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Presidential Searches and the Discovery of Organizational GoalsAuthor(s): Robert BirnbaumSource: The Journal of Higher Education, Vol. 59, No. 5 (Sep. - Oct., 1988), pp. 489-509Published by: Ohio State University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1981700 .

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J: Robert Birnbaum

Presidential Searches and the Discovery of Organizational Goals

Recent analyses of the literature on administrative succession [13, 36] indicate that there is no consensus on the basic question of whether changes of leadership reduce organizational performance, improve organizational performance, or have no effect upon organizational performance at all. In general, output data drawn from complex business, governmental, and higher education organizations [4, 26, 48] appear to suggest that on average succession hias only modest if any effects upon organizational performance.

This leads to a major puzzle. Why do organizations pay so much attention to the succession process, even though changing senior administrators may on average not have major effects on organizational performance? What are the implications for the meaning of leadership if organizational performance does not change when leaders change [43]? A consideration of these questions in the context of higher education organizations should begin with a brief description of the process through which academic presidents are typically chosen.

This article was first presented at the National Invitational Seminar on Leadership Research, Council for Liberal Learning of the Association of American Colleges, Wingspread, Wisconsin, April 23-25, 1987

This document was prepared pursuant to a grant from the Office of Educational Research and Improvement/Department of Education (OERI/ED). However, the opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the OERI/ED, and no official endorsement by the OERI/ED should be inferred.

Robert Birnbaum is associate director of the National Center for Postsecondary Governance and Finance and professor of higher education at Teachers College, Co- lumbia University. Journal of Higher Education, Vol. 59, No. 5 (September/October 1988) Copyright ? 1988 by the Ohio State University Press



490 Journal of Higher Education

The Leader Selection Process in Higher Education

The selection of a [president] should follow upon cooperative search by the governing board and the faculty, taking into consideration the opinions of others who are appropriately interested. The president should be equally qualified to serve both as executive officer of the governing board and as the chief academic officer of the institution and the faculty. ... He should have the confidence of the board and the faculty [1].

Perhaps three to four hundred presidents of the thirty-two hundred colleges and universities in this country are replaced each year. The succession process is typically lengthy, involves large numbers of people, and absorbs a good deal of the energy of a campus. At the same time, the process of presidential selection in higher education has been characterized as "so haphazard as to be ludicrous," and it has been suggested that improvement in the selection process could make an important contribution to increasing the effectiveness of presidential leadership [18, p. 1].

There is no single model that is universally followed, and differences may be seen based on institutional type, the reasons for the vacancy (resignation, death, retirement, or firing of a predecessor), or the tradi- tions of specific institutions. However, there are several studies and normative statements [5, 7, 18, 20, 41] whose ideas when combined provide a general sense of what actually happens and what is thought to be "good practice."

The search process usually begins under the aegis of the board of trustees with the formation of a single search committee of perhaps a dozen persons including trustees, faculty, students, and occasionally representatives of other campus constituencies. The committee members are often either nominated or selected by the constituencies they represent.

The first step of the prescribed process (and the one least followed in actual practice) is to appraise the institution's present condition and future prospects so that the committee can determine the characteristics of the president they seek. A list of qualifications is then prepared and the vacancy publicized through public advertisements and private inquiries. The resultant pool of nominees and applicants may number in the hundreds. Using the candidate's curriculum vita and other available documentation as screening devices, the committee eventually se- lects perhaps twenty to thirty "plausibles" for further investigation.

Additional information about the plausibles is collected by the committee through confidential letters or personal conversations with



Presidential Searches 491

referees and others familiar with the candidate's performance in previous positions. Based upon these reviews, a group of perhaps five to fifteen "finalists" is selected who are asked to visit the campus and participate in interviews with the search committee (and sometimes with other individuals or groups as well). Typically the search committee will then recommend to the trustees a select list of one to three persons, all of whom are considered acceptable, from which the board is to make the final choice. The median time between the formation of the committee and the announcement of an appointment by the trustees ranges from seven to nine months, although searches have been reported anywhere from one day to two years in length.

