Flattened hierarchies. Structural reform and Directors in the Management Board

1973

The structural reform of 1973 brought a greater right of codetermination for the staff and finally implemented the amendments to the Statutes which had been made back in 1964. The new clause was now successively embedded in the By-Laws of the Institutes. It raised the Department Heads to the status of Directors, corresponding to their academic achievements. Structurally, the MPG therefore obtained a more democratic form, with all Department Directors of an Institute now being equal and regularly taking seats on the Institute’s Board of Management. The change thus brought in an administrative correction to the Harnack principle, which is the most important principle of the Society and which stems from the very inception of the KWS: It provides for the support of especially creative and innovative scientists and their ideas, which may even be diametrically opposed to established research tenets.

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