USING AUTOETHNOGRAPHY TO REFRAME AN ‘ADMINISTRATIVE ACCIDENT’ AS AN 'ADMINISTRATIVE EXPERIMENT'
Angela J. Murphya
aFlorida A & M University, USA
Abstract
Although leadership changes can occur with substantial advance notice, such shifts are sometimes more abrupt. When unforeseen leadership vacancies arise in educational institutions, faculty can serve in temporary or interim capacities to fill them. Informed by my experiences with unexpected shifts in leadership, I use autoethnography to explore the challenges of serving as an interim department head with scant preparation. Autoethnography is a form of narrative methodology that sees the author connect their personal experience to a broader cultural phenomenon through self-reflection and meaning-making. The dominant challenges uncovered in this autoethnography are consistent with the literature on the training and development needs of department heads. My reflexive analysis identifies several learning themes: conditional acceptance, exit strategy, and ‘North Star’ faculty leadership. These concepts helped reframe my interim department chair experiences: Instead of an ‘administrative accident’ that I sought to avoid, I took part in an ‘administrative experiment’ that refreshed my career focus. Furthermore, these revelations combine with findings from the literature on department heads to call for an increase in intentional preparation by implementing ongoing training and development opportunities.
Keywords: autoethnography, department head, department chair, training, development
JEL Classification: I23, M12, J24