How Academic Organizational Systems and Culture Undermine Scholarship and Quality Research: A Response to Ron Dulek
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0021943608317762
  access restricted (by the publisher) to members/subscribers/customers only
  peer-reviewed

Suchan, Jim
JBC
2008

Abstract:

I now believe that the architects of a university's systems have extraordinary power and leverage to shape academic life in ways faculty often are only dimly aware of. Finally, we can help change the talk or narrative in our organizations about publications and reshape it to discussions about rewarding a blend of scholarship, research, publication, teaching, and service. Changing organizational talk is extremely difficult. Determining leverage points or openings for new language is hard to determine. Also, it's a challenge to determine ways to make that different language contagious, to make it stick. But I believe the challenge is worth pursuing, and it's work we should be good at. As Malcolm Gladwell (2000) points out in The Tipping Point, new language can be contagious, small actions can have big effects, and change can occur fast. In fact, if I were to step back into my Arcadian world of innocence where truth and beauty reigned, I might even believe that our colleagues and even our academic administrators have grown tired of the research bean-counting game and would welcome a new language, a different conversation, and a more growth-inducing set of values about the work we do.