Presidential Influence, Leadership Succession, and Multiple Interpretations of Organizational Change

John S. Levin

Tables

The animated debates and discourse about higher education presidents, their influences and their connection to institutional functioning, have dimmed. Other concerns such as the formation of executive teams (Bensimon & Neumann, 1993), the complexity of leadership (Birnbaum, 1989), and collaborative governance (Schuster, Smith, Corak, & Yamada, 1994) have eclipsed the topic of the individual impact of presidents on the organization. Nonetheless, presidents continue to be hired, fired, and retired; their influence cannot be dismissed easily. Whether presidents influence organizational behaviors and actions and the extent of this influence are questions which if, framed and approached differently from previous scholarship, offer insights and qualifications on the influence of presidents in higher [End Page 405] education institutions. This study suggests that how we look at presidential leadership, particularly in the interpretation of data, shapes our conclusions about presidential influence.

The work of Bensimon (1993), Birnbaum (1989, 1992a), and Neumann (1990) on presidents, while groundbreaking and foundational, falls short of satisfying the question of presidential impact on the organization on at least two counts. First, their work is not grounded in broad, constituent data. For example, Birnbaum (1989) uses only faculty in his examination of leadership succession. The second area where the work of Bensimon, Birnbaum, and Neumann does not satisfy scholarly interest is in connecting leadership to institutional types, particularly the community college. In addressing institutional leadership, Bensimon, Birnbaum, and Neumann do not disaggregate data even when they do sample community colleges, and they do not treat the community college as a special category or offer an explanation about why it should not be a special category.

In taking the discourse on higher education presidents a step further, I examine the impact of the president on organizational change. My findings in this investigation indicate that community college presidents are perceived as having considerable influence on organizational functioning and are viewed as primary agents of organizational change. However, these findings are accompanied by two major qualifications. The first is that institutional context--that is, the history, governance, and decision-making models and practices of the institution as well as external environmental factors--is an essential variable for identifying and understanding presidential influence. Second, there are multiple interpretations of the perceptions of organizational members in their assessment and judgement of presidential influence.

Through the works of Bensimon, Birnbaum, and Neumann, we have acquired numerous but not always complementary insights on presidents which may apply to an understanding of the influence of presidents. Birnbaum (1989) posits that if presidents are important contributors to institutional performance, then a change in institutional leadership should have measurable effects upon a university or college's performance. He concludes that change in institutional functioning as a consequence of presidential action is rare. Other research includes, in particular, the impact of new presidents (Birnbaum, 1992a; Bensimon, 1993; Neumann 1990), suggesting that new presidents affect institutional life and potentially affect performance. What is evident from these other studies and examinations of college presidents is that presidential succession is certain to "make a difference" to institutional functioning (Birnbaum, 1989, p. 123).

Scholarship on leadership succession, including Birnbaum's (1992b) more recent research, is not consistent with the earlier view that presidents do not influence institutional functioning or that institutions "do not appear [End Page 406] to change as their presidents are replaced" (Birnbaum, 1989, p. 123). Studies of higher education presidents suggest that the period of presidential transition and the early phases of a new presidency are times when there is considerable potential for organizational change. Birnbaum (1992a) notes that "the new president is a fresh start" when campus expectations are high for change (p. 10). Bensimon (1993) describes the initial assumption of office by the four-year college president as a dynamic period where change brought about by presidential action constitutes the norm. Presidents "make announcements, reorganize, fire and hire staff, initiate new programs and eliminate old ones, and establish interpersonal networks" (p. 639).

These inconsistencies about presidential influence are not new: The limitations of presidents and the constraints under which they work can be juxtaposed to their control over institutional life, as both views are amply displayed in the literature (Cohen & March, 1986; Dodds, 1962; Kauffman, 1980; Kerr & Gade, 1986; Mortimer & McConnell, 1978; Stoke, 1959). Moreover, this literature is confined to four-year colleges and universities, ignoring the two-year and community college.

