I have worked with many such departments, and the best advice I can give
you is to reconsider your assumptions: a) that academic organisations are
not like commercial organisations, and b)that it will help this department
to show it models of happy organisations elsewhere.
Academic departments are troubled for the same reasons as any other
organisation, and the difficult part is getting beyond and behind the easy
explanations, like "personality conficts" to find the specific and
particular reasons for the conflicts here.
You probably need background and context. How does this university reward,
promote? How does it budget? Are the conflicts generated by the scarcity
of promotions, salary increases? Are some faculty angry because they think
they have been overlooked unfairly in the distribution of rewards?
Are there issues generating conflict: say, one faction wanting more reward
to go to teaching, and less emphasis on research? Has such an issue led to
factions: a teaching faction, a research faction?
You might need to make an analysis of power and decision making. Is the
department leader called "head" or "chair"? Does s/he have a large budget
of power, or is s/he really a chair who presides, but all decisions are
made by vote?
If the department keeps minutes of its meetings, reading the archives can
often give you insight into the nature of the conflict.
If not, interviews of a deep kind may be needed to get at the real sources
of the conflicts.
Steve Eskow
--Steve Eskow <dreskow@corp.webb.net>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>