Organizational culturein private higher education: a case study of a new private universityin post-soviet azerbauan

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administrators recognize that change will come about slowly and acknowledge that the chancellor wields the power and authority in process of creating a new bureaucracy that would coordinate the various units of Khazar and distribute power.

The absence of a governing board of tmstees is noteworthy among private universities in Azerbaijan ahd Khazar is no exception. Tmstee authority, an institutional arrangement that where prominent outsiders represent the interests of the university by acting as "the long-run caretakers, finally responsible for the fate of the enterprise, and, as a body, are commonly the legal owners or legally established managers..."(Clark, 1983, p. 117). Though originating in English higher education, tmsteeship has become strongly entrenched in U.S. higher education (Rauh, 1969; Epstein, 1974) and has grown substantially in Latin America (Levy, 1980, 1986), in both the public and private sector. When asked about the constimtion of a board of tmstees to govem Khazar University, the chancellor stated that his long-term strategy has always been to establish a trustee board that would oversee all the financial matters relating to the universities. At present, he was looking at different models of tmsteeship and wanted to have a board consisting of prominent scholars, politicians, and business leaders. He admitted, though, that it would take some time to establish this trustee board because the concept was still foreign to many in Azerbaijan.

In the absence of a board of tmstees, the chancellor, then acts as the chief operating officer of the university. He alone makes the final decisions relating to the budget of the university, student admissions, and the hiring of faculty and staff, working with input from the various administrators, deans, and department heads through collective bodies like the Academic Council of which he is chair. In the eyes of many at Khazar, the university is the private property of the chancellor and he is able to do with it as he pleases. Though the chancellor has a free hand in decision-making at Khazar, his management style not like that of a despotic leader who wields his authority in , public ways. He is a quiet, unassuming figure around the institution; his interaction with subordinates is typically marked by sly humor and outward displays of cordiality. Of his own style of leadership, the chancellor said, "In

general, I am a shy person. I don't like to order people around and be domineering. I want to draw the teaching staff together, using a team approach...".