Academic Governance

Adding value to university's core business: academia.

One side of a mutual frustration is commonly heard: that university Councils do not understand academic business and merely “rubber stamp” academic proposals from Academic Boards.

The UGPD hears the reciprocal frustration of university governing bodies, that their members are actively frustrated with limitations in Council's abilities to ‘add value' to the university's core business, its academic business.

Exploring Knowledge Creating Behaviours within University Councils

University governors are invited to participate in research aimed at improving the effectiveness of shared academic governance.

In the academic lexicon of knowledge management researchers ‘value adding' is akin to ‘knowledge creation' – if Council has added value to a process it has created knowledge additional to that received by it from other bodies, doing more than just receiving and moving around information.

Sharing academic knowledge is a boundary-crossing activity. To be successful there must be boundary meeting points where mutual understanding can occur. There may be knowledge managers or brokers who manage the boundary objects, overseeing processes that transfer knowledge.

Does the mutual frustration expressed with current practice indicate problems with the sharing of academic knowledge and understanding? If so, can organisational theory provide insight into identifying practices and procedures that improve shared academic understanding, thereby resolving this frustration?

These are the fundamental questions that underpin UGPD's interest in supporting research by the University of Canberra that will provide an Australian empirical base to understanding this issue.

That may then help UGPD to help university governors by suggesting practical means to overcome their frustration.

This research has three components:

1. A survey of university governors to determine the perspectives held of knowledge by university governors and to explore views on knowledge and information.
2. Observations of Councils and Academic Boards in action, to find out where and how knowledge is created, shared and used to influence decision-making. Trial observations to verify the methodology are being conducted at the University of Canberra in 2006.
3. Interviews and discussion groups.

Governors of member universities can access the online survey through the members only area.