The Community College Context

What about the influence of presidents in the community college? It is not coincidental that Birnbaum (1988) chooses a community college, People's College, to discuss bureaucratic higher education institutions. He portrays the president of People's College as having considerable control not only over administrative and technical matters but also over curriculum. Birnbaum's analysis of People's College indicates that the community college is more bureaucratic than other higher education institutional types and that bureaucratic controls and bureaucratic authority are effective in community colleges.

The distinctive aspects of the community college noted in community college literature and reinforced by Birnbaum's (1988) example suggest that, in these institutions, a formal, administrative leader has the potential to influence organizational decisions, actions, and outcomes. Furthermore, some scholars have identified autocratic leadership in the community college (Amey & Twombly, 1992; Owen, 1992; Raisman, 1990), while still others note, subtly or not, dysfunctional outcomes of presidential actions (Baker & Associates, 1992; Cooper & Kempner, 1993).

The predominant concept, then, is that the community college context--or what might be referred to as its academic culture or its collegiate culture (Bergquist, 1992; Chaffee & Tierney, 1988)--is both bureaucratic and rational (Mintzberg, 1983; Morgan, 1986). This concept may characterize the institution as potentially mechanistic, its system of controls as dominating organizational members, and its leadership as hierarchical, commanding, [End Page 407] and positional. From this perspective, presidents of community colleges occupy positions of influence and have the potential to affect organizational behaviors and actions.

While some community college scholars ignore presidents and leaders altogether (McGrath & Spear, 1991), others explicitly equate leaders with institutional effectiveness (Roueche, Baker, & Rose, 1989; Vaughan, 1986) or implicitly with ineffectiveness (Richardson, Fisk, & Okun, 1983). Vaughan (1986) interviewed presidents, then concluded that they are important to their institutions, while Roueche, Baker, and Rose (1989) began their investigation of transformational leadership with the assumption that presidents are influential. Recent examinations of institutional performance (Baker & Associates, 1992, 1995) proclaim the significance of leadership to community college functioning. However, more evidence than informed assumptions and assertions are required to support the claim that community college presidents influence institutional functioning. Furthermore, if presidents are judged as influential, who is making that judgement and under what conditions?

Method

This investigation is a multiple case study which addresses organizational change in the community college. The study was conducted during the 1993-1994 academic year and involved five community colleges in a single state. I asked community college practitioners and the chief executive of the state agency responsible for community colleges to recommend community colleges where I might examine organizational change, and selected my sites accordingly.

Although I used qualitative research methods and a purposive sampling approach, the five institutions as a group possessed features which might permit generalizability to other sites. First, as a group, the colleges were representative in size and location of the broad spectrum of comprehensive community colleges. Their organizational structures and student populations were also representative (Phillippe, 1995). The colleges included large, medium-sized, and small institutions with student enrollments ranging from 3,000 to 28,000. Institutions included urban, suburban, and rural colleges; their communities ranged from a city of more than two million to towns with populations below 50,000. Two of the five colleges had substantial minority populations, three colleges were multi-campus operations, and the other two were multi-site.

Of most significance to this study is the presidency. The chief executive officer at each of the five selected colleges had three years or less experience in their current positions. All thus qualified as "new" chief executive officers, according to Bensimon's criteria (1993). This point is not only obviously [End Page 408] relevant to the issue of leadership succession but may pose a limitation of this investigation. Four of the five had prior presidential experience at another institution. One had moved as president from one college to another college in the same district. The other three had recently been employed out of state. Ages of this group ranged from the forties to the mid-sixties. Finally, two of the presidents were women; one of the male presidents was a visible minority, and one of the male presidents was a nonvisible minority.

