Affective Tenure Affective Organizational Commitment

Affective Tenure

Affective Organizational Commitment and Tenure

Affective organizational commitment is derived from the sense of an employee that his or her organization meets the emotional and psychological needs related to the terms of employment. In the context of education, our research considers the relationship between affective commitment and the continued erosion of tenure.

The text by Wriston (1940) is particularly compelling on this subject because of its age and its relatively philosophical tone. Wriston weighs the question of academic tenure with a particularly scholarly and discursive approach, revealing a similar set of dimensions to the debate today as existed generations ago. Wriston remarks that while academic freedom is a valuable asset to the pursuit of education, it is not without its problematic dimensions. As Wriston indicates, "the curse of freedom from the point-of-view of governing boards and administrative officers is that it means freedom for the fool as well as the wise man. Unfortunately presidents and boards (and the public) cannot always distinguish the wise man from the fool." (p. 340)

This helps to provide an understanding for our broader subject as to why there is so much resistance at an institutional level to the continuity of tenure. Efforts to stem it may be seen as influenced by the incapacity of educational organizations to effectively distinguish quality in the professorship. Moreover, it seems to suggest that newer institutions such as post-tenure review are intended to re-assert a level of authority over the educational process that tenure was conceived to offset. In this way, texts such as Wriston's paint the tenure question as a function of the ongoing tug-of-war between educational organizations and the professoriate. Here, Wriston highlights some of the implications of this conflict and implies that motives for conflagration are often unrelated to the goals of organizational effectiveness. Wriston points out that "even when we pass from research and 'creative' work to the subject of teaching we must protect the revolutionary. If minds are to be wakened and intellects sharpened there must be a challenge. How sharp that challenge is to be depends upon the teacher's method, upon the fixity of the student's prejudices, the profundity of his ignorance, the keenness of his mind and many other factors." (p. 341)

Wriston goes on to recall that one of his own professors had once been dismissed for verbally slighting the Church. Wriston would note that in spite of the fact that no students raised any objections to the slight, it was sufficient to see the professor 'displaced.' Here, Wriston reveals that separate from the goals of organizational effectiveness, certain ideological or political motives may also serve to influence the interest in control shown by administration. In this case, we can begin to understand the importance of tenure in defending against such essentially personalized motives for dismissal.

In light of the tug-of-war observed by Wriston, evidence is strong today that the administrative or organizational side is encroaching further and further upon the faculty battleground. An article by Benjamin (2010) details a critical element of the battle today, contextualized especially by the ever-shrinking size of the full professoriate. Benjamin reports that while it had always been common for administrations and universities to undermine tenure by creating non-tenure-track positions, the distribution of power has shifted in recent decades. Benjamin notes, referring to an article from 1940, that where it had once been appropriate to refer to this as a two-track system, a far more hierarchical reality has since emerged. According to Benjamin, "the two-track system developed on the basis of the emerging distinction between tenured and non? tenured appointments. From the beginning, the former were often more qualified and generally more privileged. The two-track system has become a two-tier system to the extent that second-tier faculty are systematically less qualified, less well compensated, and are provided less professional support and fewer professional opportunities. Most non-tenure-track faculty are able individuals and many are well qualified. Nonetheless, their lower compensation, often narrowly defined tasks, and lack of professional support and opportunity tend to diminish their professional contribution." (Benjamin, p. 3)

This denotes the aggressive effort employed by administrations to reduce the size of the tenured and tenure-track populations. By diminishing the size of this population, administrations are succeeding in diminishing the influence and longevity of faculty in general. As the article by Engligh et al. (2009) reveals, this has a distinct psychological impact on the professoriate that ultimately translated into a diminished sense of academic freedom. And as English et al. conclude in their research, this is contrary to the patterns revealing improved affective organizational commitment. The article finds that, in fact, "the present research showed employees with more than nine years' tenure had higher levels of affective commitment than those with less than one year's tenure, suggesting that affective commitment strengthens with tenure." (English et al., p. 403)