Partnership and transparency

I personally have seen much more evidence lately of a pattern of behaviour by management that demonstrates new thinking on campus. A sense of partnership with staff is becoming more a way of life rather than a hobby to be taken up or ignored when convenient. Of course we have to keep working on this relationship and it no doubt can still improve, but I also think that it will. The team at the top of Registry in late 2008 should be recognised for this.

As we all look forward to many new appointments at senior management level in 2009, it is important to stress that we desire and appreciate greater transparency in the process of decision making. I write this because I think a constructive dialogue amongst staff in the College of Science has emerged very recently on the issue of transparency in decision making. In this case, a decision to reallocate College surplus to hiring postdoctoral scholars for Heads was made without any apparent consultation. And rather than being retrospective, the issue is addressed to the future leadership.

For those of you not in the College of Science, I reproduce below a letter circulated by two academics. The issue is in the College of Science, but the message is more broadly applicable.

RE: College of Science funding of a postdoc for each HoD/HoS (see PVC's e-mail message 19/12/08 to all CoS: 'I have announced the first part of this investment already in the form of postdoc support for all of the Heads of Department/School....to help heads to continue their research and to make the Head's role more appealing').

One of the key aims of the introduction of the College system was to reduce administrative loads of HoDs/HoS to enable them to fulfill their roles as research leaders. If this has not yet been achieved, the solution to excessive administrative loads must be found in changes to the management and administrative system. We are concerned that the new postdoc system does not address this problem and that the non-competitive allocation of these considerable CoS funds might result in suboptimal science benefits.

It is also regrettable that there was not more open discussion of this proposal - none is evident in the July to December 2008 issues of the CoS Science News or in CoSEx meeting minutes of July, September and October 2008.

We hope that the new PVC will address the issue of administrative loads for HoDs/HoSs, the issue of open discussion of major CoS funding decisions, and the issue of competitive allocation of postdoc funding within the CoS.

If you have an opinion on this issue we would be interested to hear from you.

Paul Broady
Peyman Zawar-Reza

The University as a whole benefits from the best use of resources by all its parts. While I can see many benefits to the scheme announced by the PVC, I also see the long term benefits of more inclusive decision making and indications that the executive structure has not lost respect for the opinion of staff, interest in what staff think, and the joy of working with a mandate.

Jack Heinemann