Enacting Organizational Justice and Institutional Learning in Faculty Dispute Resolution Processes: Lessons Learned from a Study of the UNC System

Both authors have served multiple terms as faculty senators on a campus, as Faculty Assembly representatives to the UNC System, and as members of hearing and/or hearing advisory committees. Each has chaired a faculty body as well as either a department or program. And both have done extensive work in formal and informal advising of persons facing adverse employment circumstances, including with faculty engaging in hearing processes.

Chapter VI of the UNC Code outlines the four areas regarding faculty employment rights relevant to this study: due process before discharge or the imposition of serious sanctions; appointment, nonreappointment, and promotion for tenured or tenure-track faculty; reconsideration for faculty terminated due to financial exigency or program curtailment; and faculty grievance procedures for other employment related matters. The UNC Policy Manual provides implementation procedures. Changes to either must be approved by the UNC Board of Governors. Regulations for how to enact policies are also issued by the System Office under the direction of the President of the UNC system and apply to all campuses.

The sixteen higher education campuses in the system include one special focus arts institution, two baccalaureate campuses, seven master’s institutions, and six doctoral institutions with two of those classified as very high research. Six of the campuses have roots in historically minority education — five historically black institutions and one historically Native American.

For instance, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS), the accreditor of UNC System institutions, says in Comprehensive Standard 3.7.5: “The institution publishes policies on the responsibility and authority of faculty in academic and governance matters.” (SACS n.d., p. 31)

In the United States, those areas might include Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which forbids workplace discrimination based on race, color, national origin, sex, and religion,Title IX which prohibits sex discrimination in educational programs or educational activities that receive federal financial assistance, including sexual harassment, pregnancy discrimination, equal opportunity in athletics, and sexual assault policies, or ADA (Americans with Disability Act) complaints regarding discrimination against qualified individuals with disabilities and requires that reasonable accommodation be made to provide individuals with disabilities equal access to services, programs, and opportunities, as well as filings with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) or the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR).

The public phase of this study started in Fall 2017. Systemwide codes and Faculty Handbooks are fluid documents that are periodically revised. Some changes happened during the course of this study. Quotations from such documents may thus capture a moment in time and miss later evolutions.

Initial survey invitations and survey reminders were sent via emails through Qualtrics with the anonymize response option enabled.

Faculty email addresses were gathered in late April and early May of 2018. Variations in the information provided occurred between institutions, as well as between colleges and even departments at the same institution. Numerous web pages appeared not to be updated routinely. As such, current tenured and tenure-track faculty as well as non-tenure-track faculty and adjunct faculty contact information was not always available. Some department/college web pages listed adjunct and/or emeriti faculty. If email addresses were available, these populations received survey invitations.

This number represents an overall 19% response rate from a total of 15,531. The responses of 1818 tenured and tenure-track faculty represents a 22.7% response rate of the 8090 system-wide tenured and tenure-track faculty.

To determine the representative nature of the sample collected, the response rate of faculty from each campus was compared to the overall return rate (systemwide). Campus-specific return rates were notably lower for only 3 of the 16 institutions — Winston Salem State University, University of North Carolina School of the Arts, and Elizabeth City State University.

A standard 5-point agreement scale to gauge perceptions of employment rights and hearing processes was used for seven of the survey questions asked of all participants and 19 posed to a subset of experienced faculty. A “Yes” “No” and “I don’t know” format for five items addressed to all respondents and up to five for the experienced subset assessed knowledge of facts or practices on their campus (e.g., It is easy to access information about faculty employment rights). An additional four questions directed to the general population and two toward the experienced used the 5-point scale, but added an “I don’t know” option when the person answering could opt to make an assessment based either on perception or on knowledge of campus process (e.g., on my campus, recommendations made by faculty hearing committees on adverse employment decisions are typically enacted by the relevant officials). A few additional questions varied from these patterns (e.g. In my estimation, the employment rights of faculty: are stronger now that in the past, are roughly the same as in the past, are weaker now than in the past).

