existential question for leaders when they "hit the wall" of what can be done in a large university. Confronted with organizational anarchy, which path will you choose:

1. Do you regard the organizational model as unacceptable (whether practically for purposes of doing work, or ethically), and walk away from the particular situation?
2. Will you work within the means the system offers, finding the path of least resistance to do what can be done relatively easily?
3. Can you effect structural change within the system that enables it (and you) to work differently?

I've taken all the above paths in different situations. Regarding the first path, I do think there are situations in which a university's organizational model is simply counter to the public interest in higher education, and professionals have to make hard choices. I'm not going to focus on that today (but would love to hear your thoughts!).

Let's suppose we're on the second or third path ...

What tools do we have as leaders?

Knowing more about the institution's organizational model and decision-making properties, we can be more clear-eyed and effective in our work and choice of tools as architects and leaders.

(A) Building interpersonal relationships. In his paper, Matt describes building interpersonal relationships to become more effective in an organized anarchy. This is an essential tool, Matt laid it our really well, and I don't have more to add. I see this as a crucial "working within the system" path, as well as layering some informal structure onto the organization.

Matt also cites several other tactics attributed to Cohen and March [3], including: influencing the system by focusing to spend time and persist on fewer issues; creating visible groups and recognizing their efforts to advance an issue; overloading the system with issues; and analyzing the system to find small actions with big effects. [1]

In subsequent blog posts, I'd like to dig into some of these areas to offer additional tools that I've seen leaders use successfully:

(B) Identifying and connecting management approaches. Though the institution may work as an organized anarchy, not all its units do. (Try asking your registrar or campus police chief whether they run an organized anarchy.) Leaders can support change that crosses units by identifying the different management approaches in play and helping them connect up.

• More on Management Approaches Within Organized Anarchy

(C) Managing an issue portfolio. Leaders can identify a "portfolio" of issues they feel responsible for, and shepherd them through several stages to increase their likelihood of being worked on and resolved. This tool complements using relationships.

• More on Leading With an Issue Portfolio

(D) Forming enclaves. Leaders have the ability (and sometimes an obligation) to form "enclaves" within the larger organization. In these enclaves, key participants are shielded from the surrounding anarchy and supported in doing focused work. This is an example of the structural change path.

• More on this topic soon

I hope this will inspire others in our community to share their ideas and tools, because we all have a lot to learn and can use all the help we can get. I look forward to hearing everyone's ideas!

Endnotes

1. Matthew House, A Career in Organized Anarchy: Building Interpersonal Relationships in Higher Education, ACM SIGUCCS Annual Conference (2018).
2. Kenneth P. Ruscio, Leadership in Organized Anarchy, Public Administration Review (2016) (emphasis added).
3. Michael D. Cohen and James G. March, Leadership and Ambiguity: the American College President (1974), as cited in [1] above.