Every institution has them:
the administrator who treats power as ornament,
the one paralysed by fear and indecision,
the political survivor who switches sides with changing equations,
the manipulator who sees capable people as threats,
the silent worker who never (visibly) desired authority but strengthens the institution when entrusted with it,
the accidental administrator who never desired authority but quietly becomes the institution’s strongest pillar when responsibility arrives,
and the invisible yet competent leader whom power structures often keep away from decision-making roles.
A few reflections on power, insecurity, manipulation, and institutional culture in academia.
The Revolving Chair
What should be the qualities of a good administrator?
This is perhaps one of the most important questions anyone aspiring for power—however small or symbolic—should ask themselves before occupying a chair in any institution.
Not because authority is inherently dangerous, but because institutions often suffer quietly under people who desire power without understanding responsibility.
And nowhere is this more visible than in academia.
Most people outside academic spaces may not imagine educational institutions as spaces deeply shaped by power struggles. We like to think of academia as a world of ideas, intellectual exchange, and scholarship. But beneath seminar halls, faculty meetings, and official circulars lies another reality:
the constant circulation of ambition, visibility, networking, and administrative aspiration.
Every political ecosystem in higher education gradually produces its own set of people eager for administrative labels—Coordinator, Director, Convenor, Head, Chairperson, Dean. Sometimes the attraction is not the work itself, but the psychological comfort of designation.
The chair becomes an emotional object.
But administrative positions demand far more than authority. They require:
stamina,
decisiveness,
emotional balance,
accountability,
and the ability to absorb criticism without collapsing into insecurity.
Unfortunately, not everyone who desires power possesses the temperament to exercise it.
The Ornamental Administrator
There are administrators who imagine leadership as a decorative extension of their official identity.
For them, the office is not a site of responsibility but a stage for symbolic authority. They enjoy assigning duties, forwarding instructions, and exercising control from the comfort of their seat, while carefully distancing themselves from actual labour.
Their understanding of administration begins and ends with delegation.
Ironically, many such administrators spend enormous energy trying to please everyone around them. In attempting to satisfy every faction, every group, and every individual, they eventually create confusion, inconsistency, and institutional fatigue.
Popularity becomes more important than clarity.
And institutions slowly descend into disorder.
The Administrator Who Fears Everything
Then comes another category—the paranoid administrator.
These are individuals who trust nobody.
Every file appears suspicious.
Every colleague seems politically motivated.
Every decision feels risky.
Such administrators transform institutions into spaces of anxiety.
The tragedy here is not merely incompetence. It is paralysis.
Because the most damaging administrator is often not the one who makes wrong decisions, but the one who refuses to make decisions at all.
In educational institutions, delayed decisions are never abstract. They affect:
student futures,
research opportunities,
appointments,
examinations,
scholarships,
and careers.
Administrative indecision quietly destroys institutional rhythm.
And everyone around such individuals eventually becomes exhausted by their fears, hesitations, and endless postponements.
The Political Survivor
Every institution also produces a more dangerous figure—the politically manipulative administrator.
Unlike the insecure administrator who fears everyone openly, this individual operates through strategy, calculation, and carefully managed loyalties. They possess an extraordinary ability to switch sides depending on shifts in power equations. Principles are rarely permanent for them; survival is.
Such administrators often maintain cordial relationships across rival camps, not out of diplomacy, but out of self-preservation. They instinctively move toward whichever side appears stronger at a given moment. Their ideological flexibility is usually presented as “practical wisdom,” though in reality it is often political opportunism disguised as administrative maturity.
What makes them particularly harmful is not merely their ambition, but their tendency to perceive competent, independent, or outspoken individuals as threats. Since they rely heavily on controlling institutional equations, anyone capable of autonomous thinking becomes a source of anxiety.
And so begins a subtler form of institutional violence.
These administrators may:
isolate individuals from opportunities,
delay files,
manipulate communication,
spread selective narratives,
create informal hostility,
or strategically overburden those they perceive as inconvenient.
