Here’s a lesson from a university in how not to support your employees. For those of you in the academic world, nothing here will surprise you (you may accuse me of toning down the story, even). But for anyone in business, I hope at the very least this typical story will cure you of any grass-is-greener (or grass-is-more-sensible, or grass-is smarter) feelings you might have.
Photo: Bibi
I’m on the docket to teach an advanced problem solving course this coming fall, and the best book for this particular course happens to be published by a consultancy in England called IFR. The campus bookstore is a for-profit store with a contract with the university, and the bookstore routinely tries to minimize its costs by under-ordering textbooks.
Over time, the bookstore managers have found that some significant percentage of students orders textbooks from places like Amazon, where they can frequently be had for much less than the bookstore is able to sell them. So, rather than have to return books to the distributor, the bookstore just orders fewer books than will be needed for the course. For a course with an expected enrollment of 25, the bookstore may order 15 books.
What happens when there are too few books in the bookstore?
Now what generally happens is that this causes students to go through the first several classes of the semester without a textbook. In this particular case, with the book not available through Amazon and coming from across the pond, I’d say it’s more likely to be several weeks without a textbook.
Yay England!
So I contacted the author in England, who very generously offered to ship me a stack of the books (at a 15% academic discount, even) and to take back any books I didn’t sell to the students. Even with costly shipping from the U.K., the amount per book came out to about $62.
The sources I had found in the U.S. for the book (though only an older edition is available in the U.S.) ran about $100 plus shipping. I can imagine that the campus bookstore, if it even were willing to get the books, would probably have to charge at least $100.
But then the department chair asked the administration if it would be OK for our department to front the money for the purchase of the books, and the administration said no, it would not be OK.
The reason given was that the university has a policy of not “going around” the bookstore.
Now I understand the business interests of the bookstore in wanting an exclusivity agreement, but I don’t know why such a policy is really in the interests of the university.
Or, to put it another way: shouldn’t there be a policy that the university will help students get the best resources available? Or reward faculty who figure out ways to teach more effectively while reducing costs? You can imagine how disincentivized I will be in the future to try to work out a deal like this at this university.
What to do, what to do?
I think there’s a valuable lesson here: use your policies to help you help your employees and customers. Policies should be useful tools that can be–and should be–modified when necessary for you to achieve your goals. If your policies are running you, instead of being sensibly used by you, chances are they’re doing lasting harm to your business relationships.