As this investigation was a multiple case study using qualitative analysis, methods for capturing participant perceptions and for understanding deep patterns of institutional meanings followed the advice of Merriam (1988) and Yin (1989) for case study research and that of Burgess (1984) for field research. As qualitative research, the investigation used semi-structured interviews involving both individuals and groups, site observations, informal conversations, an open-ended survey questionnaire, and the collection and review of institutional and state documents.

In all methods, I was guided by organizational change literature (Levy & Merry, 1986; March, 1981; Smith, 1982), particularly by an analytical construct of organizational change based upon Levy and Merry (1986). This construct categorizes four kinds of organizational change: (a) change to the organizational paradigm where underlying assumptions of participants about the organization have altered, (b) change to organizational mission and purposes--an alteration to the rationale for existence of the organization, (c) change to organizational culture, seen largely in changes of the beliefs, values, and norms that organizational members espouse and enact, and (d) changes in the functional processes of the organization, particularly in organizational structures, managerial practices, technology, decision making, and communications.

I collected institutional documents, including 1992-1993 and 1993-1994 catalogs, student enrollment data, budget data, current promotional material, college newsletters, and personnel numbers from 1988-1989 to 1992-1993, and examined them for patterns and trends. I also collected state community college agency documents on enrollments, programming, and budgets. I examined these documents for images and themes which could provide me with a picture or narrative about each institution. I analyzed college mission statements and goals thematically and rhetorically to capture the issues, perspectives, and possible motivations of college constituents, particularly those in formal leadership roles with responsibility for published missions and goals.

Over a six-month period, I met with administrators, faculty, and support staff, as well as the chief executive officer, at each community college. I arranged to meet with at least three administrators at each institution, a group of four or more faculty, each person involved in a leadership role in [End Page 409] the institution (e.g., department chair, chair of senate). I also met informally with faculty, administrators, and a small number of support staff at each college. Formal meetings involved either individual interviews or group interviews, both relying upon a semi-structured format, in which I collected data about institutional history, present issues, and organizational change.

I developed interview data into profiles on each college charting such institutional characteristics as organizational structures and governance processes, prominent historical events, and current issues of each college from the perspective of organizational participants. I also distributed questionnaires to college personnel that included, at each institution, two board members, the chief executive officer, two educational administrators, another senior administrator, four faculty in leadership roles (e.g., department chairs), and two support staff in leadership roles (e.g., chair of staff association). I asked respondents to identify changes, forces of change, and outcomes of change in fourteen categories (e.g., curriculum, personnel, finances, students, governance). Data from organizational members collected through interviews and questionnaires cover 1993-1994.

I was chiefly interested in how community college participants interpreted organizational life, especially their explanations of organizational change. I was also looking for what Erickson (1986) refers to as causal links, the social construction of action where individuals and groups give meaning to behaviors. To guide my analysis, I examined data from the Levy and Merry (1986) construct, noting references to organizational change with respect to organizational paradigm, organizational mission and purposes, organizational culture, and organizational processes. My analysis was particularly sensitive to what is referred to as organizational culture (Cameron & Ettington, 1988; Morgan, 1986; Schein, 1985) in that the investigation emphasizes the shared meanings and sense making of organizational members.

I interviewed each president alone for at least an hour and took extensive notes by hand, frequently recording statements verbatim, especially when statements pertained to institutional change.¹ I interviewed the senior administrators (i.e., deans, vice presidents, and campus heads) as a group at each institution, with additional interviews of individual administrators who were unavailable for the group interview. I interviewed faculty both alone and in groups, with some individual interviews occurring in faculty offices or on campus walkways. In these cases, I used conversational interviewing style, making notes about these conversations later in the day from memory. The same investigative format guided all conversations and interviews, [End Page 410] namely: What has changed or altered in the institution over the past five years? Who or what was responsible for these changes? What were the outcomes of the changes?

Data and Analysis: Organizational Changes Attributed to Presidents

Table 1 displays data from interviews with faculty and administrators. The displayed data indicate areas of significant change that respondents noted where the president, acting alone or in concert with others, was responsible for change. I organized the data into three categories according to the shaping questions put to the faculty and administrators: What has changed? Who or what is responsible for change? What are the outcomes of change?

