Cash and Trust are imperatives for private college presidents implementing a turnaround strategy. Cash is obvious; no cash \u2013 no turnaround. Trust should also be obvious, but it is more nuanced than cash. In a turnaround, a president must be able to trust chief administrators, such as the leaders of academic programs and services, business offices, information technology, plant and maintenance, and the immediate staff of the president\u2019s office. The president must trust these people to carry out turnaround strategies while fulfilling the duties of their office.<\/p>\n
However, to paraphrase O.E. Williamson, a noted organizational economist, subordinate leaders may bias their decisions to support their own interests, He also notes that it is extremely expensive to keep opportunism under control because it requires continuous internal auditing and supervision.<\/p>\n
Williamson\u2019s proposition is problematic when a president implicitly assumes that they must trust senior. Too often, presidents, in particular, those leading a turnaround face a trap. They need to trust senior leadership to make the right choices because during a turnaround presidents do not have the time to devote to closely overseeing their work. However, opportunism takes no vacation even when a college is trying to survive.<\/p>\n
Here are two examples of how implicit trust could be exploited. First, there are senior leaders, who use subterfuge to work against the president\u2019s; so that they can set the stage for the ouster of the president. Second, there is the is senior leader, who believes that they have a better financial strategy than the president. However, this leader\u2019s strategy may deplete funds that the president is counting on for other strategic plans. Third, there is the senior academic leader who stirs up the faculty to encourage a \u2018no confidence\u2019 vote. While the vote may have no real effect because the board supports the strategy of the president, the vote will be published in new media and sent to the regional accreditation commission. Theis opportunistic move is like the senior leader, who uses subterfuge to undermine and force the president to be fired. The senior academic leader can also be vying for the position of the president.<\/p>\n
If the president is dismissed and both senior leaders either acting or not acting in consort, the issue for both will be who wins the game. If either one is named the president, there is a strong likelihood that both the winner and loser of the presidential contest will immediately fall into conflict. It will be in the interest of the winner to fire the loser, and in the interest of the loser to undermine the winner. This game will have no winners, but there will be a major loser, the chance of saving the college.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Cash and Trust are imperatives for private college presidents implementing a turnaround strategy. Cash is obvious; no cash \u2013 no turnaround. Trust should also be obvious, but it is more nuanced than cash. In a turnaround, a president must be able to trust chief administrators, such as the leaders of academic programs and services, business […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[29,1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/knowacademia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2451"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/knowacademia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/knowacademia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knowacademia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knowacademia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2451"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/knowacademia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2451\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2454,"href":"https:\/\/knowacademia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2451\/revisions\/2454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/knowacademia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knowacademia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knowacademia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2451"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/knowacademia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=2451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}