Administration in the Research Environment - the Provider's Perspective

The orientation document for the June 1984 meeting of the Society of Research Administrators (Western Section) posed some very intriguing questions. One example was the proposition that administration is antithetical to research because administration wants procedures, an orderly flow, rules and policies, things done in a certain way, etc. In my judgment, that proposition - as far as it goes - is nonsensical, because research also wants an orderly flow, rules, and procedures, and PIs are well known for wanting things done in a certain way. The nature of research is that it is a careful, systematic, and patient investigation into some field of knowledge - not at all antithetical to structure, order, and discipline. Yet we, as administrators, are damned for bringing these same things into the research environment. No, I don't think that's the problem. The problem is that the structure we bring to the research environment is not always the structure that the researcher wants, or that which the researcher perceives will be helpful to his own goals at the moment. It is sensibleness and flexibility the researcher really wants out of the administrative structure, not the absence of structure itself. I think this is borne out by the fact that any growing research program left to itself will soon create its own internal administrative structure. All is well until the program grows larger and the fathers of that structure, who naturally want also to be able to break as well as make the rules, lose direct control of the administrative rule-making process and find that they have lost the freedom to mold the structure to suit themselves. The orientation document also poses the question, Would an administrative structure designed and implemented in its (whatever that means) facilitate or impede the research process? That's an easy one for me; I don't even have to know what purest sense means. My answer is neither, because I am a firm believer that structures and organizations and policies don't do anything - people do. Another question posed is, Should researchers bend and comply with the needs of an orderly administrative system? My answer is, Yes. And to the second half of the question, ...or should the administration be modified and molded to fit the needs of research?, my answer is also Yes. Of course, these questions were meant to be rhetorical, and my brief answers don't begin to exploit their full potential for philosophical discussion. But as an introduction to the balance of this paper, my answers may be useful. They tell you where I'm coming from. For example, they tell you that I believe structures are not the problem, people are. They tell you that I believe rules and policies are not the problem, but the problem is a lack of sensibility and flexibility. And they also tell you that I believe both the researcher and administrators share in these problems, and share a responsibility for resolving them. My first premise is that there are basic conflicts between all factions of organizations - not simply research and administration - and that these conflicts are pandemic: that is to say, they are built-in, universal, and inescapable. We are wasting our time wishing it were not so. We might as well recognize the conflicts, because they aren't going to go away. Why do these conflicts exist, and why are they so basic? I think that question can be answered by defining acceptable research administration performance. The researchers think that administrative performance is acceptable when they can get what they want, when they want it, with a minimum of interference from the research administrator. The controller, on the other hand, probably feels that administrative performance is acceptable when no one overspends a budget, when no one makes an unauthorized commitment. Internal Audit feels administrative performance is acceptable if everything passes the test of audit, all the assets are being controlled, and all standing policies and procedures are being carefully followed. …