Recently, I was somewhat surprised to discover the sheer variety of definitions of the term “collegiality” that are found in major online dictionaries.
Collins places collegiality as a method of governance “the sharing of authority among colleagues” or, according to Oxford, it is “a word used in a theological context to signify that a group of bishops constitute a body, not a group of individuals” (which applies to universities since the original ones were nearly all church-governed).
A second definition focus on collegiality as a relationship. Merriam-Webster describes it as a “cooperative relationship of colleagues”, another Collins definition has it as the “considerate and respectful conduct among colleagues or an atmosphere, relationship, etc. characterized by this”. Macmillan goes with “the quality of being relaxed, friendly, and cooperative” while Dictionary.com simply goes with “cooperative interaction among colleagues”. Note that three out of four of those definitions focus on co-operation, that is, the idea of working together.
But even with all those different definitions, you can always learn new ones. Just a couple of weeks ago, I was doing a workshop with academic staff at a university, and the group told me that they thought their unit was pretty collegial, and indeed that this collegiality was a real source of pride.
“So,” I said, thinking I was summing up the mood of the room, “that means you all work together, you are proud of your ability to collaborate?”
A slightly embarrassed silence ensued, by which I mean everyone in the room was embarrassed for me because I had completely misread the situation. Finally, someone put me out of my misery by explaining that when they said they thought they were collegial, what they really meant was that they left each other alone to get on with their own individual projects and teaching.
“Ah,” I thought. “Right. Of course. This is an Arts faculty.”
Why does the faculty matter? Well, in my experience two key factors shape the way professors think about collegiality and co-operation: accreditation and disciplinary publication norms. In faculties which require accreditation, faculty are generally aware that they are collectively responsible to deliver a particular curriculum and they must work together to deliver it. This is less true in faculties where curricula is not governed by external standards and course offerings are more based on professorial interest. Similarly, the attitude towards collaboration in fields where solo-authored publications are the norm (or – at least – strongly encouraged during the pre-tenure period) is going to be somewhat different than in those disciplines such as, say, astronomy, where the dominant publication culture demands a great deal of co-authorship.
Basically, some disciplines require more organization and collaboration than others. In those disciplines where level of required collaboration is higher, “collegiality” is likelier to mean “we work together well”; in those where it is lower, “collegiality” it is likelier to mean “we stay out of each others’ way”.
To be clear, I am not suggesting that either of these definitions is intrinsically superior to the other: I am simply noting that the definition of collegiality is an emergent property of the ways in which disciplines are organized. (I do, however, think it would be really cool to conduct an experiment to verify this: take a few departments in Arts, change the curriculum in such a way as to significantly increase the amount of team-teaching the faculty in those departments do, and see if attitudes to collegiality change. My bet is they would, substantially.)
That said, these different understandings of the meaning of collegiality have implications for institutional governance. Or, specifically, “collegial governance”. If you think collegiality is about working effectively together, it is natural that one might view collegial governance as a means to work collectively towards a goal – a view which, as it happens, accords to some degree with the original church notions of “acting as a body”. In that case, a collegial governance problem means a breakdown in the way different actors in the university work together. That’s bad.
If, on the other hand, if your view of collegiality is “other people should leave me alone”, then a breach of collegial governance is any time the university administration, or the faculty dean, or whoever, makes a decision that infringes on your freedom of action or material interests. In this case, the definition of “collegial governance” probably looks more like the liberum veto of early modern Poland, a situation in which every single member of the Senate possessed the ability to kill a piece of legislation. In other words, “collegial” = chaos, or at the very least, it’s a very hospitable environment for “lone wolf” academics.
Again, don’t misunderstand me here: I am not saying that all Arts profs think one way and all Engineers think another, or anything like that. What I am saying is that there is a range of views about what constitutes collegiality (and hence collegial governance), and to some extent these views are influenced by disciplinary norms.
It’s worthwhile for everyone to be more explicit about this range of definitions, as it might just improve inter-institutional communication around governance within institutions. At the very least, we can be clear that when we use the term “collegiality” and “collegial governance”, we aren’t always talking about the same thing.
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I should note that the fields in which collegiality means not being told what to do are those in which there is a possibility of real, philosophical disagreement. If you want an image of a humanities department turned upside down by somebody trying to impose their own ideas read that Salon piece from 2018 on how Avital Ronell terrorised German at NYU.
A medical doctor who doesn’t subscribe to the germ theory of disease is obviously wrong; a philosopher who doesn’t subscribe to the canons of logical positivism might be the world’s foremost expert on Leibnitz. In the first case, one needs collegial governance so that expertise can impose itself on dangerous nutters; in the second, one needs collegiality so that the study of Liebnitzian optimism not be lost to the world through the imposition of common goals.
As a slight addition, I’d note that the fields in which philosophical disagreement is a real possibility are facing the largest cutbacks: competition is therefore greater, at least if we turn into a snakepit of nastiness about what our discipline ought to represent.
Righto: back to marking the last exams.
The question about what collegiality is or is not exposes an unfortunate but am unspoken truth that at the same time complicates leadership and followership. Governments and boards of governors mis-calculate the centre of institutional gravity. The flirtations in Ontario, Manitoba, and Alberta with performance funding are examples of a failure to recognize the enormous functional distance between institutional behaviour and faculty behaviour. “Leave me alone” makes the difference even longer. Will stasis defeat creativity? The distance makes the string is far too long to be pushed. This might be a good time to re-read two watershed books: Thorsten Veblen’s The Higher Learning in America and Diana Crane’s Invisible Colleges.
If Veblen is correct, the organizational structure of modern universities is – right or wrong — that of a business corporation. Every university has an organization chart that in practical effect locates the boundaries of academic collegiality. Academic units – faculties, departments, centres – are built around budgets and office space. In some cases boards and senates incorporate the structure ex officio as the foundation of collegial governance In 1910, Charles Eliot, the longest serving president of Harvard, pushed this down to the department level and argued that there is no point in either looking for or expecting academic collegiality or academic decision-making competence above the department level. When we ask who is collegially inter-acting with whom or who wants to be “left alone” by whom, we do not mean colleagues at large, we mean colleagues within the organizational confines of the department or other management unit, hence the present focus on collegiality in the Arts and the reasonable supposition that the view in Engineering might be different.
What if the same question is asked, as Crane does, without reference to organizational formality? Her answer is that there may be plenty of collegiality depending on where, how and when we look. The answers from scholars within “invisible colleges” outside the static boundaries of organizational structure may be closer to “let me pigeonhole myself” than “leave me alone.” Timing – “when to look” – also may make a difference in answering the question as “invisible colleges” dynamically form, dissolve, and take new forms. Crane does not deny Veblen. The invisible college is a way around Veblen or, at least, a different barometer for collegial behaviour.
Interesting… There is a cost to being “left alone”. Perhaps this is why Arts faculty always seem to be the last people on campus to know what the he** is going on.