Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Bottom-Up/Top-Down Leadership:
Contradiction or Hidden Phenomenon
Mary, a faculty member, develops an idea for a wellness center on campus. In talking with other colleagues, she realizes that there is a need for
the center and even some interest by others to help create it. She finds
out, however, that the administration turned down a proposal for a center
several years earlier. People say there is a chilly climate when it comes to
wellness on campus. Mary decides to pursue the idea anyway and creates
a proposal, develops an informal advisory board of colleagues, and looks
into grant funding as seed money. Mary considers ways she might garner
support from the administration for the wellness center. Mary faces a decision that many grassroots leaders encounterwhether, how and when
to converge your change ideas with those who hold formal positions of
power.
The literature in higher education does not document or help us to understand faculty members like Mary who want to create change and play
a leadership role. Higher education research on leadership and change
still focuses on leaders in positions of power such as presidents and provosts (Kezar, Carducci, & Contreras-McGavin, 2006). In recent years, a
few higher education scholars have examined leadership beyond presidents and provosts and focus on grassroots or bottom-up1 leadership and
how it contributes to institutional change and operations (for example,
Astin & Leland, 1991; Hart, 2005; Safarik, 2003). Grassroots or bottom-
The author would like to acknowledge other members of the grassroots leadership research project including Rozana Carducci, Melissa Contreras-McGavin, Tricia Bertram
Gallant, and Jaime Lester.
Adrianna Kezar is an Associate Professor at the University of Southern California.
The Journal of Higher Education, Vol. 83, No. 5 (September/October)
Copyright 2012 by The Ohio State University
The faculty and staff within our study are very much like Martha and
chose to stay within colleges and universities, even though they were
pursuing changes that were trying to fundamentally alter the campuses
on which they were located. Also, the activity of tempered radicals is
not a form of distributed leadership as the individuals are acting outside
formal authority structures.
Meyerson (2003) documents how tempered radicals use moderate, incremental actions to challenge the status quo of organizational norms.
Tempered radicals engage in a combination of five distinct change approaches: (a) resisting quietly in order to pursue personal congruence
(e.g., taking time off from work to observe important religious holidays not officially recognized by the organization or decorating ones
desk/office to exhibit support for a particular social issue), (b) turning
personal threats into opportunities by confronting discriminatory statements, assumptions, and organizational practices, (c) engaging in negotiations to identify alternative solutions to interpersonal and organizational conflicts, (d) leveraging small victories to achieve larger organizational results, and (e) organizing collective action around a critical
issue or organizational controversy (e.g., starting an employee forum to
address the issue of employer-provided child care). These change approaches are based on their comfort and understanding of power dynamics. Rather than using positional or formal authority to challenge the
status quo, tempered radicals rely on the cumulative effect of incremental actions to create change. By choosing among a range of strategies
for fostering change that differ on dimensions of intent (i.e., exhibiting
personal congruence or challenging statements versus collective action
and organizing) and scope of impact (i.e., influencing a small number of
individuals versus swaying the opinions and attitudes of many organiza-
The efforts of the faculty resulted in a broadened vision for the campus
from research on environmentalism to a commitment to teaching environmentalism, including a new environmental studies program. In addition to getting support for a program, they also obtained a new building
to house their efforts and to increase their research in this area.
However, despite the progress, the environmental initiative faced
some challenges. At times, the president seemed to be backing away
from a commitment or direction the faculty thought they had agreed
upon. One faculty member commented on how they addressed this
issue: when it appeared the administration was backing off, we came
up with even grander plans as a strategy to get the president to continue
on the existing commitments. So for the campus farm, they began to
say they were not sure this was a good idea and we countered withwe
think it needs to be twice as big as their proposal (and much larger than
we really thought it needed to be).
Ultimately, the president found himself with a more committed faculty because his vision was enlarged to include their grassroots efforts
that had been developed over 15 years. The initiative is still primarily
led by faculty but the top provides supportseveral top-down leaders
acknowledged that it is important to honor those who have created the
change by keeping them actively involved. Six years later, bottom-up
and top-down leaders share a common commitment and concern for environmental issues. Both parties feel that the environmental movement
has been a success on campus. As one faculty member quipped, we
have more than I dreameda new building, a campus sustainability
plan, a major, lots of faculty interest, a new curriculum, and tons of new
support for environmentalism. But like I said, we had lots of struggles,
particularly early on, and people never believed we would achieve what
we haveparticularly working with the administration.
