Weaving seamless lives: Organizational and disciplinary influences on integration and congruence of faculty work

This dissertation focuses on ways that university, disciplinary, and departmental contexts influence professors' time allocation, integration of work purposes, and congruence of work with university mission. Comparative case studies of twelve full professors in two universities and two disciplines included documenting 1029.7 hours of professors' activities by direct observation and immediate reports. Each activity was coded for purpose (undergraduate or graduate education, research, administration, or service), action, and duration. To determine integration, activities that fulfilled more than one purpose were coded and counted for each appropriate purpose. Interviews with the twelve professors explored how they interpreted their activities in relation to work contexts. Documents and thirty-nine interviews with department colleagues, chairs, and deans supplied information about work contexts.;Work contexts influenced time allocation and ways that professors approached their roles. Nine professors spent more time on education than research. University contexts influenced whether professors approached classroom-oriented teaching as performers or facilitators of student learning. Disciplinary contexts influenced whether they approached research training according to an apprenticeship model or counselor model. Interacting elements of university, disciplinary and departmental contexts influenced whether they approached inquiry as developers or synthesizers of knowledge.;The proportion of recorded time that professors integrated two or more work purposes ranged from 19% to 60%. The proportion of time they integrated teaching and research ranged from 8% to 34%. Professors were more likely to integrate undergraduate and graduate education in a university with an open admissions policy, a discipline with expansive rather than hierarchical knowledge structures, and if they trained teaching assistants. High classroom-oriented teaching/research integration was influenced by a broad university definition of research, expansive disciplinary knowledge structure, and faculty participation in decisions about teaching assignments. Prevalence of the apprenticeship model and low teaching loads contributed to high research training/research integration.;When the mission implicitly privileged one mode of inquiry and research training, the work of faculty in a discipline that practiced other modes was less congruent with mission. When a dean's sense of mission was consistent with the university's, other features of context were also consistent, contributing to congruence.