Rarely do they attack directly. Their methods are usually procedural, psychological, and political.
The institution under such administrators slowly becomes a culture of caution where people begin to fear visibility, honesty, and independent opinion. Faculty members become hesitant to speak freely. Younger colleagues learn the art of silence. Administrative systems become less about institutional growth and more about preserving fragile power networks.
Ironically, politically manipulative administrators often appear highly efficient on the surface. They understand systems, manage impressions well, and know how to remain useful to shifting centres of authority. But beneath that efficiency lies a deeply corrosive culture:
institutions cease to function as spaces of collective academic growth and begin operating like political survival arenas.
The greatest damage caused by such administrators is not always visible in official records. It appears instead in:
exhausted colleagues,
silenced voices,
lost opportunities,
institutional distrust,
and the gradual normalization of fear as workplace culture.
An institution can survive inefficiency for some time.
What it struggles to survive is the systematic erosion of trust.
The Strategic Networker
Then there is the fascinating figure who publicly performs disinterest in power while carefully remaining connected to the “who’s who” of the system.
They appear reluctant.
But they are always available when the opportunity arrives.
Unlike the previous categories, however, these administrators often work hard once they obtain authority. They understand systems, networks, timing, and institutional mechanics. They may genuinely attempt to justify the title they have acquired.
As long as they remain efficient and capable of taking decisions, institutions usually survive reasonably well under them.
Yet one uncomfortable question remains:
How much independence can survive under power obtained through political indebtedness?
Because sometimes competence survives only by surrendering autonomy.
The Accidental Administrator
There is also another category that rarely receives enough attention in academic spaces—the accidental administrator.
These are individuals who never actively pursue positions of power, lobby for titles, or cultivate visibility within institutional networks. In many cases, administration arrives to them not as ambition, but as responsibility thrust upon them by circumstance or collective trust.
Ironically, such people often become the most effective administrators.
Because they do not see the chair as an extension of their ego, they approach administration with clarity rather than insecurity. They are neither obsessed with pleasing everyone nor paralysed by fear. Their decisions are usually guided not by factional loyalties or personal gain, but by one central concern:
What strengthens the institution?
Such administrators are capable of working without spectacle. They participate in labour instead of merely supervising it. They do not weaponize authority, nor do they romanticize it. Most importantly, they are willing to take difficult decisions without fear or favour when institutional well-being demands it.
They may not always be politically convenient figures because they are less interested in maintaining power equations than in ensuring institutional functionality. Yet institutions often remember such people long after their terms end—not because they performed authority loudly, but because they quietly left systems functioning better than they found them.
The Invisible Administrator
And finally, there exists another category:
people who may possess genuine administrative ability but rarely receive opportunities.
They are often:
independent-minded,
capable of taking decisions,
intellectually self-reliant,
and unwilling to flatter power structures.
Which is precisely why institutions often remain suspicious of them.
Power systems prefer predictability.
Truly capable administrators can become inconvenient because they may act according to institutional logic rather than political expectation.
And so many institutions repeatedly overlook those who could actually lead them effectively.
When Power Becomes Performance
The crisis of administration in academia is not merely bureaucratic.
It is cultural.
Psychological.
Emotional.
Institutions are shaped not only by policies and regulations, but by the personalities occupying positions of authority.
A bad administrator can exhaust an institution even without openly harming it.
A good administrator, on the other hand, creates institutional trust:
by participating in work instead of merely assigning it,
by taking decisions instead of endlessly delaying them,
by remaining firm without becoming authoritarian,
and by understanding that leadership is fundamentally a form of care.
Because administration is not ornamental power.
It is custodial responsibility.
The Final Test of Leadership
Perhaps the real measure of an administrator is not the authority they enjoyed while occupying the chair.
It is something much simpler.
When their term ends, does the institution breathe easier because they are gone, or function better because they were there?
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