The Written Rules In Academic Organizations

In recent years, the voice of "de-administration" in academic organizations is getting louder and louder. The study believes that leaving aside the factors of lacking power regulation or constraint,"administration" is mainly in improper intervention of administrative power. Therefore, observing the written rules, which are important carrier, tool and method maintaining administrative power in universities to go on, can provide a new analytical angle as well as thinking dimension for us to understand "de-administration" in universities.In order to make the study more in-depth and detailed, this thesis applies Fieldwork and Depth-interview methods, doing a comprehensive study on one specific university. Firstly, on the basis of analyzing the integral changing history of internal written rules in University A, the study indicates how they are gradually heading towards its systematization and further explores the complex linkages between these systematic written rules and the organizational order of the university.Then, this study selects some core written rules of the student management and teacher management respectively, and analyzes the operating effects of these rules. By interpreting the most basic management rule, Provisions of Undergraduate Enrollment Management, which is concerned with the students' core interests and maintains the university's normal teaching order, and by further discussing the validity of this rule and the reason of its failure, the failure of some of these written rules is examined and reasons for the failure are discussed. By interpreting Rules of Titles Evaluation for Professionals, which concerns faculty members' core interests, including annual examination rules, university's contract appointment rules and some other related rules, combined with a great number of interviews, the study analyzes the crucial reason for the divergence of the operating effects of these rules and the original objectives.The study finds that in universities nowadays, function alienation exists in written rules when they are under operation in real practice. The main symptoms are inversion of ends and means and instrumental rationality overstepping value rationality. The study also notes that in reality another common phenomenon is that although written rules are valid, their effects are often greatly weakened compared to the original intention of the design which in this thesis is called the weakening of written rules'function.Based on the examination and descriptive analysis above, the thesis tries to discuss and analyze the reasons for alienation and weakening of the written rules in academic organizations. To sum up, the explanation is mainly from three aspects. First, because of the particularity of academic activities within universities and the inherent characteristics of university organizations, written rules, as the basis of the existence and operation for hierarchical organizations, however exquisite they are, they have limitations. Second, university has dual attributes on it, community and organization. The attribute of community endows the particularity to differ from other organizations and it is an important power to neutralize, relieve and even resist the rigidity of administration. However, community awareness, such as the department benefit orientation, relations of acquaintances and sympathy, is also alliance force which brings the failure of normal, reasonable basic rules. Therefore, we should respect academic organizations'attribute of being a community, and by the mean time, not forget the regulating function that written rules are supposed to be, and make them balanced or even better together. Last, combining the dual attributes of universities, the thesis points out that the absence of the original rule for all written rules, the university charter, is the main reason for the expansion, flooding, the alliance and weakening of function during their preparing and implementing processes. Combining with the comparison studies of charters in some European and American universities, this thesis analyzes the problems in the construction of university charters in China and some suggestions are provided.