The 27th president of Harvard University, Lawrence Summers resigned after five years. This was the shortest tenure of a Harvard president since the Civil War (Dunning & Myers, 2009). He aimed to use his leadership position to exert more one-sided power over the decision making of Harvard, going against the traditional way of shared governance and the independence of Harvard’s academic units (Dunning & Myers, 2009 p.6). The conflict over shared governance, and who had what power over what portions of the University are the issues that were faced with Lawrence Summers’ presidency.
The goal of the system of shared governance is creating a set of “checks and balances” where the faculty and administrators contribute to the universities governance. The governance is shared at Harvard between the faculty, trustees and the president with their administrative appointees (Dunning & Myers, 2009, p. 6). The self-government of the academic units is a unique characteristic of Harvard’s governance. The control of the curriculum, academic calendars, collection of tuition and budget creation are all held by each academic unit separately with a dean appointed by the president overseeing the academic unit (Dunning & Myers, 2009). Summers and his appointees had limited power to over the separate academic resources (Dunning & Myers, 2009). Summers used his presidential power to create a new process for budget approval by the academic departments while utilizing administrators that were sympathetic to his changes and persuade those who were not (Dunning & Myers, 2009). He did not have regard for the shared governance which left him with a hindrance that contributed to the loss of confidence in his ability to sit as president.
There were three stakeholders that were part of the shared governance that could have persuaded Summers to act differently. Summers and the three stakeholders could have used other leadership approaches but instead relied on the traits approach to leadership which is a leader-centered viewpoint that assumes a person has certain intrinsic traits that make them a leader (Northouse, 2015). The body at Harvard mistakenly assumed that Summers’ leadership experience in government using the traits approach, would easily translate to the academic setting. They failed to recognize that the president would need emotional intelligence, including “self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skill” (Goleman, 2004). Due to Summers failure to listen to stakeholders advise during his presidential role he was seen as having a low degree of emotional intelligence.
The issues surrounding Summers presidency would have been avoided by using better leadership strategies that coincided with the shared governance model. Summers needed to consider his followers and the context of different situations instead of relying on the traits approach to leadership. Servant leadership is an approach that could have worked well for Summers because it involves leaders being “attentive to concerns of the followers, empathize with them, and nurture them” (Northouse, 2016, p.225). The path-goal theory would also be beneficial to help achieve clear set goals which allows the leader to “help followers along the path to their goals by selecting specific behaviors that are best suited to followers’ needs and to the situation in which followers are working” (Northouse, 2016, p.116). Summers needed to engage his followers and the environment and move past his leader-centric approach.
References:
Dunning, R., & Meyers, A. S. (2009). Crisis fo purpose in the Ivy League: The Harvard presidency of Lawrence Summers and the context of American higher education. Duke University, The Kenan Institute for Ethics, Case Studies in Ethics Institutions in Crisis, 1-18.
Golman, D. (2004). What makes a leader? Harvard Business Review, 82(1), 82-91.
Northouse, P.G. (2015). Leadership: theory and practice (Seventh Edition). Los Angeles: SAGE Publications, Inc.