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3.2.5.3. Culture
Polycentric
Since its formation from an initiative organized by some student activists and professors from various disciplines, the FU has always granted substantial autonomy to its academic departments. Today, the FU consists out 71 academic institutions, which deal with matters from languages to engineering. Although there is considerable institutionalized overlap in the case of the regional centres, etc. the problems which arose in veterinary education and mathematics seemed to be so different that the academics did not readily ask for the pooling of services. Nor was such collusion perceived as necessary as West-Germany was going through a phase of unprecedented economic growth (Wirtschaftswunder) and so resources were readily available. As described in the section about its location, the polycentricism of the FU is also visible through the dispersed housing arrangements [i].
Open Minded
Born out of the reaction to the intolerant and legalistic practices introduced by the Unter den Linden University, the FU has from its inception been a place for free- thinking and internationally focused interests. The latter has been manifested in the regional studies institutions, which naturally gave the FU direct academic links to universities and peers in these regions. The FU-Berlin European Studies (FU-Best) program is a good example of how the FU is prepared to cater to international students.
Open mindedness became one, if not the most apparent characteristic during the alternative cultural movement, known as 68. FU was one of the centres of student protest and Habermas [ii] and especially Marcuse (1967) presented his conceptualization of a “Critical University” – meant to educate students for participation in politics and society – in a speech held in the FU. The open mindedness is of course also related to the wide array of disciplines that have to co-exist and collaborate in the FU.
Manic-depressive
Caused by more than fifteen years of constant budget and personnel cuts, many of the employees have entered into a manic-depressive mood (FU chancellor 33). Older faculty and administrators are especially sceptical of the many organizational changes, and are rather passively complying with what they are asked to do. Some of the interviewees have assessed this group to be as large as one third of FU staff (FU management multiple 39). This negative state is fostered by the leaderships mandated approach of “participation, but no co-determination” (FU Chancellor 42) when it comes to strategic decision- making.
Laissez Faire
Despite the grumbling pessimists, it has to be documented that the university gives its employees relatively high levels of freedom. Within any hierarchical organization, there are always individual knowledge entrepreneurs, who are motivated to find and realize opportunities, and produce very good results for example in the area of internet based innovations (e-learning: Dr. Apostolopoulos, spin-offs: Prof. Schiller, and research: Prof. Perchelt)
3.2.5.4. Organizational Learning
There is currently no university wide management or organizational learning program with the goal of codifying knowledge and competencies as they are implemented at the FU. As in the LSE, most organizational learning happens between befriended or otherwise connected colleagues and within the personal websites of the professors (and administrative staff) that are available. Access to an in house ‘yellow pages’ does serve as a key resource to locating in-house knowledge. Also similar to the LSE but less developed, is a press contact service that facilitates contact between FU professors and the media.
Individual departments have naturally developed communities of peers inside and outside the FU.
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[i] It is important to underline that because of the polycentric culture, all observations about the FU’s cumulative condition can only be understood as snapshot descriptions of the ‘singular instances’ that were recorded during the field-work. Nevertheless the author believes that, given the researchers embeddedness in the practice and culture, a realistic snapshot of the overall climate is portrayed.
[ii] Jürgen Habermas: "Rede über die politische Rolle der Studentenschaft in der Bundesrepublik",
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