These groupings do not follow Carnegie Classifications, nor consider what type of academic programming is offered at which institution, and do not account for measures of size such as student population. As the concern of the study is faculty employment rights and many of these rights proceed from tenure or tenure eligibility, the groupings reflected the size of that population alone. Group 1 represents seven institutions with less than 300 tenured and tenure track faculty. Group 2 included six institutions with between 300 and 750 tenured or tenure-track faculty, and the three Group 3 institutions employ over 900 tenured and tenure-track faculty. Group 1 institutions were 12.3% of the overall sample and 15.7% of the total population surveyed. Group 2 was 44.9% of the overall sample, compared to 43.4% of the population. Group 3 was 42.8% of the sample, compared to 40.9% of the population.

All persons who granted interviews were guaranteed anonymity in any reporting of their comments. The majority of interviews were recorded; in two cases, interviewees requested written notes only. When relaying quotes or other information gleaned from interviews, care is taken not to provide information identifiable to any individual. Any references made to a specific role (e.g. hearing committee member, ombuds) could include persons either currently or previously in that role.

This 4-item scale assessed satisfaction with the person to whom one reports, department/unit, institution and the likelihood of accepting one’s current position given the opportunity to do over again. Scale reliability = 0.86.

The prevalence of such reports is not surprising. Comments indicate issues with items such as teaching schedules or compensation or other basic conditions of employment. Clearly, however, respondents continued with employment in spite of dissatisfaction with the resolution of these issues.

This question provided an additional response option indicating that the person had not been in their position long enough to make this determination (as in an early tenure-track faculty member without experience at another institution). This response was selected by 17.6%.

Prior to presenting respondents with the scenarios, the survey provided the following information: “The UNC Code allows a faculty member to seek redress for an adverse employment situation/decision before one of several campus-based hearing committees. These committees hear cases concerning a variety of job related circumstances, including (but not limited to) non-reappointment, denial of tenure and/or promotion, imposition of serious sanction, and rights of faculty when programs are eliminated or curtailed. The names given to these committees differ across the UNC System constituent institutions. In this survey, the terms “hearing” and “hearing processes” refer to the convening of any of the faculty committees adjudicating these cases.”

The idea of fairness, if not “justice” is embedded in the guidelines provided in the UNC Code and Policy Manual. For example, Section 603 (Due Process Before Discharge or The Imposition of Serious Sanctions) begins with this line: “A faculty member who is the beneficiary of institutional guarantees of tenure shall enjoy protection against unjust and arbitrary application of disciplinary penalties.” Likewise, in the guidelines, 101.3.1.1[R] Regulation on Review of Intention to Discharge or Impose Serious Sanction Under Section 603 of The Code says, “The process of discharge or the imposition of serious sanction must be fundamentally fair to the faculty member.” Similarly, section 605 (Termination of Faculty Employment) includes the possibility of a reconsideration hearing for tenured faculty should there be financial exigency or program curtailment or elimination and says, “A reconsideration procedure shall be provided that affords the faculty member whose employment is to be terminated a fair hearing on the termination if the faculty member alleges that the decision to terminate was arbitrary or capricious.” Of course, determining if there were non-permissable reasons for nonreappointment or resolving other issues with job conditions also implies the necessity of fairness as a standard for the effective functioning of the institution.

There is no reason to conclude interview subjects may have been misleading. Indeed, in many cases, interviewees reported that their service period stretched over a considerable number of years. Still, many approximated the total cases they heard. Where committee reports were available, they indicate the number of cases heard but not their disposition.

In the early 2000s, several smaller institutions revamped their Faculty Handbooks with regard to employment rights and hearing process provisions in consultation with the UNC Faculty Assembly. This process was designed to assist in making certain that campus policies conformed appropriately to the UNC Code and Policy Manual and the existing associated regulations. But no additional training or guidance in the conduct of hearings was provided.

Outside of due process cases, some campus policies explicitly prohibit participation of an attorney in other types of hearings.

Again, see 101.3.1.1[R] or 101.3.1.2 [R] in the UNC Code and Policy Manual.

At institutions with more than one attorney on staff, a typical approach to this potential conflict of interest is to give the hearing committee access to an attorney other than the one representing the University (or the named respondents). This option is not realistic for smaller campuses.

Data provided by the UNC system office, July 11, 2019.