Towards a Synthesis of Organizational Theory and Historical Analysis: The Case of Academic Women

The Review of Higher Education Summer 1982, Volume 5, No. 4 Pages 233-243 Copyright® 1982 Association for the Study of Higher Education All Rights Reserved TOWARDS A SYNTHESIS OF ORGANIZATIONAL THEORY AND HISTORICAL ANALYSIS: THE CASE OF ACADEMIC WOMEN Kathryn M. Moore Scholarly understanding of contemporary higher education has benefitted greatly from the work of Lipset, Riesman, Jencks, March, and others.1Stim­ ulating in themselves, their writings have also fostered new syntheses such as Baldridge’s political model (1971b) or Clark’s use of the organizational saga in higher education (1975). However, historical analyses of higher ed­ ucation have not always made use of these contemporary perspectives, nor are these analytic approaches often tested against earlier historical circum­ stances. Baldridge, for example, developed his model based on a study of one institution, New York University, in the 1960s. Indeed, much of our understanding about higher education is based on scholarship developed in the 1950s and 1960s. The focus of this paper is a consideration of the potential for the creative merge of historical analysis and contemporary social theory regarding higher education as an organization. Selected elements derived from organizational theory are discussed from the perspective of their contribution to understanding historical developments in higher education. Concomitantly, through the scru­ tiny of selected historical materials, the scope and power of the organizational elements are assessed. In order to bring concreteness to the discussion, a specific historical context, the late 19th century, was selected. Further, for reasons of brevity, one particular group of actors, academic women, is emphasized. The three con­ cepts from social theory that are examined are power, authority, and influence. Academic women were chosen as historical examples for two reasons: first, there is less known and understood about them; and second, what is known Kathryn M. Moore is associate professor and research associate, The Centerfor the Study of Higher Education, The Pennsylvania State University 213 214 The Review of Higher Education often calls into question previous understandings of higher education based on the experience of academic men. The discussion presented here draws upon a much larger work of my own (Moore, Casaday, Russ, and Shea, 1982), as well as a growing body of scholarship on women generally. My purpose is to demonstrate in a short space how the combination of contem­ porary theoretical and historical contextual issues can illuminate and enlarge our understanding of American higher education generally. Theorists of social change, using both historical and sociological lenses, have tended to concentrate on large scale social systems such as nations, peoples, states, or societies and on major sources of change such as cultural disparities, economic antagonisms, ideological conflicts, class differences, and other social disparities that threaten a particular social equilibrium (Martorana and Kuhns, 1975, p. 174). This is often couched in a concern for the general trend of history and its meaning. In this way sociologists and historians have shared a set of common concerns and insights. Spencer, Comte, Pareto, Marx, Weber, and Teonnies, some of the earliest and greatest social theorists, based their work on these concerns; others who followed them have built upon them (Etzioni and Etzioni, 1973, p.3ff). However, as Logan Wilson has pointed out, “ there has been much less research into the relatively subtler and more muted forms of disjunction occurring within relatively homogeneous groupings, and thus there are cor­ respondingly fewer assumptions about the sources of tension and the origin of competition and conflict in this kind of milieu. . .’’ (Wilson, 1972, p.220). One example of this sort of milieu to which Wilson refers is a college or university. Only recently have social scientists begun to concentrate on in­ dividual social organizations such as business corporations, firms, or schools. It is certainly no accident that these new investigations coincide in time with the period of late nineteenth and early twentieth century when such organi­ zations were beginning to proliferate and to predominate the life of Western society. American universities were part of the corporate inventiveness of this period but have only belatedly received serious scrutiny from social scientists concerned with social and organizational change.2 Indeed, most of the analyses of universities and colleges are so recent that there frequently appear to...