Diversity Initiative at a Community College
The second example of bottom-up/top-down leadership takes place
among a group of women leaders at a community college that is committed to hiring more women and faculty of color and helping students
of color be successful that they labeled a diversity agenda. The group
began when three women faculty started to have lunch and talk about
the remarkably low number of women of color on campus and women
Several years after they began having lunches, campus leaders established an office of diversity, hired a director, and established a diversity
hiring committee. However, these changes were not based on pressures
from the bottom-up, but because the administration had seen the office
on other campuses and had a stated commitment to diversity. While the
group could have seen this as a sign to rejoice, they were skeptical at
first: it seemed to come out of nowhere as if someone said, you should
have one of these offices. So, we were not sure it would actually accomplish much or if the institution was really behind it.
The group met for a few more years and began reflecting on the topdown efforts of the diversity hiring committee and described common
concerns about institutional efforts to recruit and maintain a diverse faculty. The women believed that by combining some of their ideas with
a process that had institutional support and money, they could create
broader change than they had alone in the past. One staff member noted:
Sure, we had gotten a handful of people hired and maybe changed the
teaching practices of 2025 faculty, but we were not making that much
They met for six months to strategize better approaches including cluster hiring and mentoring. Then they realized they needed to gain access
to top-down planning and they started by contacting the director of the
diversity officeinviting her to meetings. The director of the office of
diversity played the role of translator by working with the administration, but also attending the womens group. One faculty member describes the advantages of working closely with the director of the office
of diversity:
She [the director] helped open up communication channels between us and
the administration. It also made us aware of how to work with the administrationwho we needed to talk withwho is influential. We also did not
really understand how to talk effectively with the administration. Also, she
suggested not only contacts, language, but also strategies like waiting until
the budget is settled or not asking for money right away. So, this helped
formulate a better approach.
After two years of using these various strategies, the hiring task force
committed to a different approach to the recruitment and retention of
faculty. Six years later, they have now been successful in dramatically
changing the profile of their faculty and in altering the curriculum. The
new strategic plan for the campus now highlights diversity as one of the
major efforts for the next five years. As the quote above suggested, the
group is currently experiencing some problems in terms of the direction
in which to move forwardone group believes they can work with the
administration and move forward and another group feels that they need
to go back to being a bottom-up only group. The group that wants to
return to a bottom-up approach believes that members of the administration have hired a more diverse faculty, but that they are hiring conservative individuals and that the radical goals of the group are being subverted and watered down. These women feel that they should not have
trusted the administration with the hiring process. In fact, many women
were suspicious of bringing the initiative to the institutional level, but
they lost out in the earlier discussions. One faculty member describes
this issue, Several of us were worried that bringing attention to our efforts more broadly, it could actually compromise the work. We thought
continuing the slower, smaller, personal approach was better. What is
happening now suggests we were right.
There is also concern among administrators that the womens group
has too much power and that they are empire building. Recently a new
president was hired on campus and the womens group was very involved
Within the first six months of the presidents tenure, she established
seed funds for faculty to create innovations in their courses and paid
for this work as long as they presented the work to the campus, hoping to get other faculty on board. The president also started to highlight
the work of these innovative science instructors in all of her speeches,
providing the support that she felt would help them to be successful.
The president created a campus speaker series around the importance
of Science for All and secured the deans of several schools to sponsor
and support new thinking around the sciences.
Table 1
Kaleidoscope Convergence: Model of Bottom-Up/Top-Down Leadership
Assumptions
Bottom-up/top-down leadership
Overlapping interests of
bottom and top
Direction of interaction
between the two levels
related to change
Focused on bottom-up and way it converges with top. Also demonstrates way top can be supportive of bottom-up (more research
needed).
Challenges
Bottom-up not realizing their interests are different from the top,
appearance top-down is usurping the initiative, too much skepticism from leaders, bottom-up being considered a sell out, and
power dynamics
Closely related to timing is capitalizing on and being open to opportunities. For example, several of the faculty who were part of the environmental initiative tested the waters from time to time with senior
administrators to see if there were any opportunities for expanding their
initiative. When the new president hired several new administrators
who shared an interest in environmentalism, they seized the moment to
broaden their efforts. With the diversity initiative, they also capitalized
on a strategic time and opportunity when the office of diversity was established and there was more attention across campus to diversity than
there had been in previous times. However the case of the pedagogical
innovation demonstrates that bottom-up leaders may need to be cautious
and evaluate the opportunity. Does the president already have support
on campus before they offer up their support to our initiative? How long
should bottom-up efforts be in place before they try to move toward institutionalization?
