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| Oops, looks like I accidentally sent my moral sensibility through the dryer. |
Call it "ethical fading."
"A senior administrator," Mr. Harris says, "does not wake up in the morning and say, Today I am going to do something that lands me on the front page of the Chicago Tribune for the wrong reasons." Instead, he says, what comes into play is a phenomenon known as "ethical fading," in which the culture or structure of an organization causes those within it to lose sight of ethical considerations.Or, say, when a hypothetical faculty member should be grading papers right now, instead of locking her office door, unlocking the bourbon drawer, and hanging out on Higher Education's Premier Online Publication.
It's not "laziness." Let's call it "motivational fading."
Hey, that's us!
ReplyDeleteWhat an awesome slogan. Fab, you need to copyright that or put a TM after it or something.
That's what I've been telling everyone. "I've been invited to join the editorial staff of Higher Education's Premier Online Publication." Nobody checks, so they're all very impressed.
DeleteI'll add "Editorial Staff of CM-HEPOP" to my CV and wait to see if anybody calls me on it.
DeleteDilbert calls this "the way of the weasel": "the giant gray area between good moral behavior and outright felonious activities." A university is supposed to be about truth, so becoming infected with it is much like a ship becoming infested with rats. Once it happens, it's very difficult to eradicate it entirely, and because of this, it keeps coming back.
ReplyDeleteIn 2009, we got a rotten provost. His had a distinctive management style, not just in being adversarial, but in how he'd act in major ways without consulting, or apparently thinking very much. He left in 2013 to become president of another university, and Doug help them.
We still haven't escaped his baleful influence, though, one reason being the hires he made. It feels like passing a kidney stone.
I think this helps explain the growing use of adjuncts, as well. Hiring an adjunct can often seem like the right thing in the moment (we really need another section of this class; this person really needs a sabbatical; that job really should come with a course reduction; that recent grad really is a fantastic teacher, and it would be a shame for hir to leave the classroom; we can ask this or that of the dean/provost, but not both), but the little decisions add up over time, and before you know it most of the professoriate is off the tenure track.
ReplyDeleteNifty graphic and caption.
ReplyDeleteI'm late to read the linked article, but did anyone else shudder at the line:
ReplyDelete"an organizational problem that demands organizational solutions"