What Is the Place of “Loyal Opposition” in an Academic Organization?
How does a leader maintain appropriate loyalty to her employer when she opposes some of what it does? And how should she communicate about such opposition to the people she leads?
Today I want to loop back to an issue I mentioned in an earlier piece: the problem that arises when a library leader finds herself in a state of principled opposition to the position of either the library (if she’s a middle manager) or the university (if she’s the library director).
Let’s return to the hypothetical example I used earlier: a library director is under pressure from staff to offer remote work options. However, university policy is clear that remote work is only allowed under highly exceptional circumstances, none of which applies to anyone who works in the library. When the library director communicates this back to her staff, the reaction is strongly negative, with some employees saying she should simply disregard the campus policy on the basis that it’s wrongheaded and out of date, and others arguing that even if breaking campus policy is a bad idea, simply saying “sorry, campus policy won’t permit it” is an insufficient response – she shouldn’t just be telling them what the policy is, but actively advocating on their behalf for the policy to change to what they believe it should be.
This scenario will be familiar to anyone who has served in a leadership or management position in a library. Invariably, at some point you’re going to find yourself in a situation in which your obligation to advocate downwards on behalf of leaders above you conflicts with your obligation to advocate upwards on behalf of the people you manage.
Our last three articles talked about the importance of keeping the library aligned with its host institution’s priorities and strategic directions, as a matter of both sound strategy and institutional ethics. But what about when the conflict a library leader experiences arises not from misalignment between her staff and the host institution, but between herself and her host institution (whether that’s the library or the university)? In other words, what if she finds herself genuinely in opposition to the institution’s priorities or directions, and wants both to follow her conscience and fulfill her obligation as a leader to be supportive of her employing institution?