Development of the organisation towards fewer, larger units

The aim is to provide better conditions for the departments' education and research by creating a more robust and efficient leadership, management and administration. This is important in order to maintain the quality of the core activities as they come up against a rapidly changing wider world and increasingly tight economic conditions. The change will be made while maintaining a high level of autonomy in the core business. 
The current organisation with small and many units leads to a number of problems and difficulties with a high risk of negative impact on education and research. Some of the issues that have been identified are:

• Small budgets limit the departments’ capacity to make decisions and make them more vulnerable to, for example, declines in external funding or increased co-financing requirements.  
• Small units find it more difficult to staff academic management posistions and to create sustainable leadership.
• Small volumes of staff entail a risk that collegial elections will be reduced to a paper exercise. 
• Small units often mean limited administrative support for management and other staff, as well as an increased vulnerability to staff changes.
• Many units make it difficult for resource-efficient coordination of administration in areas such as finance, human resources and quality assurance.

• Many units lead to local interpretations of rules and guidelines and several different processes for handling the same type of case.     

  More information about the background to the organisational change can be found in the Faculty Board's directional decision – se link above. 

The aim is that changes in the way the organisation is managed and administered will create the conditions for further developing and improving research and education. By bringing together different subjects and environments within the framework of larger departments, it is also the aim to create synergies and new ideas that contribute to renewal in research and education.

At the same time, it should be noted that new, larger units are not intended to reduce the number of main areas or subjects in research education, but rather to preserve a diversity of subjects and specialisations in both research and education.

Collegial governance is about both culture and structure. The cultural aspect includes, among other things, the idea of the importance of enlightened dialogue. The structural aspect means that the college elects its own leaders, but also that the college – or rather representatives organized in boards, committees and councils – make joint decisions or make proposals for decisions.

Collegial governance is thus based on decisions being made on the basis of the expertise and experience that exists in research and education. That said, it's important to remember that collegial governance coexists with a line organization. The line organisation's governance mechanisms are not based on peer quality assessment, but on laws and regulations, strategic goals and the allocation of financial resources.

There are more colleagues who can take on assignments as head of department or member of board, department management, preparatory groups and the nomination committee. A larger department also makes it possible to rotate between these assignments and prepare younger colleagues to take on different assignments.

The organisational project was not initiated with the aim of downsizing and making savings, but to meet increased demands and challenges with existing resources. However, since the start of the project, financial challenges have become more acute and demands to do more with less are currently tending to increase. The creation of larger units appears increasingly necessary to minimise the risk of more radical savings and to maintain the quality of core activities.

An alternative to reducing the number of units would be to centralise significantly more recourses and decision-making power at the faculty level. Such a solution would address several of the challenges that have been identified, not least in terms of inefficient use of our overall administrative resources, vulnerable economies and limited ability to make strategic decisions. However, centralisation would go against an established practice within the faculty, which is characterised by a very high degree of autonomy.

Another option would be to fully professionalise the management and governance organisation by abandoning collegial leadership in favour of recruited managers. However, this alternative is not compatible with the University's work and delegation of authority and is not seen as desirable.

The challenges of many and small departments/units have been noted by previous faculty managements for at least fifteen years. Increased demands for strategic and efficient use of resources and the growing need for specialised support functions have made it increasingly urgent to address the situation. By forming larger units in the next few years, we hope to avoid ending up in an urgent need for change. 

The project group has presented a number of proposals/scenarios for mergers between different departments. The various scenarios have been anchored in the steering group and were also presented at a workshop with the heads of department at the end of January. During the spring, discussions based on these scenarios continue.

At the end of April, the Faculty Board decided that a new department, the Department of Communication, will be established in January 2025. The department will consist of the Department of Strategic Communication in Helsingborg, the subject of Media and Communication Studies in Lund and the journalism programme in Malmö.

There is also a process ongoing of a merger between the Department of Sociology and the Department of Gender Studies. A proposal to include the subject Gender Studies in the Department of Sociology will be presented to the Faculty Board in the autumn. If the Board takes that decision, the new department will be effective  from January 2025.

Technical, administrative and academic management staff may be most affected.  

For some TA staff, the organisational change means that they will be part of new, larger administrative groups at the department level. The ambition is that it will lead to improved coordination of administrative processes and contribute to reduced vulnerability, but also provide opportunities for in-depth expertise that the organisation needs. 

Teachers and researchers will be affected by becoming part of a larger unit with a new management and more colleagues, but their tasks will not be directly affected.
 

This is not yet decided and it is something that departments concerned must be able to influence. The project group aims to develop models and proposals on how larger units can be organised that can form the basis for discussions. During the autumn, the project group will gather knowledge about how other major units, both within Lund University and other universities, have chosen to organise themselves. 

The organisation and management structure will depend on which departments are to merge and the conditions that prevail in that particular merger. It is important to point out that collegial governance must be safeguarded and further developed in the new constellations.

The risks identified so far are mainly related to autonomy, subject identity and profiling in relation to the outside world, as well as size asymmetry between the units.

Other risks may include increased distance between management and employees and the emergence of an increasingly complex structure with new hierarchical levels within each department. The task of the project group is to relate to these risks and make proposals that take these and additional risks into account in the course of work.

Although the project involves risks, it is important to remember that an unchanged organizational structure would also bring risks and challenges.