Table 2 displays data from questionnaires completed by faculty, administrators, board members, and support staff. The displayed data indicate those areas of significant change that respondents noted in which they viewed the president, acting either alone or in concert with others, as responsible. The categories are the same as those in Table 1.

I analyzed interview data to identify patterns--that is, the recurrence of items noted by respondents--and also compared the data from one party with those from other parties to determine consistency. Thus, if there were recurrent references to the restructuring of departments, then I compared data from the president, from administrators, and from faculty to determine if (a) the meanings of the action were consistent, (b) the determinants of the action were consistent, and (c) the outcomes of the action were consistent.

The data in this investigation suggest two of the four areas of organizational change that Levy and Merry (1986) identified: change to organizational processes and organizational culture. College 2 altered organizational processes by restructuring academic departments to such an extent that the total number of departments decreased from approximately 75 to 40; the changes included removing current department chairs, revising job descriptions, and selecting new chairs. College 4 altered organizational processes by increasing the involvement and role of the faculty and other employees in institutional decision making. Before this alteration, college employees had a limited role in governance processes, and the former college president controlled decision processes. Reportedly, all employees became more involved in decision making and faculty additionally played a more prominent role in curriculum and program planning.

In both cases, interviewees attributed these alterations to the presidents. At neither institution did the faculty praise the change, but senior administrators [End Page 411] [Begin Page 413] termed these actions improvements to institutional operations and ultimately to outcomes. At College 2, the college president began to "reorganize the college . . . even before [his] first official day on the job." According to the president, "the department chair position" had troubled him "since I arrived" at the college three years earlier. Senior administrators explained that the president "reorganized the college by decentralizing decision making" and "he remedied the flawed organizational system of the past where faculty would run to the president and to the board." Administrators saw him as restoring sound bureaucratic leadership to the institution. Faculty agreed that the college is now "more professional" with "less centralization" and admitted that this condition was an improvement over the past when the college was "disorganized" and subject to a high level of internal politics and antagonisms. Both faculty and administrators concurred that "order" permeates the college. But faculty lamented their considerable distance from the governing board and their dependence on the president for their well-being, including their working conditions.

At College 4, with its increased role for employees in decision making, the president after a year in his position noted that the faculty are "struggling" because they look to the president for decisions. Instead, he refused to make decisions that required others' expertise. He also instituted a strategic planning process to emphasize process and "collaborative, participatory decision making." One senior administrator noted that the faculty, as well as some other administrators and support staff, were "overwhelmed" with the new presidency. Furthermore, the faculty were still adjusting to the change in presidents. The former president had had a very different style, one involving "more freedom" in which he made "individual deals" with the faculty. Noted one: "The past was okay if decisions went your way." That president had been moved to another college within the same district, while his successor had been assigned from another college in the same district. However, faculty noted that their "comfort level [had] gone up" with the more participatory style.

The president and his two senior administrators explained that they were emphasizing process and procedures to improve organizational performance and to bring a more systematic approach to the management of the institution. The faculty expressed a willingness to accept these changes as long as they did not interfere with the faculty's values and goals, including service to students, "student learning," and "the relationships between faculty and student." "The common goal here is students," noted one faculty member. "We like it small; our students like it small," noted another. "Faculty reach out to students," said another.

Organizational culture, including the values held by organizational members and the meanings they attributed to organizational actions, were affected [End Page 413] [Begin Page 416] by changing relationships among organizational members at College 2 (where these relationships had become more formal), by alterations to the connections of the faculty to the institution at College 3 (where their role in governance had increased), and by changing the rationale for institutional action at College 5 (where a quality improvement philosophy had been adopted).

