"This theory, called "flow theory," holds that the strength of intrinsic motivation is directly proportional to the extent to which the activity promotes a state of flow: a feeling of such total immersion in the task at hand that the individual becomes unaware of anything else. Most of us (more than 80%, according to Csikszentmihalyi) have experienced flow in our work - when a class session is going particularly well, for example, or when we become thoroughly engrossed in analyzing experimental data."Tomorrow's Professor Msg.#468 CONDITIONS PROMOTING QUALITY FACULTY WORKFolks: The posting below looks at some interesting factors impacting intrinsic and extrinsic faculty rewards. It is from Chapter 2 Motivation for Quality Work, in Departments That Work: Building and Sustaining Cultures of Excellence in Academic Programs, by Jon F. Wergin, Virginia Commonwealth University. Anker Publishing Company, Inc., Bolton, Massachusetts. Copyright 2003 by Anker Publishing Company, Inc. http://www.ankerpub.com/ Reprinted with permission. Regards, Rick Reis reis@stanford.edu UP NEXT: Getting Homework to Work Tomorrow's Academic Careers -------------------------------------- 1,775 words --------------------------------------- CONDITIONS PROMOTING QUALITY FACULTY WORK Align Institutional Mission, Roles, and Rewards Earlier I noted that extrinsic rewards alone won't promote quality work. That doesn't mean they're unimportant! They are, in fact, necessary, if not sufficient. When extrinsic rewards compete with intrinsic rewards, the former nearly always wins, hands down. How often have you heard from tenure-track faculty that they'd prefer to spend more time working on their teaching but don't want to jeopardize their chances for promotion? Or even more disheartening, how many times have senior faculty told their junior colleagues not to waste time on their teaching until they're safely tenured? The reward system is a powerful motivator of faculty behavior. Study after study during the past decade has demonstrated just how far out of whack faculty roles and rewards have become. A series of studies by Bob Diamond and his colleagues at Syracuse (1993) showed that faculty view teaching as relatively more important than research but see their institutions as having reversed priorities. A now-classic study by Jim Fairweather (1996) at Michigan State revealed that the more research faculty do, the less they learn (a finding which is true, incidentally, of liberal arts colleges as well as research universities). Most recently, a survey by the Associated New American Colleges (McMillin & Berberet, 2002), a consortium of private comprehensive universities, showed that while faculty members in these institutions felt an alignment between their work and institutional mission, they perceived a misalignment between their work and institutional rewards. An interesting sidelight of this last study is that while about 70% of faculty felt they were in step with institutional mission, only 30% felt that their colleagues were! (A cynical interpretation of this might be that most faculty feel they are the frogs who stay in the wheelbarrow; their colleagues are the ones who jump out.) Without alignment, faculty attachment to their institutions will be weak and more intrinsic motivation strategies will seem disingenuous, at best. Alignment of roles and rewards is not the exclusive responsibility of academic administration, by the way. Promotion and tenure committees at most institutions are made up solely of senior faculty members. They are the ones who interpret policy, who decide whether or not a candidate meets the standards set forth in the policy documents. While it's true that their recommendations may be overturned by deans or provosts, such reversals arte uncommon. Faculty who complain - with justification - about the mixed messages from their academic administration need also to scrutinize value choices that their own colleagues are making. Engage Faculty Meaningfully Faculty like work that is not only vibrant and intellectually interesting (that is, after all, why we're in the business), but work that takes us somewhere. I can't imagine any activity less motivating that one that everyone knows is purely ritualistic: the task force report that goes nowhere, the self-study that no one reads, the discussion of policies that are already a fait accompli. In the following chapter I'll describe in some detail our study of departmental review practices (Wergin & Swingen, 2000), where we uncovered some of the key ingredients to healthy departmental functioning. One of these was what we called a "leadership of engagement," a style of decision-making that relies on an open dialogue about the options faced and the likely consequences of options chosen. I think that much of what passes for faculty apathy about shared governance can be traced to a perception that what faculty say won't really matter. We don't like feeling co-opted and thus inconsequential to the life of the campus. We are much more energized by problems in which both we and the community at large have a stake, where we are presented with real choices, where our voice is recognized, and where we can act with a sense of efficacy. I am also aware of the hypocrisy in some faculty cultures, in which faculty demand to be consulted on all matters of import but want no part of the responsibility for their consequences. "Engaging faculty meaningfully" means that engagement must include a sense of collective responsibility for decisions made and actions taken - that leadership must also encourage collective reflection of the sort that leads to organizational learning. Identify and Uncover Disorienting Dilemmas A leading thinker in adult learning theory, Jack Mezirow (cf., 1990), has suggested that adults engage in deep (that is, transformative) learning only when faced with what he calls a "disorienting dilemma," a situation in which our usual perspectives won't work or don't fit. Only then, suggests Mezirow, are we likely to be motivated to learn and change. For example, experimental findings which don't square with accepted theory motivate us to look at the problem differently; student complaints about the incoherence of their undergraduate major motivate us to reassess our curricular requirements. Or maybe they don't: Adult perspectives about what is real or true are notoriously difficult to change, and so negative student feedback may well be met with denial or displacement of blame. Thus, the dilemma can't be too disorienting, because then it will only lead to an escape response. Flow theory. A powerful theory of motivation developed by Csikszentmihalyi (1990), one that is backed by an impressive array of empirical research, helps put all this in context. This theory, called "flow theory," holds that the strength of intrinsic motivation