The succession practices of institutions of higher education differ significantly from those of business firms. For example, presidents of business firms are often personally selected by their predecessor, groomed and given explicit assignments in preparation for that role, and then promoted internally [14]. Although colleges and universities tend to fill administrative positions below the presidency through internal promotions [38], college presidencies are more likely to be filled by external candidates [3, 23]. The selection process in higher education also takes longer, considers a greater number of candidates, and involves many more constituent groups than is typical in other organizational settings.

The selection of leaders in colleges and universities may be different from that of other institutions because their environment and technology are different. In a following section we shall consider sequentially the steps of the presidential search process already noted and discuss the reasons they may be important to colleges and universities. Before doing so, however, it is important to understand the constraints within which the search process is conducted.

Candidates and Vacancies Identifying plausible candidates. Institutions are most likely to se-

lect as plausible candidates persons who have worked in similar institutions, whose previous institutions were as prestigious and preferably more prestigious than the one being searched for, who have had successful administrative and faculty experience, and who have had some previous association with the institution [3, 9, 23, 37]. Prestige is important in presidential selection as well, and "search committees see the institution one comes from as dignifying or detracting from the status of their own institution" [21, p. 8]. These factors are likely to produce pools of candidates who have passed through a series of promotional




filters and who have been extensively socialized in institutions similar to the one to which they aspire. Because of this, institutions are likely to find great similarities in many of the most critical characteristics of serious candidates. It is true, of course, that each candidate is different, and there will be a wide range of personalities, temperaments, and leadership styles. But compared to the important ways in which they are similar, their differences may be minor [29].

Not only are plausible candidates likely to be similar in terms of experience, but they are likely to be similar in terms of their perceived effectiveness as well. The problem of discriminating between such candidates has been referred to as "selecting at the right tail" [24] - that is, the extreme right hand portion of the bell-shaped normal distribution curve. Most such candidates will be well qualified. It is possible that there will be differences in the fortunes of the campus based upon which candidate is selected. But the differences between candidates are usually so small, and the effects of external variables so large, that it is rarely possible to predict reliably beforehand the consequences for the campus of selecting between the top candidates.

Social matching. It is common to consider succession as a process in which a search is conducted to fill a vacancy. But looked at from the perspective of the candidate, it is also an opportunity to further a career. Indeed, both perspectives are valid, and it is useful to think of the process as a social match between candidates and vacancies. Candidates gain reputations as a consequence of their performance in previous positions. Vacancies (that is, the unfilled presidencies of specific institutions) also gain a reputation in terms of their desirability and their ability to satisfy the needs of those filling them [31, 43].

The search process serves as a forum within which vacancies and candidates assess each other's suitability for a social match. From the perspective of each, the available information on the other is limited and imperfect, thus injecting the possibility of considerable error into their assessments. In addition, the mixed-motive nature of the negotia- tions between candidates and vacancies limits openness and encour- ages impression management behaviors on both sides that make accu- rate assessment even more difficult. A good deal of the search is ritualistic in nature, and traditional academic norms of courtesy and civil discourse often preclude the asking of important questions. "The courtship is very polite" [22, p. 6], and this may lead to incomplete disclosure on both sides. The institution is anxious to secure the best candidate and in an effort to increase its attractiveness may inadver-




tently (or sometimes deliberately) mislead them about matters such as campus finances or relationships [19]. The candidates are also anxious to present the strongest appearance and may misrepresent their interests or accomplishments in an effort to do so.

Considered either as a process for filling vacancies or as one for advancing careers, the search appears at first glance to offer almost unlimited opportunities for choice. But viewed as a process of social matching, choices become severely constrained. Both vacancies and candidates can plausibly consider only a match that at least maintains (and preferably increases) their reputation, and this mutual interest in reputational enhancement sets constraints that severely limit the positions to which a candidate may aspire and the candidates to which a vacancy may prove attractive. There is thus a process of self-selection that serves to limit the participants in a potential match. There should be little overlap, for example, between community college candidates or vacancies and those of research universities.

Socialization, self-selection, and filtering significantly reduce the variability of plausible candidates; difficulties in assessing performance due to limited information and impression management increase the difficulty of selecting among them. Because differences between plausible candidates are likely to be small, similar candidates may appear to be different, and different candidates may appear to be similar. This matching of candidates and vacancies may therefore in some ways resemble chance [30].

The processes and the outcomes of presidential searches may thus involve far less rational behavior than the normative models suggest. What might be the functions of each stage, and what may be their important institutional consequences?

