5.2 Internal university governance and management
5.2.1 Deans and university governance
The above section described the top management3 structure and actors in Kenyan universities. Within this structure, deans occupy the position just below top management. While the private universities mainly have fewer faculties, most of the public universities are comprehensive and have various disciplines and thus many deans compared to the private ones. As heads of the faculties and schools, deans head the academic units in the universities with responsibilities ranging from developing academic programs, mobilizing resources for the faculty, students’
services, staff development, financial management and strategy development amongst others. In some Kenyan universities deans are elected, while in others they are appointed by university management.
3 The apex of the organization as we discussed in section 1.2.1 that discussed different leadership positions in relation to organizational structures.
In most Kenyan universities deans report directly to the Vice-Chancellors. In few instances, especially in large universities such as University of Nairobi, faculties are situated within colleges. Here a dean reports to the principal of the respective college under which the faculty falls. In recent years and due to several transformations in the higher education sector, the mandates of deans have been expanded. In the formative years the universities were more centralised with top level executives having to be responsible for most managerial tasks. In the last ten years most universities have devolved several authorities to the deans. This has also been compounded by the changing role of government in funding as a result of the rapid expansion of the sector. Some universities have developed training programs for deans to prepare them for these new mandates (Ngethe & Mwiria, 2003;
Wangenge-Ouma, 2012).
In our discussions in Chapter one, we presented deans as middle managers whose leaderships styles have not been much investigated but whose responsibilities are growing within the universities. In the same chapter, we proceeded and presented some of the roles of deans in Kenyan universities and the changing contexts in which they work. Generally deans head faculties composed of several departments headed by chairs or heads of department under whom academic programmes are run. Among other responsibilities, deans chair faculty board meetings which brings together representation from all departments in the faculty. Faculties are of different sizes in terms of students and staff, even within same institutions, and have different cultures and capacities. The deans relate to different stakeholders including within and external to their faculties. The faculties are the main academic units of the universities and the colleges.
Due to funding constraints the government requires universities to generate extra funding from other sources to augment funding from the government. The universities are required to innovate new ways of generating alternative income (Wangenge-Ouma, 2012; Johnson & Hirt, 2011). This led for example to the
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establishment of university companies and other Income Generation Units (IGUs), mostly run at the faculty level. They are expanding the portfolio of deans even further. This is in addition to managing the privately sponsored students programs that generate most of the revenue for the public universities. In general, the position and role of deans in Kenyan universities has become the operating management floor where most of these activities are to be undertaken.
Compared to the previous years, there is strengthening of the internal management of the institutions and demand for more accountability from both internal and external stakeholders especially students and employers. The government of Kenya launched a strategy for performance improvement in public universities through performance contracts requiring university leaders to work towards predetermined objectives, outputs and results (Letangule & Letting, 2012). This is aimed at institutionalizing performance and improving service delivery by ensuring that university leaders are accountable for results and resource utilization (Republic of Kenya, 2001; Mathooko, & Ogutu, 2014). The mandates of deans in Kenyan universities have also recently been expanded as a result of decentralization of several activities and responsibilities from central university management to the levels of the deans. Through this more decision making and authority were devolved to the deans, giving them more responsibilities than before (Dinku &
Shitemi, 2011; Kamaara, 2011). As highlighted in section 1.3 the new mandates of deans include sourcing for more funds for their faculties through innovative income generation mechanisms, recruiting more fees paying students (especially the privately sponsored students programs), responding to demands for more accountability and enhanced performance from both internal and external stakeholders, managing diverse students groups and those of central management amongst others. In fact, Dinku and Shitemi (2011) expound on how the role of the dean has changed, the challenges deans encounter in managing their faculties such as funding, capacity deficits, students and staff needs, new governance requirements and concerns on quality amongst others. These require leadership development for the deans. They point out the shift of the universities from being
ivory towers to open and collaborating institutions, where entrepreneurship is a basic goal in addition to appreciation of bench marks and shared experiences (Dinku & Shitemi, 2011:12). As such, the sphere of deans in Kenyan universities has been expanding, making it even more necessary to understand how they manage their faculties.