is directly proportional to the extent to which the activity promotes a state of flow: a feeling of such total immersion in the task at hand that the individual becomes unaware of anything else. Most of us (more than 80%, according to Csikszentmihalyi) have experienced flow in our work - when a class session is going particularly well, for example, or when we become thoroughly engrossed in analyzing experimental data. The principal characteristic of flow is the perception of perfect congruence: that what we're doing is just challenging enough to give us a sense of accomplishment and growth. At these times we're at the top of our game, and that feeling alone is enough to sustain us. Insufficient challenge, on the other hand, leads to boredom and lack of energy; a challenge that is too far out of reach leads to anxiety and frustration. The trick, therefore, is to link challenge with support. If the goal is to encourage more faculty to use instructional technology, for example, then the appropriate strategy would be not only to show faculty how technology might enrich their teaching, but also to provide opportunities to experiment with such technology in a low-risk, high-support environment. Similarly, if the goal is to encourage greater faculty collaboration around departmental goals, the appropriate strategy would not be to have a series of meetings rewriting departmental mission statements, but rather to begin with the work faculty are doing, link it to collective expectations, and then help faculty see how they might contribute to the collective work more meaningfully. In short, faculty resistance to change doesn't necessarily mean that they have no energy for change. Far from it. Help Faculty Develop Niches Back in the 1980s, several of my colleagues and I did a study of career satisfaction among senior faculty members in five diverse institutions, including a community college, a small private university, an Historically Black College/University (HBCU), a liberal arts college, and a research university. We wanted to know which factors most contributed to satisfaction among these faculty. What proved to be the most important factor separating high- and low-satisfaction groups across all institutions was what we called a sense of "niche," a perception that individual faculty had a place in their academic community which was theirs and no one else's. Two characteristics define a niche: 1) It's connected (that is, part of a larger organic whole), and 2) it's constantly evolving. What's the difference between a niche and a rut? Take a moment and mentally list the connotations you have for each term and you'll have the answer. A niche is warm, comfortable, three-dimensional, defined by a larger space; a rut is something you get stuck in. A niche promotes growth and change; a rut does not. Faculty can change their niches much like we decorate our houses or build an addition; in order for them to be comfortable, they have to be amenable to change. A faculty sense of niche connects with all four key motivators: It communicates autonomy, it requires a community context, it provides tacit recognition of worth, and, because faculty are the architects, it's the mark of efficacy. Encourage Faculty Experimentation, Assessment, and Reflection As I'll show in the next chapter, change is more likely to occur when faculty are encouraged to experiment and take risks. Instead of being held accountable for particular results, faculty are held accountable for conducting an assessment of their work, interpreting the results, and making informed judgments about what to do differently. Imagine the tone of an evaluation policy which focuses on faculty growth and development rather than exclusively on outcomes, such as articles published and grant dollars generated. How much healthier and more energizing that would be! Conclusion: Build Organizational Motivation At the beginning of this chapter, I derided the Walden Two approach to faculty motivation, the view that faculty behavior can be manipulated by adjusting reinforcement schedules. I hope I've shown that we're far better off thinking about motivation differently. The problem is not How do we fix the reward system?; it's How do we create environments most conducive to productive faculty life? A useful way to think about this, and a useful way to end this chapter, is to consider Staw's (1983) notion of organizational motivation. Staw suggests that individuals are motivated to behave in ways befitting the interests of their organizations when two conditions are met optimally: when they identify with their institutions and when they see tangible evidence that they are contributing to their institutions in meaningful ways. Revisiting the list of four motivators (autonomy, community, recognition, efficacy), then, suggest the following. Faculty identify with their institutions when they understand that they are part of an academic community that cares about them and respects both their autonomy and the unique ways in which they contribute to the common good. They identify, in other words, when they feel a sense of niche. Faculty experience efficacy when they are recognized for the contributions they have made to the organization and perceive the effects these contributions have wrought. All this suggests that the way to enhance the collective motivation of faculty in academic departments is to create and nurture conditions which promote identification with the department and to ensure that faculty work is built upon the talents, interests, and expertise of its members. In the next few chapters, I'll explore ways to accomplish both goals. Note This chapter is a slightly expanded version of "Beyond Carrots and Sticks: What Really Motivates Faculty," published in Liberal Education, Winter 2001. Reprinted here by permission. References Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. New York, NY: Harper-Collins. Diamond, R.M. (1993). Changing priorities and the faculty reward system. In R.M. Diamond & B.E. Adam (Eds.), Recognizing faculty work: Reward systems for the year 2000. New Directions for Higher Education, No. 81. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Fairweather, J. (1996). Faculty work and the public trust: Restoring the value of teaching and public service in American academic life. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. McMillin, L.A., & Berberet, J. (eds.). (2002). A new academic compact: Revisioning the relationship between faculty and their institutions. Bolton, MA: Anker. Mezirow, J. (1990). How critical reflection triggers transformative learning. In J. Mezirow & Associates (eds.), Fostering critical reflection in adulthood: A guide to transformative and emancipatory learning. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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