Succession Processes and Organizational Consequences It seems reasonable to postulate that in order to be considered suc-

cessful, succession processes of effective organizations would lead to certain outcomes. For example, because succession may lead to dis- ruption [3, 14, 41], a good selection process would minimize organizational instability. It would reinforce important organizational values, confer legitimacy and therefore authority on the selected leader, and increase acceptance of the leader's initial actions. It would permit selection of a leader with the necessary instrumental skills and cultural values without imposing unrealistic cognitive requirements on the search participants. It would help an organization "make sense" of its




own processes and interactions and thus serve as an integrating coun- terbalance to the development of subsystem goals that are an inevitable part of complex institutions.

The process by which leaders are selected should be thought of as an integral part of organizational life. It "highlights, like a projective test such as the Rorschach, both the internal complexities of the institution and the attitudes and ideologies prevalent in its environment" [33, p. 342]. Examining important elements in the sequential stages of the search should therefore provide insights into the organizational functioning of colleges and universities.

The search committee. The search committee itself is a relatively new phenomenon in higher education. Prior to 1950, the typical search process involved a committee of trustees that would conduct the search, screening, and selection, with the role of the faculty (if any) limited to consultation, and with no other groups represented [5]. Dur- ing the past quarter century, the search and screening committee has become the norm, with broad representation suggested "from all the institutional constituencies with which a new president will have to function" [18, p. 28].

The composition of the committee symbolically represents the president's simultaneous role in several different organizational systems. Trustee members identify the president as the CEO of a large bureau- cracy, whereas faculty participation recognizes the president as first among equals in a collegium. The involvement of representatives of various other competing constituencies, whose interests successful candidates must attempt to satisfy simultaneously, reflects the presidential role as mediator in a complex political system. Successful candidates must be perceived as capable of filling all three roles satisfactorily.

The committee also serves as a symbol that permits various constituencies to display or enhance their status within the organization. Sta- tus can be affected by whether or not the constituent group has committee membership, by the way the members are selected, by the number of representatives each group has, and by the selection of constituent members for roles such as committee chair. The composition of the committee itself is not a given but rather is the result of what is usually a tacit negotiation that reflects the balance of influence on a campus. Serious conflict can result when a committee is formed or operates in a manner inconsistent with the expectations of important constituencies. In an organizational setting in which substantive criteria of performance are elusive, procedural defects in a search process




may compromise legitimacy and lead to withdrawal of candidacy or premature resignation.

"New leaders are not totally free to develop their own reputations but are, at least initially, constrained by the reputation of their selec- tor" [25, p. 19]. Leaders are likely to be considered legitimate to the extent that group members are involved in selecting them [50, p. 15-16] and to be considered competent if the person or group selecting them is seen as competent. It would be expected, therefore, that a president selected by representatives of constituencies would be able to exercise more influence than one selected without constituent participation. Participation by various constituencies in the search process increases the likelihood that those groups "will accept [the new president's] authority and be cooperative - at least at the outset" [20, p. 18].

The composition of the search committee also serves as a source of information to the candidate about the core values of the campus and the appropriateness of the vacancy. A search committee with significant faculty membership suggests to a candidate different normative expectations about the interaction and influence of campus constituencies than does a committee dominated by trustees.

Developing the criteria. The development of the criteria for candidates is often the first activity in which the members of the committee work together. There is usually much discussion about values and de- sirable characteristics at this stage, although there is evidence [42] that those criteria that are initially considered important may be ignored in the final stages of the search. Nevertheless, the process is meaningful. It provides a forum for interaction and influence in which members can begin to sense the different interests that each may have. It permits various constituencies to symbolize and confirm their status by ensur- ing that a criterion important to them appears in the written position description, and it allows all participants to test areas of consensus and begin the process of negotiating differences.

The symbolic rather than instrumental value of these discussions is made manifest by the general nature of the stated requirements that often result. This often incudes the possession of a doctorate, administrative experience, an understanding of the essential values of the type of institution involved, and evidence of "leadership." In some cases, however, committees prepare detailed lists of qualifications that clearly cannot be met by any candidate [18]. The presence of such lists has sometimes been interpreted as reflecting a considered - albeit unrealistic - consensus by the committe; it may rather indicate that committee members were willing to permit every member's personal




interests to be included because they intuitively realized that in the final analysis the list itself would prove to be relatively unimportant.

