Promotion and Tenure: Community and Socialization in Academe

Research on the organizational culture in higher education affirms that congruent cultures are better than fragmented ones, and that managing culture is an oxymoron. Such analyses often lead to the assumptions that unity of purpose is essential and leadership is impossible. This book reframes rather than suppresses these notions, and by respecting the differences, builds a commonality between them.

Using data on faculty socialization in academe, the authors consider how the work of cultural leadership becomes interpretation and facilitation rather than management. Through a series of interviews using experimental forms of ethnographic presentation, Tierney and Bensimon articulate salient problems of tenure-track faculty, especially women and faculty of color, and address the issue of individuals voluntarily leaving the tenure-track. They offer a new paradigm to delineate ways in which the academic community can help socialize younger faculty, and honor differences more readily.