When the president at College 5 introduced Total Quality Management (TQM), this change altered the organization significantly, according to both the college president and college employees. While College 5 had a reputation as a "change agent," in the words of the president, faculty, and administrators, change in the past was directed to the external environment in accordance with the college's mission of serving the underserved. For full-time organizational members, the introduction of TQM precipitated internal change, "empowering employees" and "involving everyone." TQM also led to a reorganization of the college.

The president's motivation in adopting TQM strategies was to deal with shrinking resources and to help the college survive as a responsive institution. However, once introduced, TQM became a pervasive way of operating, and what began as a strategy evolved into a philosophy. Initially, employees were antagonistic to TQM, and the president "backed off [from] forcing it on everyone." Now, faculty and administrators asserted, the campus had embraced TQM to the extent that its assumption of continuous improvement is inserted into all of the college's decision making deliberations.

Aspects of culture, if not entire cultures, alter through actions attributed to the president. College 2 participants viewed the president as responsible for changing how individuals and groups related and interacted with each other, because he is "a man of unique abilities." The faculty said that "campus [had been] pitted against campus" during the years preceding the current presidency, but these former antagonisms, including conflict and competition between college units and among individuals had disappeared during the three years that the president had been in office. Both administrators and faculty attribute organizational change to the president: The administrators I interviewed characterized him as a "leader," while the faculty, in addition to agreeing, also identified him as a "teacher." The president himself describes the college as "close to Camelot," where he is accorded the power of Arthur. The president uses task forces, consultants, committees, and personal contacts, especially with faculty, to effect internal change. Thus, he is credited with altering patterns of behavior, reducing conflict and competition within the institution, resulting in a more stable environment, with newly established practices of orderly and less contentious behavior. [End Page 416]

Overall, for all five colleges the data from respondents confirm that they identify their college's president as responsible for administration alterations, particularly to personnel, roles, college operations and emphases, forms, processes of decision making, organizational goals, and mission focus. The outcomes attributed to presidential action are extensive and varied. They include the perpetuation of competing interests within the institution (as noted for College 1 on Table 1) improving the college's image, depersonalizing employee relationships, increasing employee involvement in decision making, paying more attention to the business community, to employees, and to students, and articulating a new underlying philosophy about the rationale for college operations.

Institutional changes effected by presidents alone or by presidents in concert with others occur largely at the macro-organizational level; with few exceptions, they concern the institution's management. These changes include introducing a strategic planning process, restructuring departments, altering governance, and introducing quality improvement processes.

The consequences of these changes, with few exceptions, have more to do with influencing employee behaviors than with more measurable outcomes such as institutional productivity, student enrollments, or even student learning. Outcomes include the formation of new groups, the increasing formalization of institutional roles and processes, an increased sense of democracy, and improved morale. These outcomes suggest that institutional changes influenced by presidents affect internal constituents' behaviors and attitudes as well as organizational processes.

Finally, the interview data about the presidents can be seen in an overarching theme comprised of the images of past and present, old and new, and former and current. These images are consistently embodied in the presidency. The articulated problems of the past are associated with the former president or presidents. What respondents at three colleges referred to as the "new democracy," "new ways of thinking," and "a corporate approach" respectively were all connected to their new presidents. This pattern suggests that the intuitive perception--that institutional change is a function of presidential succession--is correct: that the new president acts in ways and with effects that the former president neither practiced nor realized.

College 3 provides a salient example of the prominence accorded to the chief executive officer, largely as a consequence of succession. The previous president of eight years had been removed after a faculty vote of nonconfidence and a faculty petition to the state board of governors. His departure in the early 1990s was a relief to most college members. Interviewees described him as an autocratic president whose material contribution was in the form of some significant buildings, including a performing arts center. [End Page 417] However, his emotional legacy lingered on in bitter expressions about how he had treated the faculty. "The past was so bad," summarized one. The "former president had a bad attitude," noted one mid-level administrator. He "beat the shit out of me," noted a long-serving senior administrator.

