Policy without (much) pain - University of Ballarat

Policy without (much) pain3. What do we mean by policy?"Do we have a policy on that?" The term ‘policy’ is commonly used in Australasian tertiaryinstitutions, to mean:any kind of text, committee decision or management directive that shapes any aspect of theinstitution’s activities any text in the institution’s policy repository (which may include everything from statutes downto business rules and non-mandatory guidelines).At the same time, in almost all institutions a policy is also a specific type of text, approved at ahigh level of the institution (by the council or academic board, by the Vice-Chancellor, or by amember of the senior management team).The term policy isslippery: its meaning canvary depending on context.This slipperiness perhapsreflects the contestednature of policy inattempting to shapehuman activity.A policy typically states the principles on which theinstitution bases its approach to an area of activity,and broad rules which staff are required to follow incarrying out the activity. In many institutions,however, there may also be ‘policies’ setting outdetailed steps for specific processes, which may nothave been approved at such a high level.Different areas of the same institution may havedifferent understandings of what a policy is. Forexample, academic policies tend to be statements ofprinciple and high-level rules, supplemented by moredetailed procedures documents, while finance andhuman resources policies may be highly specific and detailed – in effect, procedural documentsthat happen to be called ‘policies’ in that area. There may be a policy on staff taking taxis or onthe correct process for administering institutional credit cards.Units within the institution, such as faculties, may have their own policies if the institution permitsthis. In some institutions these faculty policies may fill a gap where there is no institutional policyas yet; or else they may supplement an existing central policy by specifying how staff in thefaculty are to perform the activity in question, where the policy has left something to the faculty’sdiscretion.~ 6 ~