This review has been accessed  times since April 8, 2001
Birnbaum, Robert. (2000). Management fads in higher
education: Where they come from, what they do, why they
fail. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
xxii + 287.
$32.95
ISBN 0-7879-4456-4.
Reviewed by Bob Barnetson
Alberta Colleges & Institutes Faculties Association
April 8, 2001
Bordering at times on the epidemiological, Robert Birnbaum's
Management fads in higher education traces the
history of seven management fads in American higher
education to develop a compelling model of the fad process
and the transmission of fads to higher education.
Subsequently, he posits characteristics and factors that
make institutions vulnerable to fads and suggests why
managers implement them. Finally, Birnbaum examines the
legacy of fads in higher education. Underlying this
cathartic book is Birnbaum's belief that the techniques and
technologies we use are not neutral but rather embody
particular ideological beliefs.
Management fads are the widespread, zealous and blessedly
short-lived application of techniques or practices in
colleges, universities and technical institutes, often
imported from government or the private sector long after
the bloom is off. Ever fashionable and frequently messianic,
fads offer convincing narratives, illuminate better ways of
doing things, reduce ambiguity (as well as diversity), shift
power between actors, and make consultants big, big piles of
money.
Birnbaum presents seven case studies of recent management
fads. These include Planning Programming Budgeting System
(1960-1975), Management by Objectives (1965-1980), Zero-
Based Budgeting (1970-1985), Strategic Planning (1972-1994),
Benchmarking (1979-present), Total Quality Management
(1985-1996), and Business Process Reengineering (1990-1996). All
of these fads differ from the scientific management that was
ascendant between 1900 and the end of the second world war.
The post-war massification of higher education saw the
adoption of numerous management techniques and technologies
to increase cost-effectiveness. Rationality became the
hallmark of academic management as new decision-making
systems attempted to reduce ambiguity and increase internal
consistency, even at the expense of desirable outcomes.
Based on the seven case studies presented in Chapters Two,
Three and Four, Birnbaum outlines the five-stage progression
of management fads. The first stage is characterized by the
identification of a crisis that (coincidentally) invalidates
existing operating assumptions. Early adopters of the fad
enthusiastically report on its success, providing proponents
with evidence that the fad can resolve the crisis. This
triggers interest among other organizations. Criticism of
the technique is deflected via the presentation of
simplified versions of the fad, distancing it from previous
fads, and intense rhetoric about what is at stake should
the fad not be implemented.
As momentum builds, the fad moves to stage two. Early
reports of success become elaborated and widespread and
organizational peer pressure builds as adopters receive
accolades. Little attention is given to the potential costs
of the technique and resisters are denigrated as self-
interested or intransigent. The time between widespread
dissemination of the fad and widespread knowledge of user
reactions and independent analysis is the third stage.
Although the fad continues to receive positive press,
counter-narratives begin to emerge. Interestingly, analysis
in the private sector tends to be quantitative (perhaps
reflecting profit-driven criteria) while analysis in academe
tends to be interpretative. In the fourth stage, momentum
swings to these counter-narratives and the claims about the
fad's effectiveness begin to be undermined. The growing bad
press effectively inoculates institutions against adoption
although current users may discount these reports to protect
their financial and psychological investment in the fad.
Widespread rationalization of the fad's
failure—particularly among promoters eager to protect
both their status and their epistemological
assumptions—is its death knell. Birnbaum details the
preferred rationalizations, such as poor leadership,
improper implementation, and lack of resources. Less popular
is the notion that a technique was based upon invalid
premises. For example, underlying most fads is the belief
that organizations work like machines. That is to say,
organizations are rational, possessing clear goals and
operating via an understandable (and therefore manipulable)
causality. Although several alternative metaphors have
emerged (cf. Cohen, March and Olsen, 1972; Birnbaum, 1988;
Morgan, 1997; Cutright, 2001), the mechanical metaphor for
organizations endures, perhaps because it suggests
organizations can be controlled.
Birnbaum argues that several factors pressure institutions
to adopt management fads. Predominant, to my mind, is the
culture of crisis wherein political and ideological agendas
are pursued through criticism of goals, processes, and
outcomes. Where these claims stick, institutions or systems
are vulnerable to the introduction of value-laden management
fads. For example, in my jurisdiction (Alberta, Canada)
performance funding was ostensibly introduced to address
ill-defined problems with institutional accountability and
performance. Although there is little evidence that
accountability or performance has improved (or needed to),
"our" performance indicators now act as a
conceptual technology—shaping what issues we think
about and how we think about them (Barnetson and Cutright,
2000). For example, measuring enrollment growth defines
accessibility as the availability of seats and thus ignores
the impact of rising tuition on the ability of students to
afford those seats.
One institutional response to fads and their proponents is
the virtual adoption of a fad. Institutions seeking approval
from governments, peers, the private sector, or the public
may publicly espouse the methods and jargon of a new fad. In
practice, institutions (or sub-units) may not adopt the
technique or process of the fads or may implement them in a
way so as to limit their effect until interest passes. Given
that management fads are introduced in higher education
after they have come and gone in government or the private
sector, waiting out the fad may be a cost-effective and
culturally appropriate response. Virtual adoption also makes
it easy for institutions to abandon a fad.