The arrival of a new president brought a sense of "hope," "relief," and fairly high expectations to the college. "Cynicism is being replaced by hope," commented an instructor. We have "a desire to move on," stated another. Faculty referred to the changes that occurred with the arrival of the new president as "the new democracy." Organizational change was manifest in increased faculty participation in governance and planning processes and in improved faculty and administration relationships. An "institutional self-study" was in progress "in preparation for accreditation." The new president saw the process of self-study as a form of strategic planning, and the faculty viewed it as an "avenue of change"--"not an event but a process." The college was involved in revising its mission and goals statements, and participants expected the statement to reflect employee values. The former mission and goals statements had not been derived from a collaborative process.

Discussion

The respondents in the study viewed the president's role in initiating change as "central," "crucial," and "essential"--a traditional and intuitive conclusion about sources of change. But I suggest that there is another way to view the influence of the president as reflected in the perceptions and language of campus members. This alternative view suggests that participants may be perceiving change and attributing it to the president as an individual when the change forces involved are actually more complex along two dimensions.

The first dimension is institutional culture. I suggest that context and contributing factors may motivate, influence, bias, and predispose organizational members to assess presidential influence. I refer to these forces collectively as institutional context, which includes governance and decision making practices and models, political systems, institutional history, the external environment, and other contributing factors such as external environments. A researcher understands institutional context when he or she attempts to draw coherent patterns of meaning from information obtained during a qualitative organizational investigation (Hardy, 1996). For example, at College 4 I identified a markedly negative perception about its former president and the years of his presidency on the part of the study participants; this negativity heightened their expectations that organizational change would accompany a new president. [End Page 418]

I call the second dimension variant readings. This dimension involves viewing and understanding the perceptions and language of organizational members as reflected in interview and questionnaire data. This evaluative technique is not dissimilar from literary analysis which offers multiple interpretive choices and in which theory or a theoretical framework guides the reader to make sense out of the idiosyncratic in texts (Fish, 1995; Miller, 1991). Modern or contemporary criticism suggests a multiplicity of meaning in text, with pluralism as a norm for explanation (Derrida, 1982; Selden, 1989). I will illustrate this point after discussing institutional context.

Institutional Context

College 1 had a history characterized by conflict, "in-fighting," and "internal competition." Thus, the president's actions in hiring new administrative personnel and his changes in power structures were consistent with the college's internal environment and history. It seemed reasonable to conclude that the president was part of a stream of forces at his college engaged in political behaviors and that his actions were not necessarily the shaping forces of organizational change. "The president creates who's on top" of the power structure, observed one college administrator. The college has "competing political structures," says another. Many political power struggles had accompanied the historical development of the college.

College 2 also was portrayed as having had a conflict-ridden history, but descriptions of its record were much more negative than College 1's. College 2's past had been an embarrassment for organizational members, with presidents replacing each other rapidly, a governing board scandal, a poor public image, and antagonistic behaviors among internal groups. The actions of the current president need to be viewed in this context. Study participants said that he had "fixed the negative image problem of the college," brought "stability" and "efficient operations," and increased the institution's credibility among external constituencies. Praise for the president and gratitude from many that he had "saved" the institution might well have led to elevated perceptions of both the president's power and accomplishments. Similarly, it is also reasonable to conclude that the president's power and influence were enlarged because organizational members believed he would or had "rescue[d]" the institution from "collapse."

College 3 has a discredited history similar to that of College 2, but the villain is more specific--the former president. Thus, the very fact of his departure, irrespective of his successor, brought a sense of change; but the current president arrived endowed with qualities of change. The powerful and "autocratic" male was replaced by a woman who refers to herself as "a cultural interpreter" and "an agent of change" and who attributes to the faculty a description of her presidency as a "new democracy." Her gender [End Page 419] and consultative style suggest to organizational members that she is responsible for considerable organizational change; and most faculty willingly attribute the changes that have occurred to her. It is important to note, however, that two of the faculty interviewed referred to their "healthy skepticism" based on caution born of past experience with the former president.

