University Politics

I have in a previous blog post argued that universities should be structured as a matrix organization to allow for interdisciplinary collaboration. That blog post was written after I had been Head of the Department of Musicology for four years. At the time, I was slightly frustrated about the challenges we faced with “silos” within the university. Many initiatives were halted due to the university’s organizational structure, which is divided into faculties and departments. My thought was that a matrix organization could be a way to solve the problem. ...

I recently read an interesting book by Gary Hamel called Humanocracy, in which he argues for replacing traditional, top-down bureaucratic structures with more decentralized, people-centric organizations. Ultimately, his goal is to “empower” individuals to innovate and make decisions at all levels, rather than relying on rigid hierarchies. He introduces two approaches: “Swarm of hacks”: This means encouraging lots of small, grassroots experiments or improvements by individuals or teams, rather than waiting for big, top-down changes. “Roll upward”: Instead of decisions and innovations coming from the top, they emerge from the bottom and move upward through the organization. I like the analogy of thinking about this as a type of open-source development, where anyone can contribute improvements, rather than a single manager dictating all changes. ...