The initial screening. Search committee members are likely to enter the process with an inflated perception of both the attractiveness of their institution and the availability of qualified candidates. The search process may not be successful to the extent that unrealistic perceptions persist, and it is therefore important to a successful outcome that aspirations be reduced. This can be accomplished in part by having all members of the search committee review the materials of all applicants. This serves two purposes. By examining all applicants the members assure themselves that no outstanding candidate has been overlooked, and by seeing the candidates in the total context of the pool, candidates who might initially have been dismissed become more attractive. The review of all applicants may be of less importance in those situations in which there is clear institutional consensus about values and criteria [18], but for other institutions it is an important means of aligning aspirations with reality.

The committee begins its deliberations with a number of applicants and nominees so large that a comparison and evaluation of each one against each other one and against the stated criteria are exceptionally difficult. The committee simplifies this impossible cognitive task of comparative analysis by turning it into the relatively simple task of dichotomous choice, and candidates who are considered "plausible" are selected out for further consideration. It is likely that the selection of plausible candidates is at least as much due to heuristic judgments of committee members as to conformity with the stated criteria. The experience of some search committees is that regardless of the system used to evaluate candidates, the same people will by and large appear on the plausible lists of all committee members [41, p. 46]. That this tends to happen even in the absence of specific criteria or intensive consideration of institutional needs suggests that, in fact, neither are required for the development of consensus at this stage. A small number of intuitive and heuristic criteria apparently suffice (that is, "sufficient" administrative experience, "sensitivity" to the needs of a certain type of institution).

Filtering the plausibles. The initial screening deflates unrealistic aspirations and identifies potential candidates for further review. How- ever, there are often still too many plausibles at this stage to permit full attention to each, and it is necessary to reduce the list still further. This can be done in several ways. One involves more careful examination of




the presented credentials, a luxury not available at earlier stages. Dur- ing this process further information may be secured that results in either an enhancement or diminution of the desirability of the candidate.

The second is through behavior that defines the heuristic criteria used in the previous stage. The actual meaning of the committee's initial requirement of "significant administrative experience" can become clear only when someone suggests rejecting a candidate because "she only has five years of administrative experience." This process of discovering the actual meaning of the heuristics can only take place after the initial screening has been completed. It is in part a process of retrospective sense-making [50] through which committee members begin to define after the fact the criterion upon which they selected the plausibles.

Because the plausibles as a group are much less varied than the pool from which they were selected, narrowing the group still further by deciding which candidates are "best" is difficult. The third filtering process is to search for reasons that will disqualify candidates from further consideration - a process that is significantly different from searching for reasons to retain them in the pool. This process has led to the observation that college presidents are not "selected" at all, but rather that they are the remaining survivors of a process of rejection. By reducing the number of people in the pool to the ten or so it will interview, the committee moves toward the reduction of uncertainty, and a simplification of their cognitive task.

The interview. The interview is generally considered to be the most critical part of the search. Committee members who describe it as the most persuasive component of the process comment on its ability to identify "discrepancies that existed between images formed on the basis of applications and recommendations and images generated on the basis of direct contact with candidates" [41, p. 54]. The ability of "images" to overwhelm the written record of the accomplishments of a career suggests the importance of image in the president's role. The search committee is obviously interested in selecting the "best" candidate. But in this final stage the candidates are all accomplished, and it is virtually impossible to comparatively assess their technical compe- tence. Symbolic and representative attributes therefore become important: Does he dress and look "like a president"? (so that he can provide symbolic representation for the campus); is she articulate? (so that she will appear to be knowledgeable and persuasive in public forums); are




his responses decisive? (suggesting that in administrative life he will be similarly decisive). Based upon the interview, the number of candidates is further reduced.

The final decision. The initial screening processes have at this point filtered a large number of potential candidates into a small number of seriously considered alternatives. At each stage of the process the average "quality" of those remaining increases, but their variability de- creases. The constraints of the status of the institution and the availability and interests of candidates make it likely that in many important respects the five or so finalists cannot reliably be distin- guished, and yet there are apparent differences between them. These differences become the focus of discussion, and it is through this process of discussion that organizational goals become clarified. Organiz- ing has been thought of by Weick ([50] as a process in which an organization converses with itself and in so doing discovers meanings. The search process is part of that conversation.

