[2015] OPEN
UNIVERSITY
[2015] OPEN
UNIVERSITY
9179 OU14 - Head of Centre -- Strategy and Policy
In 1993 I made my one and only political move in the OU and indeed my one and only political move in about 20 years of working life. We in OUBS, as a body, had decided to change the governance structure of School. Thus, the academics were going to be organised under 5 different centres. There had been much debate about this, since some of us wanted these to be centres equivalent to the disciplines in the rest university and some wanted them to be cross discipline. In the event, we compromised by having a couple which were cross discipline and three which were based on disciplines. I was in the one called 'strategy and policy'; which also included marketing. Each of these centres, which comprised 5-7 academics, was to be managed by a ‘head of centre’. This was an elected position.
Accordingly, when it became obvious that David Asch was going to run for Dean of the Business School which was to be decided at the same time, I put my name forward for head of centre. I did this because I essentially thought that this was a management role where, although wielding some influence, I would be able to avoid the politicking which was starting to happen. I assumed that it was an academic role and as such would be above such things. How wrong could I have been? Universities are full of politics.
Even so, I then – for once - played a political game myself, since I asked David Asch to second me. David needed me to support him for his run at the Deanship, but he also wanted -- as a backstop -- to have the position of head of centre in his pocket. I knew it would be a difficult decision for him, but I also knew he would take the decision needed to guarantee my backing for the deanship; and second me for head of centre. Accordingly, I was made head of centre without any opposition.
It was, though, the worst decision I ever made at the OU. David hated me for it, and all his friends -- who made up the majority of members in the centre -- hated me for it; and made me pay for it for long afterwards. They were constantly sniping at me as head of centre and David, as my boss, backed them up to the hilt. Consequently I only stayed around in that job for just over two years, until I found excuse to leave the post.
The interesting thing about the OU, at the time, was that the deans of all faculties, and a number of their subordinates, were elected by their members. In the case of the deans themselves, the electorate comprised the academics, of course, but also the associate staff who in those days included course managers but only representatives of the secretaries. Thus, at that stage, the voting was dominated by the academics and course managers. Later on, as far more admin staff were admitted and were allowed to vote in the leadership elections, the core vote of academics was swamped by everyone else. This was played upon by subsequent deans who got elected on the basis of the peripheral voters not on the wishes of the core voters.
Up to that time Andrew Thomson had been respected by all of us as an excellent Dean. As such, he would normally have been automatically re-elected. The problem was that for the previous year he had been spending all his time pushing the OUBS into supporting the MCI initiative on the Certificate -- against the academic wishes of the school. The school, therefore, moved against Andrew simply an order to get the academic standards back up again; where, in those days, the majority of academics were working on the MBA rather than on the lower level courses -- though this position was reversed in later years
In talking with Andrew I said that I would personally support him, which I would have done, but that I thought he'd probably would lose by a whisker. Unfortunately, he tried to retain power against David Asch -- a move which I later on wished he had succeeded in -- by aligning himself with Rob Peyton as his choice; offering himself some form of partner to Rob. This simply didn't make sense, and my intervention in the election was simply, but very powerfully, to point out that this was unworkable. Accordingly David Asch won by a landslide.
That was in many respects the beginning of the end. David Asch moved, over the next five years, to centralise power under the Dean.
Prior to this, as I have said, OUBS was a collegial institution -- where power was shared by all of us. All decisions were, in theory and practice, decided at the School Board; in which everyone participated. Later on this became just a rubber stamp for the decisions made by the dean.
At that stage I was at the height of my power, though this was not by design but merely by accident. I was just launching one of most successful MBA electives, B885. I was now head of strategy, and I was running the Ethiopian project. In addition, supported by these achievements, I was the first of the lecturers -- after Rob Paton who had been in the university for a long time -- to be promoted to senior lecturer. I enjoyed my position of power, and my popularity. I was even the only academic invited to the course managers' lunch. I genuinely was very popular.
Regrettably, though, I was seen as a massive threat by all politicians who wanted to gain power in the OUBS: not least role by the new Professor of IT, Roland Kaye, but also by David Asch who saw me as a threat to retaining his position. Thus began a decade of politicking against me, which saw me reduced to being just about the most unpopular person in the School.
Even the success in Ethiopia, which led to the School receiving the Queen’s Award for Export achievement, was ultimately claimed by David Asch for himself. I suppose it was all my own fault for signally failing to succeed at the office politics game where I had been so successful on the international stage!
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