Civil Service, Academic Tenure, and Management History: How Changes in Management Theory on Professional Knowledge and Hierarchy Affected Merit Reform

Abstract

This article relates shifts in American university tenure policies to historical changes in management debates on the relative importance of expertise and hierarchical standing in organizational decision making. The analysis contrasts the importance of expertise in Progressive Era (ca. 1895–1917) scientific management theories with the emergence of a more hierarchically grounded managerialist perspective in the second half of the twentieth century, and explores the implications for university policy.

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Notes on contributors

Hindy Lauer Schachter

Hindy Lauer Schachter is a professor in the Martin Tuchman School of Management at New Jersey Institute of Technology. She is the author of Reinventing Government or Reinventing Ourselves: The Role of Citizen Owners in Making a Better Government (SUNY Press, 1997), Frederick Taylor and the Public Administration Community: A Reevaluation (SUNY Press, l989), and Public Agency Communication: Theory and Practice (Nelson Hall, l983. She co-edited with Kaifeng Yang, The State of Citizen Participation in America (Information Age Publishing, 2012). Her articles have appeared in Public Administration Review, Administration and Society, International Journal of Public Administration, Public Administration Quarterly and other journals. She served as book review editor of Public Administration Review from 2009–2011.