How CEO Deans in Academic Pharmacy Describe and Manage High-performing and Low-performing Faculty

Area of Science:

• Organizational Behavior in Academia
• Human Resources Management in Higher Education
• Academic Pharmacy Leadership

Background:

• Academic institutions face challenges in differentiating high-performing faculty.
• Defining and managing faculty contributions beyond standard productivity metrics is essential.
• Understanding organizational fit is key to faculty evaluation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To gather perspectives from Chief Executive Officer (CEO) deans on faculty categorization.
• To explore the definitions and identification of
• star
• and
• deadweight
• faculty.
• To understand current strategies for recruiting, retaining, and managing faculty.

Main Methods:

• A focus group of CEO deans was conducted at the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP) 2019 Interim Meeting.
• A semi-structured interview guided by an organizational behavior framework was employed.
• Content analysis with axial coding was used to analyze the qualitative data.

Main Results:

• Star faculty exhibit extraordinary citizenship and utilize their networks to enhance the program and colleagues.
• Current efforts to recognize star faculty are nascent and require strengthening.
• A distinction was made between unproductive (
• deadweight
• ) faculty and more deleterious ones, with the former posing unique HR challenges.

Conclusions:

• Faculty comportment and behaviors extending beyond performance metrics are increasingly recognized as important.
• Findings provide a foundation for future research on organizational effectiveness in academic pharmacy.
• This study highlights the need for nuanced approaches to faculty evaluation and management.