At College 5, a tradition of both internal and external change is central to its image. Founded in the late 1970s in a multi-college district, its very existence was controversial because its mission and operations were not consistent with those of the district's other colleges. The nontraditional image of the college is accompanied by nontraditional organizational operations, such as an almost total reliance on part-time faculty as instructors and on the use of alternate instructional delivery, including distance education. "What's a regular program!" exclaims one full-time faculty. The president's introduction of TQM is consistent with the college's self-image as an agent of change. TQM furthered an already ideologically cohesive group, one which shared a strong belief system about organizational purpose, altering its operational style so that members worked more in groups and better integrated disparate organizational levels and units. Study participants attributed to the president, the emissary of TQM, the initiation of these organizational changes and the resulting improvements in employee morale, enrollments, retention, and internal harmony.

In all cases, institutional context is equally or more important than the perception of presidential influence in contributing to organizational actions and outcomes. From the perspective of institutional context, presidents can be seen as extensions--part of a stream of forces that contribute to organizational life and organizational actions. Presidents who are perceived as the most influential are those who fit well into the socially constructed story of the institution. For College 1, the story is institutional politics--in-fighting, campus rivalry, and competition among groups. Study participants identified the president's influence as using political power to change power relationships.

For College 2, the institutional story consisted of a nightmarish past--conflict among faculty and administration, presidential terminations, and board scandal. Study participants saw the president as restoring dignity to organizational members, indeed "saving" the college from "collapse." For College 3, the story is about a villain, now vanquished, and replaced with someone who promises a new beginning, a chance for renewal and rebirth. For College 5, the story consists of continuity in ideology and organizational survival through new technology--TQM. The president introduced this technology, allowing the organization to survive with its belief system intact. [End Page 420]

Variant Readings

College 4 is the best example of variant readings of organizational perceptions or interpretations of presidential influence. Both faculty and administrators worked in the same fairly small institution (approximately 3,000 students), collaborating on curriculum and program development, on providing services to students, and on organizational decision-making. However, their interpretations of organizational life and behaviors differed. Three senior administrators, including the president, perceived fundamental changes in the college, especially the introduction of participatory management and governance. They attributed these changes primarily to their own influence. In contrast, the faculty said that the radical change in administrative personnel had not "altered the way we run things," did not mention all the organizational alterations listed by the three senior administrators, and, in fact, saw their influence as close to negligible. While the faculty do acknowledge an increase in faculty involvement in governance, unlike the administrators (who see the outcomes of this behavior as substantial), faculty express little consensus on outcomes. There was a similar discrepancy of perception about the president's introduction of quality improvement initiatives. (See College 4 in Table 1.)

The case of College 4 shows variant readings of presidential influence based on the organizational position and role of the data source. In College 2, administrators exhibited much greater consensus about their perceptions of the president than the faculty did. In both colleges, the association and relationship between the administrators and the president were considerably more complex and sensitive than between the faculty and the president. For example, the administrators were more closely supervised by and more accountable to the president than the faculty. They also shared an obvious community of interest, specifically managing the employees. It should not be surprising, then, that administrators' perceptions of the president differ from faculty's when it comes to presidential influence on organizational actions and outcomes, especially positive outcomes.

Conclusions and Implications

Based on the perceptions of organizational members, community college presidents are seen to "make a difference" to institutional functioning. Leadership succession may help to explain why presidents are viewed as influential; specifically, the concept of succession explains why organizational members identify presidents with organizational change. Succession is a "disruptive event [that] changes the line of communication, realigns relationships of power, affects decision making, and generally disturbs the equilibrium of normal activities" (Hart, 1991, p. 88). From one level of analysis [End Page 421] (Miskel & Cosgrove, 1985; Hart, 1991), the departure of a president and the subsequent arrival of a new president marks the ending of one phase of organizational life and the beginning of another. Organizational change accompanies presidential succession. As this study shows, presidential succession may be a significant contributor to perceived organizational change in community colleges, specifically in organizational processes and organizational culture.

