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....

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....