Effective Leadership Attributes in Institutional Practices

DECENTRALISATION

Decentralisation and participative management is best exemplified in Saveetha Institute of Medical And Technical Sciences. The organisational hierarchy incorporated into the University’s framework comprises the Vice chancellor heading the university and superintending the Registrar and Deans. The Registrar of the University heads a team with the Deputy registrar and Joint registrar. The Registrar supervises the Deans of all institutions. Each institute has a Dean, upto 13 Associate/Assistant Deans, 15 program directors and 60 Department Heads. This system is unique to SIMATS. The Program director is responsible for the improvement of the program and will monitor both the undergraduate and postgraduate students. The Department has an academic and an administrative head to take care of the students, teaching and non teaching faculty.

At SIMATS we follow the management principles to improve efficiency by having 6-8 members in the core team who take care of the responsibilities and also ensure the work is equally delegated amongst the members. This practice avoids social loafing and allows maximum participation across all strata.

OUTPUT OF DECENTRALISATION & PARTICIPATIVE MANAGEMENT

This principle has worked wonders with the Engineering discipline where 400 faculty are employed. There were 12 departments to begin with and after decentralisation they were split into 55 specialised departments with 8-10 members in a team. The specialised departments are bestowed with freedom to develop the infrastructure, facilities, curriculum changes and collaborations. This practice has enhanced the students and faculty for attending webinars, conferences, faculty development programs and e-talks in large numbers. The number of Continuing Education programmes conducted also increased three fold. The research facilities were improved by opening new labs after receiving the proposals from the respective departments. The number of publications also increased two fold.

The stakeholders of SIMATS include students, parents, employees, employers, alumni and external examiners. The Students give feedback on the theory classes, curriculum, faculty, infrastructure, research and food outlets within the campus. The feedback on academic related issues are analysed by the core committee and brainstormed ideas are formulated as proposals by the institutions which will be presented to the academic council through BoS. The faculty, students, alumni, and external examiners also give feedback to improve the quality of the research work. Our cite score with the Web of Science has increased six fold in the last three years by implementing the feedback received.

This incredible power is given to the students to give feedback and bring about changes in the quality of work that we do. Our online portal system ARMS - through which any student/employee can register a complaint with regards to the academics, infrastructure, inventories or any of the activities within the campus. The query is assigned immediately to the technical support and the issue is sorted. The issue is resolved only after the complaint is attended to completely and a feedback is taken. The quality of campus living is improved with the feedback process. Decentralisation is done by involving all strata in the feedback and implementation process and this ensures participative management.