Furthermore, the community college context may also explain why presidents are viewed as influential in the behaviors and actions of the organization. As a bureaucratic institution, the community college is an environment conducive to administrative controls, with presidents occupying positions of both de jure and de facto influence. This condition is arguably distinct from that found in four-year colleges and universities where there may be domination by other forms of authority, for example, professional authority.

Notwithstanding leadership succession and the community college context, the influence of presidents on institutional actions and outcomes in this investigation can also be explained and qualified through both a specific institutional context and variant readings of collected data. Institutional context frames the perceptions of organizational members, and variant readings of perceptions result in pluralistic interpretations stemming from multiple perceptions and idiosyncrasies in the meaning of the language which conveys perceptions. Although the community college context predicts presidential influence, and leadership succession connotes organizational change and the potential that leaders will be influential, presidential influence in community colleges may actually spring from institutional history (for example, patterns of organizational behavior that guide member expectations) and institutional membership (for example, the organizational position and affiliation of those describing organizational change and judging the president).

The implications of the latter point--organizational position and affiliation--have a bearing upon both research and practice. Because of their institutional position, administrators, faculty, support staff, and board members--all organizational members--have selective perceptions and indeed biased judgements of the chief executive officer. The views and judgements of one group alone do not provide a valid assessment of presidential influence. Thus faculty may be unaware of some presidential actions, and administrators may overestimate the effects of action. While this investigation did not examine the perceptions of students, it is reasonable to assume that their judgements of presidential influence will differ from those of institutional employees. As a group, students' contact with the president is limited; they function as customers rather than employees of the institution and do not have reason to share a community of interest with institutional employees. They neither have to support nor oppose the boss. Research on [End Page 422] the effects of presidential action in the community college has yet to explore student outcomes or to rely upon student perceptions.

The implications of the former point--the role of institutional history in presidential influence--have saliency for those who study higher education organizations. Understanding organizational behaviors (including understanding the perceptions of organizational members) is likely to be shallow without a knowledge of historical context. Knowledge of institutional patterns of decision-making, of political alliances both past and present, and of the relationship of the institution to its community, for example, clarifies understandings of organizational behaviors. Thus, not only judgements of presidential actions but also presidential actions themselves are connected to institutional history. Presidents may act in accord with existing patterns of decision-making or they may act outside those patterns and without regard for them. Presidents may form new administrative alliances and ignore old ones. And presidents may try to redefine the image of the college in the community whether that image is consistent with community needs or not.

Finally, the nature or quality of presidential influence, not fully addressed in this discussion, may be a topic of more benefit to scholars than the quantity question: Are presidents influential? If so, how much influence do they have? Cases of and references to organizational dysfunction in the community college (Amey & Twombly, 1993; Cooper & Kempner, 1993; Owen, 1992) suggest that presidential action can be deleterious to institutional well-being, even if the president is a "visionary" or "blue chipper" (Roueche et al., 1989)--one who exerts considerable influence over institutional life. The point is not that presidents of higher education institutions are influential but that their actions have a qualitative bearing upon the institution. We need to understand not only the ways in which presidents are influential but also the effects of presidents, whether, for example, they enhance faculty work or deepen already existing patterns of institutional friction.

John S. Levin is Associate Professor and Director of Community College Institute, Center for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Arizona, Tucson. His current research interests include the governance and management of higher education institutions and organizational change in the community college. He thanks those community college presidents and other institutional members who agreed to participate in this study and who offered their frank views on institutional matters. The author also thanks Gary Rhoades for his review of an earlier version of this article.

Note

1.I use verbatim statements from interviews and verbatim responses from questionnaires in my text, noting these with quotation marks.

References

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