syllogism
A New Kind of Consultancy

The Syllogism
Blog

RSS RSS Feed
Entries from November, 2009
30
Nov

Research: Succession Planning in the University Sector

comment bubble 1 Comment
bullet CATEGORY
People
Research
Strategy
bullet AUTHOR
Dr. Christopher Lake
bullet PUBLISHED
30 Nov 2009

Universities are rarely out of the news these days, whether it is the debate about student fees or about the broader contribution universities do (and should) make to our social and economic life. Given their high profile, we thought it would be interesting to find out how universities approach succession planning – how, that is, they fill their key positions. Our report on this is less an audit than a commentary on the management issues succession planning raises and on how thinking about succession planning is conditioned by broader ideas about university careers and the nature of the academic community.

The report looks not just at succession planning itself but at the issues grouped around it – issues relating to the balance between insiders and outsiders, the flow of information within universities, the nature of the market for university talent, and the trends that will shape university succession planning over the next decade. As such, it takes the temperature of a mix of universities across a range of management concerns.

The report is based on interviews with the senior officers of twenty one universities. Taken together, the universities represent a mix of higher education institutions in the UK. The report aims to stay close to the issues as they play out in practice. But it presents these issues – and the views of the study participants – in a way that is structured and systematic and seeks to recognise their broader context.

pdf

Download Executive Summary of Succession Planning in the University Sector

pdf

Download Succession Planning in the University Sector

24
Nov

Research: The Civil Service and Its Values

comment bubble 0 Comments
bullet CATEGORY
Ethics
Research
bullet AUTHOR
Dr. Christopher Lake
bullet PUBLISHED
24 Nov 2009

Most organisations profess to live by values – values they publicise and appeal to as part of their daily lives.

The question we ask here is: what are values, and how does an organisation know whether it is living by the right ones? Instead of answering this in the abstract, we look at the ongoing debate about the values of the civil service. Many features of this debate are generalisable. They tell us something important about values, and organisations, across the board.

What puts civil service values in the spotlight at the moment is the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill announced in the Queen’s Speech on 18 November. This Bill responds to long-standing demands to place the traditional values of the civil service on a statutory footing.

In reviewing something as fundamental as its values, the civil service faces the same challenge as any other organisation – that of making sure it launches the argument from the right point. By going straight to arguments about the content of values, the danger is of bypassing prior arguments about their standing and purpose. Our analysis confronts that danger. It approaches the issue of civil service values from first principles, identifying their place, rationale, and limits.

We argue that in ascribing values to actors and agencies we should already have in mind an account of the place and function of such actors and agencies in the world. An account of values must fall in behind an account of place and function, not the other way around. For example, the values that inform the dealings family members have with one another are not – and should not be – the same as those that inform the dealings that a court of law has with those appearing before it.

This is not the same as saying ‘anything goes’ or ‘context is everything’: it would be hollow indeed for an organisation dedicated to wrongdoing to claim it was only being true to its values. But it does mean that any account of the values required of an organisation – whether in the private, public, or third sectors – must begin with an account of what it is there to do and be. Arguments of this kind can be controversial: of any organisation it will be true that there are competing conceptions of why we need it and whose interests it exists to serve. But such arguments are also unavoidable if we are to get our story straight about values.

pdf

Download The Civil Service and Its Values