Disrupting Faculty Service: Using Technology to Increase Academic Service Productivity.

Abstract

Scholarly attention regarding faculty involvement has primarily focused on faculty opinions of shared governance and faculty influence on institutional decision-making. There has been limited attention given to academic service productivity and the effectiveness of traditional approaches toward the accomplishment of faculty service requirements. This paper discusses disruptive technological change as a subset of disruptive innovation and proposes a technology-based framework for increasing service productivity while maintaining effort with regard to faculty service requirements in academic institutions. Specifically, a social networking tool is used to approach academic service projects with organic involvement and measured progress. It is suggested that such an approach may have positive implications toward increasing productivity in academic service. Further, additional benefits inherent in the tool make possible the leveraging of external networks for further productivity gains with no increase in resources while fostering a standardization of products across universities.