Prior to the actual encounter with candiates, it is difficult for search committee representatives to seriously identify institutional goals in a manner that would eliminate from consideration any plausible candidate. Discussions of the value of teaching versus research, administrative skills versus academic experience, budget expertise versus community relations success have no objective referents that would permit them to be juxtaposed and priorities indicated. Even when criteria are ostensibly agreed upon, they don't appear to be of much assistance when the final decision is to be made [42, p. 120]. The reason for this is that the goals and criteria themselves are ambiguous and complex, and although some candidates will appear stronger or weaker than others on some criterion, the qualifications of all the final candidates on the important criteria are likely to be at least acceptable. Given the similarities between the candidates, "it is at this point that the vagaries of personality, chemistry, and the like seem to take over" [20, p. 27]. Ob- viously no selection committee can justify (to itself or to others) making a decision as important as presidential selection based upon "chemistry." Some other rationale must be found if the decision is to be legitimated and the importance of the selection confirmed.

Here, at the end of the search, the committee is faced with individuals who may in one way or another appear to represent the optimization of one or another institutional goal. It is the process of discussing the apparent differences between candidates that permits the committee to enact its values. It decides from among all the rhetorical requirements which are truly the most important ones. "In searches of




this sort, arguments about institutional direction are made, not openly at the outset of the search, but buried in the evaluations of the final candidates. One person may be seen as having strong financial skills, another as being an academic leader, and the search committee and the board of trustees struggle over which attributes are most needed at the same time as they consider the candidates' personalities and backgrounds" [33, p. 345].

One of the few reports of an actual presidential search process [16] il- lustrates this goal-discovery phenomenon at a community college. The trustees made their selection from among three finalists, all of whom satisfied some of the requirements that had been established for the position, but none of whom met them all. In describing the candidates the chairman said that any of the three could be chosen randomly and would do well. "For the first time, though, the rhetoric of the search process was tested. . . . No individual could offer everything .. .; the college had to decide what it wanted to be . . ." [16, p. 31, 32]. The rationale given by the committee for their final selection based on the humanistic characteristics of one of the candidates was that they wanted the campus to feel like a family again, a goal that had not been among those expressed in the extensive "profile" prepared prior to the search.

Although the normative process suggests the need to identify organizational goals before the search, in practice it may be the search itself that defines the organizational goals. When goals are too ambiguous or self-contradictory to be meaningfully identified by articulating values, they can become manifest through behavior.

Assessing Recommendations for Change When the administrative succession process is viewed primarily as a

system of personnel selection, it may appear anarchic and inefficient. The recommendations commonly proposed to increase the effectiveness of the search process in higher education usually are based implic- itly upon the notion of organizations as rational systems. The emphasis is commonly upon "fine-tuning" the criteria of "what kind of president the institution wants to fit present and future needs" [23, p. 179] and then moving towards "the design of more effective search processes" [7, p. 8] to improve institutional outcomes.

I have suggested, however, that the process by which presidents are identified serves many important symbolic as well as instrumental functions. What are the implications of this understanding for proposals that have been made to alter the search process?




Specifying institutional goals. A common recommendation is to ra- tionalize and articulate institutional goals to correct the tendency of both boards and search committees to "rush into the search and selection of candidates without taking adequate stock of what or whom they actually need" [41, p. 29]. But a number of factors make the effi- cacy of such advice questionable. These factors include the restricted availability of plausible candidates, the loose coupling between stipu- lated requirements and the characteristics of actual candidates, the different optimization interests of the participants, and the likelihood that either short-term or long-term environmental changes will alter future campus goals and values in currently unforeseeable ways. Ex- cept under the most unusual circumstances, developing specific presidential requirements related to specific institutional needs may be out- side the cognitive capabilities of any group.

Use of consultants. A number of individuals and firms provide con- sultant assistance in the search process, and it has been suggested [12, 40, 47] that their use can improve the process and its outcomes. These services can be of many kinds ranging from assisting in the procedure, to screening the plausibles, to making specific recommendations of finalists.

