Prestige, Affiliation and Region as Determinants of Collective Bargaining Involvement

1 3 PRESTIGE, AFFILIATION AND REGION AS DETERMINANTS OF COLLECTIVE BARGAINING INyOLYEMENT* Margaret K, Chandler Daniel J. Julius Thomas Mannix Graduate School of Business Teachers College Office of the President Columbia University Columbia University Western Michigan University Purpose of the Research A decade has passed since the faculties of Michigan’s Alpena and Henry Ford Community Colleges voted t o replace "shared authority" with the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers. During this time we have witnessed a plethora of value- laden discussions, mono­ graphs, articles, books, workshops, conferences and meetings devoted to faculty collective bargaining. That the arrival of faculty unions has formented so much self - analysis is in itself a telling insight into the mindset of the American pro­ fessoriate. Underlying assumptions repeatedly imply that a research culture, the advancement of learning, intellectual indepen­ dence, innovative thinking and delicate institutional membranes will fail to survive the adversarial relationships inherent in U. S. style trade unionism. Critics have decreed that the dif­ ferences between the industrial and the educational enterprise are such that unions and unionism will cause substantial harm to academic autonomy. A number of scholars have noted that the question o f reconciliation of faculty unionism with an idealized concep­ tion of academic mission is almost moot because according to their observations, collective bargaining is making i t s greatest headway in the lower tiers of academe. Ladd and Lipset (1973, 1975) report that the least professional sector is the most supportive of faculty unions. The major centers of research and scholarship would never usher in bargaining agents. According to this view, professional authority would be safeguarded: "Let the community college faculties organize. It will never happen hereJ" Ten years after the initial steps at Alpena and Henry Ford, we are not so sure. Is there really an inverse relation­ ship between institutional quality and the tendency to bargain collectively? Could it be that institutional quality and * Revised paper presented at the annual meeting of the Associa­ tion for the Study of Higher Education, March 20, 1977, Chicago, Illinois. 1 4 prestige rankings have served to mask the true variables that promote or discourage collective bargaining? If we examine factors such as affiliation ('public vs. private), region and size of institution, does the picture change? Research Design In an effort to provide anin - depth answer to the above questions, we developed datarelating to the following inde­ pendent variables; institutional prestige ratings, affilia­ tion, region and size, and the dependent variable, collective bargaining involvement. We hypothesized that the claims for institutional pres­ tige as a determining variable were unwarranted and that phenomena that were attributed to prestige could be explained by simple but key basic factors such as those we selected; affiliation, region and size. One could suggest other poten­ tial influencing factors. Enabling legislation, union climate, institutional transition and financial stress and union and management leadership styles are examples. However, one finds that as the list grows, the factors specified tend to be inter­ related and therefore are not true independent measures. We wanted to test our hypothesis in a parsimonious way, using simple but powerful alternative explanatory variables. We did not employ a sampling procedure. Our research data were collected for the entire population of four -year colleges and universities in this country. The Prestige Ratings Data with regard to affiliation, region and size were readily available. For the prestige ratings, we consulted several studies designed to measure this variable. Our pri­ mary source was the classification of higher education insti­ tutions prepared for the Carnegie Commission on Higher Educa­ tion (1973). The Commission identified categories of colleges and universities that were deemed relatively homogeneous with respect to the functions of the institution and the character­ istics of students and faculty. In all, 1,766 four - year colleges and universities are listed and grouped in the following categories: Research, Doctoral Granting, Comprehensive Universities and Colleges, Liberal Arts and Specialized Institutions (nine separate cate­ gories). We used this system of classification in our re­ search, and we also used the Commission's system of ranking which established a more and a less prestigious category with­ 1 5 in each classification. The Research 1 group...