Chairman of the board: Problems will be solved within a couple of years
Once the university management has solved the problems encountered by many employees following the process of reorganisation at AU, everyone will be able to appreciate the advantages of the changes that have been carried out. These are the words of Michael Christiansen, chairman of the university board. He also says that things will have fallen into place in a couple of years’ time.
Michael Christiansen, the chairman of the university board, divides the process of change described in the report on 9 March 2011 into three phases: 1. The board makes a decision based on the recommendations of the university management. 2. The university management implements the changes, and:
“Now we’re in the third phase of this major process of reorganisation, which is all about life at the university for each individual member of staff and each individual student. There are some problems in this area. But I think it’s important that people’s frustrations don’t make them critical of the first two phases,” says Michael Christiansen, adding that:
“It’s no secret that the people facing the problems don’t exactly regard us as the best management team in the world at the moment. But I hope and believe that in a couple of years’ time, once everything has fallen into place, people will find it easier to appreciate our visions and will agree that the university has been changed for the better.”
The chairman of the board believes that staff frustrations can be categorised into three areas, all of which are related to the new university structure: problems regarding IT integration, poorer decentralised administrative support, and a lack of clarity regarding management in a matrix organisation.
Solve the IT problems
The first thing Michael Christiansen comments on is the problems involved in integrating a wide variety of IT systems:
“I regard our IT problems as serious, and the board has informed the management that we simply have to invest as much time and money as it takes to solve these problems. My impression is that people are giving this area very high priority. Unfortunately, I also have to say that progress is proving extremely difficult and it’s still going to take some time. But we’re on the right track,” he says.
Frustrations of academic staff
Christiansen is also well aware that the academic staff feel they are now getting less administrative support since the secretaries were transferred from individual departments to large administrative units:
“Lots of people might regard this as some form of neo-Stalinism, with everything being done in enormous units, like cutting individual members of staff adrift and leaving them to fend for themselves. But it’s worth remembering that the idea behind centralisation is the wish to rationalise our operations – freeing up more money for research and teaching – and to increase our level of specialisation,” he says.
“Having said that, we also need to make sure that everything works smoothly, and that staff feel secure in their everyday working lives and immediate working environment. The board is aware of people’s frustrations in this particular respect, and we are also aware that the current and future rectors have said – both in public and to the board specifically – that this is an extremely serious situation which requires immediate attention. So we feel confident that changes are in the pipeline in this area.”
A matrix organisation
Michael Christiansen acknowledges that there are inherent problems involved when you structure the management in matrix organisations, but he believes this is the right management method for AU.
“It’s no good imagining that you can return to the kind of bureaucratic organisation that used to exist in the Danish State Railways back in the 1960s. There’s management of each individual research project, management of each department, and central management. I can’t convert all this into a unitarian style of management because that would ruin the entire structure. We work in a matrix organisation, and we’re just going to have to get used to it. That’s how modern people work.”
The management is frustrated
The role of the board is to help things move forward by advising the university management.
“And our top priority involves supporting the management in its efforts to bring this particular boat safely into harbour. Because there’s no doubt that the management is just as frustrated as everyone else when it comes to the problems involved in implementing the changes. But we have to give them the chance to find the answers, and I am absolutely certain that they will succeed,” he concludes.