Consultants may be particularly beneficial in those situations in which the participants are so inexperienced or lack confidence [18] that they appear unable to proceed without assistance. Other institutions might find them useful when the level of trust on campus is low, and consultants seen as objective and uncommitted to any particular outcome may be a means of managing conflict. At the other extreme, in situations where there is general campus consensus about values and therefore less need for the reduction of aspirations or the negotiation of goals, the use of consultants may make the process more efficient. On many campuses, however, the search process as now conducted fulfills important organizational and symbolic needs that could go unad- dressed if consultants were too deeply involved. In particular, the participation of the full committee in reviewing all candidates and engag- ing in the initial screening may be a major means of sense-making and reality checking that facilitates later elements in the search and assists in the management of organizational conflict related to succession.

Change evaluation or screening processes. Several proposals have been made that would alter current procedures for evaluating candidates. Belt [28], for example, has advocated the development of assessment centers at which the actual behaviors of candidates could be observed as they encountered simulated situations that presumably




would reflect the demands of a presidency. However, it may be that the presidential interview fulfills many of the claimed functions of an assessment center by requiring the candidate to interact successfully with numerous institutional constituencies in a stressful and ambiguous sit- uation. This "realistic approximation of roles a president must play in a complex institution" [18, p. 45] may be a sterner test of whether candidate's have "the right stuff" than could be developed in a simulation.

Proposals such as these to change the evaluation process are often based on the attractive, but unverified, notion that more effective presidents could be selected if more information about them were available. But as one president has said, "it is impossible for a board of trustees to know how it is all going to work out until the marriage takes place and some time has been spent in living together" [8].

Consider candidates without higher education experience. Over 80 percent of all college presidents have some prior faculty experience [39], and only 7.5 percent come to the presidency without a back- ground in either instruction or administration in higher education [23]. It has been suggested [10] that in the future greater consideration should be given to candidates with nonacademic backgrounds such as diplomats, congressional leaders, corporate executives, and scientific research directors, among others. The principle behind this idea is that high talents are presumed to be transferable between administrative positions and that concern for educational policy is not necessarily the sole province of academics.

As normative organizations, colleges or universities control the behaviors of their participants primarily through symbols. Although there are exceptions, in general their leaders can be successful only to the extent that they are seen as committed to the core values of the academic enterprise. To a great extent the success of colleges and universities can be traced to their tradition of selecting presidents familiar with the technology rather than with professional management. In contrast, many other organizations have found to their dismay that reliance upon managers unfamiliar with the technology of their business has often been dysfunctional. In business, for example, "critical business decisions too often are made not on the basis of a true understanding of the technology but in elegant formulas learned in business school .... Since CEO's tend to be judged and judge themselves by the profits reported while they are in charge, they are under- standably reluctant to pursue long-term projects that won't pay off until after they retire" [49, p. 22].

Avoid compromise. It has been suggested that search committees




should select the "best" candidates and avoid political compromises and openness that may keep away the strongest candidates. When committees represent constituencies, it is thought, "trading off their various preferences ... runs the risk of ending up with mediocre candidates" [41, p. 15]. Those who argue against representative committees assert that "the finally appointed president [is] bound to be without style, strength, and decisiveness - a plant manger rather than a strong leader .... With few exceptions, a strong leader [can't] get through the process" [11, p. 13].

It is probably true that search committees often select "compromise candidates," but in so doing the committee may accurately reflect the reality of institutional governance. When search committees are composed of representatives of competing constituencies, the committee itself may become a forum for their conflicting claims, and the result may be to select "those with survival skills, those with 'nice' personalities, those who will appease rather than lead" [21], p. 8]. Given the common socialization and experiences of the candidates and the difficulty in reliably and validly distinguishing between them these may not be unreasonable characteristics upon which to make a choice.

In the search committee, the positions of the various representatives identify the constraints within which the successful candidate must function (at least initially). It may be possible to ignore these constraints and appoint a "strong leader," but the resultant costs in institutional conflict may be high. In the absence of evidence that in higher education "strong" leaders improve organizational performance, the benefits may be illusory.

