Institutional Policy and Its Abuses.
Observers of organizational life have treated policy-makers and policy manuals to caustic verbal blows for years. For example, it has been said that the last act of a dying organization is to issue a greatly enlarged policy manual. But policy itself is like any other management tool: it can be used or abused. Thus, the question for college administrators is not whether one should have formal policy, but rather what policies are needed and how they can be put to work for more effective organizational functioning. The purposes of this article are to review the role of institutional policy, to cite frequent abuses of policy, and finally to delineate the several principles of policy management. It is hoped that a review of the pitfalls and standards of policy application will provide a set of criteria against which a university administration may gauge the effectiveness of its existing policy management.