Successful fads—those achieving widespread notoriety
and adoption—have a common set of traits. A fad that
can be transmitted to other organizations via repetition
will likely be successful. For example, Birnbaum asserts
that individuals whose organizational perspective is
structural (rather than cultural or interpretative) are more
likely to be captured by a fad. They may, in turn, become
key vectors for the spread of the idea. The success of a fad
is also enhanced if the fad sounds reasonable (in light of
our internalized beliefs about how organizations work) and
if its definition is malleable enough so that its adoption
will create little cognitive dissonance. When reasonableness
and vague definition are combined with a high level of
complexity (i.e., where a fad requires behavioural changes
so significant that causal and outcomes analysis are
retarded), a fad becomes nonfalsifiable. That is to say,
detractors cannot disprove claims about a fad's
effectiveness. The nonfalsifiability of fads may be
reinforced by the political, ideological and financial
investment of adopters who have no desire to hear a critical
analysis, even after the fad has passed.
But what influences managers to adopt or support management
fads? Birnbaum posits six interrelated biases. These include
role bias wherein academic managers feel pressured to
take charge despite limited resources and understanding,
ambiguous or conflicting goals, and intractable problems.
Adopting fads offer managers an opportunity to appear to be
in charge. Managers can also experience cognitive
biases such as making decisions based on intuition
rather than evidence, generalizing from favorable anecdotal
evidence, and selectively assessing the impact of a
technique on the organization. This may be reinforced via a
placebo bias wherein the implementation of a fad
masks symptoms without addressing the underlying problem.
Normative bias can result in managers applying a
logic of appropriateness (e.g., mimicking the actions of
other managers in uncertain situations) over a logic of
rational choice. Similarly, managers may adopt a fad to
reinforce their self-image as effective at solving problems
and influential in the organization (a self-efficacy
bias). Finally, managers with their credibility heavily
invested in a fad may have their judgment compromised by a
commitment bias.
The positive and negative legacy of fads is difficult to
assess. Birnbaum asserts that even limited exposure to fads
may subtly alter the functioning of organizations as useful
concepts, models and processes are incorporated into an
institution. One positive effect of fads is pressure
experienced by academic managers to recognize the importance
of data in decision making. Fads also create opportunities
for institutions to evolve by adopting new practices that
better fit the environment, reinforce managers' commitment
to engage and actively shape their environment, and trigger
intra-institutional interaction. Finally, fads may draw
institutional attention to specific issues such as cost
effectiveness, innovations at other institutions and the
like that, while important to external stakeholders (and
therefore to maintaining institutional legitimacy), are not
a high academic priority.
The negative effects of fads are legion. These include an
overemphasis within and outside the academy on numbers that
may reshape priorities towards the quantifiable or pressure
institutions to alter their performance to get prettier
numbers. For example, Alberta has adopted performance
funding. A single PI (enrollment growth) has been
responsible for the majority of the variance in funding
awards. Expensive (but necessary) adult upgrading programs
hamper institutions' ability to expand enrollment during
this time of constrained funding and this pressures them to
get out of upgrading and into other more cost-effective
programming areas.
Persistent, public and possibly inappropriate inspection may
in turn reduce trust in higher education. Similarly,
justifying a fad by reference to a crisis in higher
education reinforces the belief that higher education is in
an almost constant state of crisis. Quantification may also
give managers a false sense of certainty and undermine the
value of decisions informed by intuition. The transient
nature of fads can also give rise to cynicism within the
community about managers and thereby reduce their influence.
At the same time, the centralization required by many fads
may undermine the autonomy of faculty—both individually
and as a group.
Based upon Birnbaum's analysis, the most damaging outcome of
fads appears to be their impact on the narrative that
undergirds higher education. As Birnbaum writes,
In the United States, the educational narratives of the
past have been stories of personal virtue, civic
participation, democracy, and social justice. The narrative
gods of the present appear to be economic utility,
consumerism, and technology—a weak foundation on which
to build a just social order or excite the imagination. The
idea of higher education as a social institution has been
displaced by higher education as an industry (p.
266).
Fads promote a narrative wherein business is portrayed as
efficient and effective and higher education is not. Faculty
members are often cast as the villains in this narrative as
they resist the introduction of management techniques to
protect their pay, privileges and status. When one accepts
this characterization (as part of adopting a fad), the
obvious solution is to subject higher education to the
discipline of the market and reorder governance to mirror
that of the private sector. Birnbaum argues:
[T]he simplicity of this narrative is its power,
and the
story of a small, privileged elite that benefits at the
expense of the public is an evocative story that taps into
the American psyche. So is the narrative of a fad that
pledges to right the wrong and put the university in its
place. Interesting stories are more likely than accurate
ones to be accepted (p. 227).
As corporate priorities and practices creep into higher
education, Management fads in higher
education makes an important contribution to our
understanding of how this will affect colleges, universities
and technical institutes. Specifically, by codifying our
knowledge of fads, this well written book gives us insight
into the fad process as well as the impact of fads on
institutions and, more broadly, upon the entire undertaking
of higher education. Those who have (and those who have not)
survived TQM, BPR, PIs, and their ilk will also find a
reasoned explanation for their cynicism about new management
fads. Perhaps more useful, Birnbaum's book may help faculty
and administrators discover the positive outcomes that can
flow from these elaborate exercises.
About the Reviewer
Bob Barnetson
Bob Barnetson is research and communications officer for the
Alberta Colleges & Institutes Faculties Association. His
areas of interest include higher education policy and
academic labour.
References
Barnetson, B. & Cutright, M. (2000). Performance indicators
as conceptual technologies. Higher education. 40 (3).
277-292
Birnbaum, R. (1988). How colleges work: The cybernetics
of academic organizations and leadership. San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass.
Cohen, M.D., March, J.G. & Olsen, J.P. (1972). A garbage
can model of organizational choice. Administrative
science quarterly. 17 1-25.
Cutright, M. (ed.) (2001). Chaos theory and higher
education: Leadership, planning, & policy. New York:
Peter Lang Publishing.
Morgan, D. (1997). Images of organizations,
2nd
Ed. London: SAGE.
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