تبریک یا تسلیت؟ نقش سرمایه انسانی در پرورش یک مدیر دانشگاه

Administrative skill is essential to organizational effectiveness. Yet, few studies examine how human capital investments over a career affect selection into administration. We use panel data for economists to estimate the probability of choosing administration over a pure academic track. The results show that, while research-specific human capital reduces the probability of becoming an administrator, general human capital increases it. There are also inferior administrative opportunities for women that have not improved over time and variation in the role of human capital according to institutional research mission. Thus, our results suggest academic leaders are not merely born, but cultivated through their human capital investments.

Although administrators in higher education play an essential role in the success or failure of one of the nation's oldest, largest and most important non-profit sectors, academics have historically perceived a move into administration as a backhanded promotion (e.g., Clotfelter & Rothschild, 1993; Ehrenberg, 1999). In particular, while there has been recognition that successful administrators are likely to have desirable innate and learned leadership qualities (e.g., Kim, 2002), there has often been the suspicion that administration is the career path followed by academics who are relatively less productive at least in the research dimension (e.g., Siegfried, 1997). Nonetheless, prior work that has studied the effects of pay dispersion on turnover, job satisfaction and productivity for administrative positions has not explicitly examined the personal or career attributes of administrators (e.g., Pfeffer & Davis-Blake, 1992). This paper uses uniquely detailed data on the careers of academic economists to examine whether the career development of academics who become administrators differs systematically from their colleagues who remain in the purely academic track. Our analysis provides some of the first formal evidence that general versus research-specific human capital investments facilitate selection into administration, which is broadly consistent with findings for managers in other occupations (Singell, 1991). Academia provides a particularly useful institutional setting to study the choice of an administrative career path versus a well-defined purely academic alternative career choice (e.g., Cameron, 1978). In particular, U.S. universities generally share a long-standing, common internal hierarchical structure and easily identifiable administrative positions that make comparisons across institutions more straightforward than in most public-sector or private-sector industries. Moreover, unlike the private sector, the relative reputation of these institutions is highly stable over time such that comparisons over the course of a particular academic's career, or between two academics at the same point in their careers but in different vintage cohorts, remain valid over a long span of time. Academic professionals also perform a relatively homogeneous set of job tasks (teaching, research and service), produce readily observable measures of output (published journal articles) and face promotion standards that are directly related to observed output (McDowell, Singell, & Ziliak, 2001). A focus on academic economists also yields particular advantages for a study of the administrative career choice. Economists are overrepresented in higher levels of academic administration relative to their proportion of the academe (e.g., 2.6% of college presidents and 1.6% of provosts; Siegfried, 1997) and possess economic reasoning skills useful in administrative work (Ehrenberg, 1999). Although the market basket of skills possessed by economists may not make them fully representative of all administrators who hale from many disciplines, the relatively high salaries of economists yield higher opportunity costs for individual economists selecting into administration in comparison to faculty from other disciplines, which will tend to make the decision less about remuneration and more about the job-skill match. We develop a probit model of the decision between administration and the pure academic track that is conditioned on an academic's training, career background, and academic performance. The empirical analysis uses detailed panel data for American Economic Association (AEA) members to analyze whether personal and organizational characteristics explain the likelihood that an economist is observed as an administrator. Our findings indicate that research-specific human capital investments and gender tend to reduce the probability of becoming an administrator, but also show that some academic tasks provide general human capital that facilitates the choice of administration. Several sensitivity tests that estimate the model by Carnegie research classifications reveal that the role of human capital in the economist's choice of administration differs with the research orientation of the institution. We also investigate the link between publishing productivity at the beginning of a 10-year career window and the likelihood of holding an administrative position at the end of the window, which confirms that research-specific productivity reduces the likelihood of selecting an administrative job.

Quality administrative stewardship is crucial to the success of the U.S. higher education system, which is both a nationally vital and internationally renowned industry. Yet, few studies examine the factors that determine who chooses to enter university administration. This paper uses rich panel data from American Economic Association membership directories over a period of more than 30 years to examine the role human capital investments play in the decision to become an administrator. The results show that academic economists who eventually enter into university administration systematically exhibit general skills and make less research-specific investments over their careers than those who remain in the purely academic track. For example, economists who obtain PhDs from or place in more research-oriented economics departments are less likely to select into administration, whereas years of experience increase the probability of choosing administration. In addition, female and foreign-born economists are found to be less likely to place in an administrative job, suggesting that sharing common experiences or language with the historical majority of the academy may facilitate becoming an administrator. Sensitivity tests confirm the broad findings drawn from the base specifications, but also show that the role that human capital plays in the administrative choice depends on the institutional setting and career profile. Specifically, separate estimates for institutions classified and not classified as Tier 1 research institutions indicate that research production is relatively more valued and general experience is less valued for administrators in universities that have research as a primary mission. Likewise, specifications that examine how an academic's behavior at the beginning of a career interval affect his or her selection into administration at the end of the interval indicate that the early-career choices to become active in research, remain at the same institution and to not enter administration reduce the likelihood of later being an administrator. Overall, the results suggest that leaders are not simply born but are cultivated and shaped by the human capital investments they make during their careers. However, the adage that “those that can, do; those that can’t, teach” may apply in many instances to managers in high-skill professions, because leadership ability results from relatively general versus skill-specific human capital investments. Thus, university administrators are to be congratulated for the width, and not necessarily the depth, of their abilities.