Maintain confidentiality. Great concern has been expressed [41] that failure to keep the search process confidential may result in losing the best candidates, particularly among sitting presidents. Although this may be true, the personal advantages of confidentiality must be balanced against the status needs of various constituencies to influence the presidential appointment directly, if only by the opportunity to protest candidates prior to their consideration by the trustees. This conflict has generally been resolved in favor of the organization by inviting finalists to meetings with various campus constituencies. To the extent that this exposes candidates to uncomfortable or even hos- tile questioning, it probably serves to provide important and otherwise unavailable cues concerning campus relationships and candidate suitability to finalist and committee alike.

Less justifiable from an organization perspective are searches conducted under the so-called "sunshine laws" of several states which open




up all records and interviews to the general public. Riesman has argued, for example, that "good candidates will only rarely come for- ward to be exposed to the circus of publicity with every conversation recorded and with public discussions of the search committee concerning the candidates" [46, p. 8]. A thoughtful case study of a presidential search conducted under the unusually intrusive sunshine laws of Florida [34] clearly documents the costs of "openness" in terms of strong candidates lost and discussions and candor inhibited.

On the other hand, although it is true that many potential candidates will not subject themselves to this publicity, it can be argued that to the extent that such a law accurately reflects the political climate of a state, it serves to select candidates who would be able to comfortably function as president with a high degree of public exposure. The issue is not completely one-sided; as one candidate whose interview by the trustees was held in public put it, "Mature people in or seeking public positions should be able both to participate in and tolerate public deliberations" [18, p. 30]. Open searches may thus be a functional way of selecting persons who will be able to work under intense public scrutiny. In much the same way, the open campus participation that sometimes leads to a popularity contest is sensible in a political system in which personal popularity is an essential precondition of effectiveness.

Succession and Organization Symbolism and leadership. Because of the relationship between suc-

cession and other ogranization functions, consideration of the processes through which leaders are chosen should prove to be a useful way to illuminate the meaning of leadership itself. In an effective organization, presidential search should be aligned with the other struc- tures and processes through which individuals and groups interact, share meanings, and engage in sensible behavior. These alignments should ensure that the process is consistent with the expectations of internal constituencies and should also help to bring the institution into greater conformity with the demands of the external environment [45]. Individual institutions under environmental pressures to become administratively more efficient or educationally more effective may not be able to actually do so, but they can often satisfy external expectations by appointing a new president who announces an intention to do so [44].

The ways in which college and university presidents are chosen differ considerably from those in other organizations, but their search procedures appear to be uniquely suited to these institutions. Their




consistency with other aspects of organizational life helps to explain the general stability of educational organizations and the difficulty in relating changes in leadership with conspicuous improvements in organizational functioning. The search is a conservative process through which the institution ensures that a change in leadership will not be disruptive. The succession process is the organization itself in micro- cosm. The political processes by which compromises are tacitly reached ensure that someone is selected who will be acceptable to various important constituencies. The process works to increase the probability that the candidate who is finally selected will be seen both as an expert and as conforming to institutional norms, both factors that increase the influence of the selected leader. Indeed, it is an organization irony that a leader seen as conforming is more likely to be able to innovate and engage in deviant behavior than one who is not [17, p. 502-3].

Understanding the conservative nature of the process explains to a great extent why suggestions that would significantly alter the accepted succession procedures are largely ignored. Some of these suggestions may appear to call for only simple and objectively rational alterations in administrative process, but in fact they would significantly alter the symbolic systems that help participants discover meaning and define reality. The traditional understanding of presidential search as a process through which a campus seeks a person to implement understood goals can be reconsidered at least in part as a process through which those goals become articulated and clarified. The search committee is a forum in which ideologies, resource allocations, values, and roles are assessed. It may be that studies of leadership that limit their attention to the behaviors of incumbents overlook the importance of the succession process to organizational life, and that "many of the truly critical phenomena occur before the leader comes on the scene" [13, p. 252].

The process of presidential selection in higher education, like the selection of civic and political leaders, has many important symbolic functions and "is an important ritual. It provides a sense of social involvement. It is an outlet of the expression of both discontent and enthusiasm. It provides live drama for people to watch and enjoy. It gives ... people a sense of participating in an exciting adventure. It draws attention to common social ties and the importance of accepting the candidate who wins" [6, p. 159-60]. There is a significant element of chance involved as well. Who eventually enters which vacancy is to some extent based upon who happens to be on the committee and attends meetings, upon nonrational assessments of candidates, upon




changing pools as candidates become available or voluntarily with- draw for other opportunities, and upon the degree of attention to the process that can be afforded by the various participants and their constituencies.

