Leadership for Academic Units: A Performance Improvement Model for Department Chairs, Deans, and Academic Vice Presidents (and those who aspire to be)

Introduction

Each year, academic units receive their budgets after a process that focuses on requests for additional resources to support current activities. This is followed by requests to support a series of new activities, which can include new marketing and recruitment initiatives and new courses, programs, equipment, research initiatives, and so on. Unless driven by dire budget shortfalls, there is no serious examination of the unit’s current activities to determine which, if any, should be cut back or discontinued, referred to in industry and government as “zero-based budgeting.” The term “serious” is used because despite whatever discussions might take place about underperforming areas, significant resource shifts hardly ever take place ...