In both the environmental and diversity case, bottom-up leaders had
relied on translators (director of the office of diversity, faculty who
have formerly been administrators) to help them frame their change initiative, to identify the right data to package their ideas and to use the
appropriate language to gain attention and support for their ideas. Trans-
3 Our study uses the definition of leadership offered by Astin and Leland (1991):
leadership is a practice that involves pursuing change and is often collective.
4
Convergence is similar to, but unique from, distributed leadership in which individuals in positions of authority delegate power. Grassroots leaders are operating without
any delegated authority. Distributed leadership (in being tied to authority) always comes
from the top-down, whereas convergence can come from the bottom-up.
5 The issue of authority that faculty and staff possess is debatable. Officially, they
have no authority (Birnbaum, 1988). Organizations such as the American Association
of University Professors have argued that faculty should be at least advisory as part of
shared governance and have delegated authority for certain areas such as curriculum.
Some campuses observe the recommendation for shared governance as a principle. Most
campuses do not have shared governance beyond an advisory capacity (which means
not true authority). Therefore, the study authors acknowledge there is no absolute statement that can be made about authority, but generally, faculty and staff have no formal
authority on most campuses particularly as it relates to overall campus decision-making
related to budget, enrollments, or operational functions. Faculty have autonomy as professionals and this provides discretion and some level of informal authority particularly
related to their own teaching and research. Meyersons study notes how ultimately all
employees have agency and some informal discretion and power (which is different
from formal authority). We are not suggesting that people do not have informal authority and agency, merely that they do not have formal authority. Not having authority is
different from not having power or influence.
6 Traditional social movement theory tends to see grassroots and top-down leadership
as isolated from each other and is less open than the tempered radicals framework to
identifying convergence as possible. On very rare occasions, grassroots efforts change
mainstream society, such as in the civil rights or abolition movements, but generally
these two levels are not conceptualized as converging. Bottom-up leaders and top-down
leaders are assumed to not share similar interests or concernsfor many social movement theorists, convergence is contradictory (Tarrow, 1998). One of the important contributions of this paper is to challenge this assumption and see some of the possibilities
of convergence in institutional settings.
7 When we use the term case we are referring to the site. When we use nested case
we are referring to the initiative within a site such as diversity or environmentalism.
8 While we only presented one case of each outcome, there were many other examples on the campuses we studied of these different outcomes. It cut across different
types of change initiatives (campus and community partnerships, to diversity, to mentoring programs, to service learning, to childcare centers) on different types of campuses.
9 Certainly the case examples do demonstrate they create informal structures such as
networks.
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Appendix A
Two Frameworks for Understanding the Convergence of Bottom-Up and Top-Down Leadership
Compared to Study Findings
Distributed or shared
leadership
Should be encouraged
more to create more
shared interests and
strategies
Bottom-up trying to
create change incrementally
Focused on bottom-up
and way it converges
with top. Also demonstrates way top can be
supportive of bottomup (more research
needed).
Strategies to work
between the levels
Specific set of
strategies needed:
empowerment, accountability, decisionmaking partnership.
Communication and
facilitation skills are
key to making these
levels work together
effectively
Challenges
Assumptions
Tempered radical
Appendix B
Characteristics of the Five Campuses: General Characteristics Of Sites
Char.
Community
Research Univ.
Public Regional
Technical
Liberal Arts
Size
25,000
25,000
17,000
30,000
3,000
Control
Public
Private
Public
Public
Private
Selectivity
Open access
Highly
selective
Moderately
selective
Moderately
selective
Highly
selective
Resources
Constrained
Moderately
strong
Moderate,
constrained
more recently
Constrained
Strong
resources
Location
Outside urban
Urban
Rural
Suburban
Suburban
Diverse by
race and
gender
Diverse by
gender
Diverse by
race, gender,
and social
class
Diverse by
gender, and
increasingly
by race
Administration
Strong &
controlling
Weak
Strong &
controlling
Strong
Faculty
Very diverse
and staff
and
demographics progressive
and political
orientation
Increasingly
diverse, and
moderately
conservative
Not diverse
and fairly
conservative
Very diverse
and progressive but more
conservative
Increasingly
diverse and
progressive
Culture
Collegial,
close knit,
currently
some politics
between the
administration
and faculty,
classic liberal
arts experience
Weak
Student
oriented,
developmental, proud of
mission &
colleagues,
unionized
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