Donde Plowman
UTSA professor argues for fewer rules in UT System
(July 16, 2003)--Donde Plowman, professor of management in the College of Business, presented a report to the Board of Regents of the University of Texas System in July titled "A Few Simple Rules Will Do: A Complexity View of the University of Texas System."
Plowman offered the Regents insights about complexity theory to encourage the board to reduce and simplify their current Regents' Rules.
"The most abundant but least used resource in organizations is human ingenuity," she said. "It doesn't get used because organizations are cluttered with over-specified and complicated rules that make creativity impossible. What we need is more 'mindfulness' and less mindless rule-following."
In her presentation to the board she compared the number of subjects covered in the Regents' Rules to those of comparable public university systems. UT System rules cover over 190 different subjects, while the University of California and University of Illinois systems cover less than 40 subjects. The Texas A & M system document covers about 60 different subjects.
Plowman argued that universities are systems that self-organize, that are emergent and co-evolve and should be managed and led with this in mind. If so, universities will rely less on rules and more on the mission and values to guide people's behaviors. One implication of her suggestions would be for local campuses to have more say over decisions that affect local campuses.
"Working on this project has allowed me the opportunity to extend some of my work on organizations as complex adaptive systems to a real-life application in the UT System," she said. "Who knows, organizational life at each campus might get easier if the guidelines I suggested are actually used."
For a copy of the paper she wrote for the Regents, visit Plowman's Web site.
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© The University of Texas at San Antonio, 2003