49069 Leadership & Responsibility 2019 Autumn

Reading 3.1

“The Dean’s Disease: How the Darker Side of Power Manifests Itself in
the Office of Dean”

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Table of Contents
Introduction.................................................................................................................................................3
Critical analysis............................................................................................................................................3
Summary.................................................................................................................................................3
Key ideas presented in the article...........................................................................................................4
Evidences.................................................................................................................................................5
Conclusion...................................................................................................................................................6
References...................................................................................................................................................7

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Introduction
This study has been based on critically analysing an article by Arthur G. Bedeian namely ‘The
Dean’s Disease: How the Darker Side of Power Manifests Itself in the Office of the Dean’. For
that reason, the article has been summarized including a summary of the conclusions set by the
author. Furthermore, some important concepts and ideas presented in the article have been
illuminated in this study. Apart from that, the article and the evidences, used in the article, have
been evaluated on the ground of their relevance, validity, consistency and logic. Moreover,
both the level of originality and biases on the part of the author have been identified and
discussed in the study.

Critical analysis

Summary
The article talks about the negative side of having the omnipotent power in any field of our
society. Specifically, the article draws upon the darker side of exercising power by the deans of
universities and the aftermaths that come with the wrong handling of power. This article
illuminates that the whole university suffers due to the wrong handling of power bestowed
upon the deans. The author opines that dean of any university has the highest level of
responsibility and for that reason they area also bestowed with the highest amount of power in
the whole institution (Bedeian, 2002). However, after getting used to the initial days of joining
the institution, the deans become used to the excitement and gratitude that they receive from
other university personnel. The author thinks that it is in human nature that we always make
the wrong use of power that we have.

The shift, from being a responsible person to be a powerful person, slowly comes up with many
negative changes in the behaviour and thinking patterns of the deans. In this article, the author
highlights the fact that this darker side of power comes into front because of many surrounding
factors and the whole university is deemed responsible for bringing this negative side of the
deans in the universities. So, the article discusses those factors and reasons that are responsible

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for bringing such changes in a responsible person. In addition, some strategies have been given
by the author that can be useful in dealing with this kind of power play in the universities.
Furthermore, some precautions have also been suggested in this article that can be helpful in
preventing such darker side of power from being manifested in the deans (Bedeian, 2002). In
the conclusion, the author claims that many people get attracted to certain working positions
just because those positions come with a lot of power. Finally, the author points out the
statement that power can corrupt an individual, but this can be avoided with the help of the
whole university faculty in the context of the ‘dean’s disease’.

Key ideas presented in the article

First of all, the author shows originality of thoughts throughout the whole article. The concept
of power and its negative sides have been brilliantly illuminated by the author through using
the context of the power play that most universities go through. The term ‘the dean’s disease’
has been coined by the author that shows the first instance of his originality of thoughts
depicted in the article. The article has wider significance because it can be applied to those
unavoidable circumstances too that encourage unequal power distribution. From the term
‘disease’ it can be understood that the author relied upon psychological research for
investigating the reasons behind the change of behaviour showed by the deans. For that
reason, opinions of psychologists and psychoanalysts have been used as references in this
article.

Apart from that, remarks of great literary personas, like Sophocles, Lord Acton have been
presented in the article in order to establish the fact that power corrupts the deans in the
universities. The article used a deductive approach to reach to its conclusions. This can be said
because general researches on power manifestation have been implemented in the article in
order to talk about a specific instance of manifestation of power. For that reason, the author
has used his first-hand observation of working around such deans for three decades for
structuring this article (Bedeian, 2002). One interesting thing about this article is that the
author did not generalize his opinions about deans and thus he made it clear that he does not
think that all deans get affected by this ‘disease’. However, he also claimed that this particular

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disease can also be seen in other higher administrative personnel who are given a huge amount
of power in their respective institutions. In this way, the article has become a useful source for
doing other researches based on this topic of power manifestation.

On the other hand, the significance of this article gets even broader because the author did not
rely solely on his first-hand observations to construct his conclusions. If he would do so, the
scope of the article could have become very limited and clichéd. Three main reasons have been
mentioned in the article that affects the handling power according to the author including the
strategic praise showed by other faculty members to the dean in order to stay in the dean’s list
of favourites (Bedeian, 2002). Another reason behind this scenario is that faculty members
become doppelgangers or carbon copies of the dean so that it becomes easier for them to
upgrade their positions in the university. Moreover, the recommendations, on how to solve this
issue, have been mainly based on author’s innovative strategies and on some leadership
management strategies based on the researches on leadership in general.

Evidences
Over 30 different sources of data have been used in this article along with author’s own
reasoning. However, it has been noticed that most of the articles, used as references, are more
than 10 years old from the year this particular article was published (Bedeian, 2002). So, this
lessens the relevance of the evidences because the society has been changing in a rapid speed
and that is why, the conclusions based on those old evidences have less relevance today. The
overall presentation of thoughts has shown consistency because the conclusions have been
made after structuring the body paragraphs with a gradual establishment of thoughts.

On the other hand, the evidences, presented by the author for supporting his claims, seem to
be quite logical. This is so because those evidences come from various psychological researches
which justify the existence of the ‘dean’s disease’.

No instances of biases have been identified in the article apparently. However, the author
claimed that the idea for coming up with the concept of dean’s disease came to him after the
first-hand observations he made in his real life (Bedeian, 2002). So, maybe there were some

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reasons in the personal level that worked as motives for writing this article. On the contrary, by
saying that this article is not for all the deans in the world, the author eliminated the element of
bias from his research.

Conclusion
So, in this study, the article namely ‘The dean’s disease’ by A. Bedeian has been critically
analysed. For that reason, the article has been summarized focusing on the subject of the
article. In addition, some key concepts and ideas, presented in the article, have been identified
and evaluated in this study. Moreover, the evidences used in the article have been analysed on
the ground of their relevance, consistency and more.

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References
Bedeian, A. 2002, The Dean's Disease: How the Darker Side of Power Manifests Itself in the
Office of Dean, Academy of Management Learning & Education, vol 1, no 2, pp.164-173,.