Graduation Year
2025
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree
Ph.D.
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)
Degree Granting Department
Communication
Major Professor
Patrice M. Buzzanell, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Mahuya Pal, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Nacy Romero-Daza, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Joshua M. Scacco, Ph.D.
Keywords
communicatively constituted organizing, higher education, organizational communication, quantitative content analysis, shared governance, structural power
Abstract
There are at least two versions of higher education today. One is that universities and curriculum need to be reformed to suit contemporary exigencies, particularly market-driven logics and direct paths to desirable job and career outcomes. The other is the story in this dissertation, namely, that the liberal arts hold value for the creation of new knowledge, critical thinking, and empowerment. With this admittedly one-sided corrective to the dominant narrative of higher education, this abstract and dissertation begin.
In the contemporary landscape of American higher education, the liberal arts are under siege. Once heralded as the cornerstone of democratic citizenship and intellectual growth, they are now increasingly marginalized by political scrutiny, market-driven imperatives, and managerial restructuring. Entire departments are shuttered, faculty roles are diminished, and curricula are reshaped to prioritize immediate economic outcomes over enduring human questions. Across the country, colleges and universities, long envisioned as spaces of critical inquiry and public good, are being reimagined as degree factories, evaluated less by the depth of knowledge they foster than by the salaries their graduates earn and the speed with which students can be pushed through.
This erosion is not merely academic; it is symptomatic of a broader cultural and institutional shift that threatens the foundational ideals of higher education itself. The decline of shared governance, the suppression of faculty voices, and the assault on academic freedom are not isolated trends but interconnected developments with profound implications for how knowledge is created, valued, and controlled. As these dynamics intensify, what is ultimately at stake is the soul of the university, and the role it plays in shaping an informed, reflective, and participatory society. From an organizational perspective, this shift from collaborative to managerial governance norms, undermines institutional stability and adaptive capacity in an increasingly unstable world.
As the socioeconomic conditions surrounding society expand in complexity and the needs of stakeholders evolve, organizations struggle to navigate an increasingly precarious landscape to remain relevant and effectively meet their institutional mission (Kuhn et al., 2017; Mumby, 2019, 2020). The ways in which an organization structurally identifies and formally responds to problems is embedded within the institutional infrastructure, shapes the institutional narrative, and serves to operationalize the power dynamics among organizational members (Deetz & Mumby, 1990; McPhee & Poole, 2001). This dissertation investigates how shared governance is communicatively constituted in institutions of higher education (IHE) and how it functions as an infrastructure for participatory deliberation in times of disruption.
Drawing on the Communicative Constitution of Organizations (CCO, McPhee & Zaug, 2000), the study conceptualizes shared governance as a communicatively constituted structure and process through which authority, participation, and organizational identity are enacted. Using a quantitative content analysis of 1,165 pages of institutional documents from a large U.S. college system, the research systematically examines the presence of shared governance principles, and the alignment of discursive and structural governance features with deliberative processes. Two research questions guided the analysis of (1) how shared governance is communicated in official texts and (2) how faculty roles are represented in governance decision-making.
Findings demonstrate that governance texts are a critical site where institutional roles are defined, stakeholder authority is negotiated, and deliberative conditions are discursively structured and suggest that while shared governance is frequently invoked as a principle, its implementation varies widely, often constrained by neoliberal logics and managerial language. Analyses reveal patterned discrepancies, what this study terms governance dissonance, between symbolic commitments to shared governance and operational enactments privileging administrative authority. Regression models identify stakeholder role alignment and document type as significant predictors of the discursive and structural conditions central to shared governance, highlighting faculty’s deliberative engagement as a central leverage point shaping institutional sustainability.
This study contributes to organizational communication by theorizing shared governance as a discursive artifact, repositioning as a communicatively constituted infrastructure through which institutions design, enact, and sustain their academic and civic values. It argues that the future of higher education depends on preserving and reimagining shared governance as a dynamic, discursive practice essential to institutional coherence and the renewal of the liberal arts tradition.
Scholar Commons Citation
Todd, Rebecca R., "Joint Action (In)Action: A Communicatively Constituted Examination of Shared Governance, Organizational Sustainability, and the Future of Liberal Arts in Institutions of Higher Education" (2025). USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/etd/11103
