The Politics of Collegiality: Retrenchment Strategies in Canadian Universities

Alexander D. Gregor is associate dean of the Faculty of Education at the
University of Manitoba and co-editor of Postsecondary Education in
Canada: The Cultural Agenda.

In this lucid treatment of university-management strategies, Cynthia
Hardy, a professor of management at McGill University, provides an
important warning about the dangers of applying private-sector
retrenchment strategies to the university setting. Her case studies of
six Canadian universities demonstrate how the special character,
history, and social-political circumstances of an individual institution
will determine what strategies will work and how. Hardy believes that it
is possible to attain planning and retrenchment goals while maintaining
the principles of collaboration and consensus. What her book offers is a
plan for “discriminating management, not standardized management that
ignores the complexity and diversity of life.”

Readers are also provided with succinct overviews of the current
theoretical models of university governance and decisionmaking: the
bureaucracy, the collegium, the political organization, and organized
anarchy. By illustrating these models across the range of case studies,
Hardy provides a real-world understanding of their theoretical insights.

With this timely book in hand, university administrators should be
better equipped to handle the daunting challenges facing them.