The Status of the Department Chairmanship in University Organization

Abstract

to place that knowledge in a framework which might assist in developing future treatments, both conceptual and legal, of the department chairmanship. The issue with which labor boards are faced in defining the chairmanship is to decide whether it is a supervisory or nonsupervisory role.1 This decision must be made in the process of determining the composition of a bargaining unit. Supervisors are not eligible as part of the institution's management'* to bargain through an elected agent, while nonsupervisors are allowed to join bargaining units. Without going into details of the individual cases, it will suffice to report that it has been decided in the cases of some institutions that chairmen are supervisors and in other cases that they are not.2 The central questions raised by these rulings focus on the nature and scope of the department chairman's authority. The purpose of this paper will be to review briefly the concept of authority as the basis for constructing an analytical scheme and to review the available research findings on the chairmanship in relation to that scheme. The intended outcome is to present the process of identifying the scope and nature of authority accruing to a given role as a complex task, and to suggest minimum criteria for undertaking a determination of authority inherent in or accruing to a role, specifically the departmental chairmanship.