The search andpostdecision surprise. If a perfect search process is one that results in a match that is considered satisfactory to both applicants and vacancies over an extended period [27], then the process in use in higher education falls far short of the ideal. Many presidents serve only a brief period and then either voluntarily or involuntarily leave. This may in part be due to incomplete information exchange during the search process [19], to the scapegoating of the president for outcomes due to uncontrollable environmental events, or to changes in the interests or goals of either side.

It may also be due to disappointment in the performance of the president, caused by a "postdecision surprise" that is a predictable consequence of the decision process itself. Postdecision surprises arise when an attempt is made to make the best choice from among a pool of alternatives when "variation among the true values of alternatives is relatively small, the ambiguity or uncertainty in evaluation is relatively high, and the number of alternatives considered is relatively large"[ 15, p. 26]. Search committees make predictions about how effective an applicant may be, but because of limited information, the lack of objective and reliable criteria, and the uncertainty of future needs their estimates always include many random and extraneous elements. Be- cause of random variations in career patterns unrelated to actual capabilities [31], the choices seen as "best" will also be those with the most extreme random components. On average, although the performance of these "best" choices will be better than lesser choices, because of regression effects they will not be as good as predicted. In the higher education search process, discrepancies between expectations and actual performance may lead in some cases to short terms of office.

The importance of leadership. It may be argued that the investment of so much time and energy in search processes is justified because presidential selection is critical to the effective functioning of the organization. However, it can also be proposed that the search process in higher education is long and labored not because presidents are in- strumentally so important, but because they are not. "When leaders really do have effects, it is less necessary to engage in rituals indicating their effects. Such rituals are more likely when there is uncertainty and unpredictability associated with the organization's operations" [43, p. 110].




A long and expensive search is consistent with societal expectations of the importance of the role. Institutions that allocate resources to such important activities appear to be rational and thereby increase their legitimacy and their survival capabilities [35]. The selection of a specific candidate after such an extensive and presumably rational process provides confirmation that the chosen individual indeed pos- sesses unusual characteristics. The search thus provides a process for the routinization of charisma that gives additional influence to the incumbent.

Making sense of presidential searches. When people attempt to make sense of ambiguous events, they are likely to attribute the causes of outcomes to the willful acts of individuals rather than to external forces. The idea of leadership "provides a sense of control. The very notion of leadership may therefore in some ways be considered as a social attribution of observers, eagerly accepted by organizational members because it provides a sense of control and therefore of meaning that otherwise would be lacking" [43]. Participation in the leader selection process (directly or through a representative) increases still further the sense of control. Among other things, "when causality is lodged in one or a few persons rather than being a function of a complex set of interactions among all group members, changes can be made by replacing or influencing the occupant of the leadership position" [43, p. 109].

Great effort is spent in searching for a leader, and there are many examples of new presidents (particularly during times either of rapid growth or of institutional trauma) who have had profound effects upon their organizations. But there is little empirical evidence to suggest that presidents in general have a major effect upon organizational performance. This does not mean that presidents are unimportant, but rather suggests that in most (but not all) cases the selection of one experienced and accomplished candidate over another is unlikely over the long run to make more than a marginal difference. It may be that the careful screening and filtering of the traditional search process results in "uniformly consistent judgments in leader selection" [26, p. 128]. Obviously, to the extent that presidents and their plausible re- placements are similar, succession would not be expected to have major consequences.

But regardless of the substantive outcome, presidential search in higher education is an important and necessary process. It provides people with a sense of participating in important decisions and thereby lessens power differences in the organization [32]. It stabilizes the or-




ganization and leads to satisfaction with the social order by confirming the myth that positions are allocated on meritocratic grounds. It con- firms the importance of leaders in the absence of objective indicators.

There is no right or wrong way to study organizational processes, and no single model does or can represent any process in all its wonder- ful complexity. Different perspectives or cognitive frames do not necessarily compete with each other, but rather illuminate different aspects of reality. More traditional views of the presidential search emphasize important features of the process that in this article are treated simplistically, overgeneralized, or largely ignored. The emphasis here upon the symbolic aspects of the presidential search is meant to supplement the rich work of other serious students of the process.

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