UNDERSTANDING AND IMPLEMENTING MANDATED REORGANIZATIONS 107 Case: Show me the money Triggered by a large budget shortfall (stemming from both a reduction in state funding per FTE and enrollment declines), the president at a mid-sized, public comprehensive institution announced at a general faculty meeting that the univer- sity would merge its four colleges into three colleges to save money and help address the shortfall [Structural]. The president indicated in subsequent discussions that he did not want the admin- istrative load of the deans in the colleges to become so onerous so as to cause them to be ineffective following the merger. He asked deans to consider strategies to keep the number of direct reports to the deans approximately the same as before the merger. The deans initiated discussions with faculty to develop recommendations about how departments could be realigned into fewer units when new colleges were formed. With no current vacancies in the deanships, one dean needed to return to faculty. At least three of the four deans felt they were likely to be selected to continue. One of the deans—feeling secure in his position—began to speak critically of the merger decision and process. At that point, the president decided to consolidate to just two colleges instead of four, and the “vocal dean” was asked to return to faculty. With just two colleges remaining in the plan, the division consolidated Arts and Sciences programs into one college and professional programs in the other. The provost appointed deans from among sitting deans without faculty input. Previous faculty feedback and annual evaluations of the deans were used to select the deans best able to help the colleges move through reorganization. To meet the president’s other goal of keeping the number of direct reports to each dean similar to those pre-merger, up to four departments were combined into schools under a single director. Despite being comprised of A&S-aligned programs, one of the newly amalgamated units was assigned to the professional college to balance the loads of the deans. As the college mergers alone would not save sufficient funds to cover the budget shortfall, the president, provost and deans proactively solicited additional cost- saving suggestions from department chairs and faculty. These suggestions were largely anonymous when they began circulating—despite assurances that they were only suggestions and not plans—the faculty who would be affected (e.g., eliminate program X and its faculty) formed resistance groups and bogged down discussions [Human Resource]. Open fora and meetings with the faculty and student senates were held to try to mitigate these misunderstandings. Deans were given a target amount of funding to save within their new colleges to help make the budget. Counter to the recommendations of the deans, as former departments were pooled into larger units the president and provost reduced the number of staff in each final unit by at least one and generally more (4 staff to 2, 3 to 1, etc.). Several individuals the deans wanted to appoint as chairs of units rejected the offered positions. Other individuals had to be cajoled into serving.