University management argued that the staff should not qualify as "employees" under the National Labor Relations Act 1935 §2(11) as they had sufficient supervisory authority.

The Court purports to recognize that there are fundamental differences between the authority structures of the typical industrial and academic institutions which preclude the blind transplanting of principles developed in one arena onto the other; yet it nevertheless ignores those very differences in concluding that Yeshiva's faculty is excluded from the Act's coverage.

63, 65-66, 366 F.2d 642, 644-645 (1966), this Court has recently sanctioned a definition of "managerial employee" that comprises those who " 'formulate and effectuate management policies by expressing and making operative the decisions of their employer.'

The touchstone of managerial status is thus an alliance with management, and the pivotal inquiry is whether the employee in performing his duties represents his own interests or those of his employer.

[6] But the Court's vision is clouded by its failure fully to discern and comprehend the nature of the faculty's role in university governance.

Unlike the purely hierarchical decisionmaking structure that prevails in the typical industrial organization, the bureaucratic foundation of most "mature" universities is characterized by dual authority systems.

At the same time, there exists a parallel professional network, in which formal mechanisms have been created to bring the expertise of the faculty into the decisionmaking process.

What the Board realized—and what the Court fails to apprehend is that whatever influence the faculty wields in university decisionmaking is attributable solely to its collective expertise as professional educators, and not to any managerial or supervisory prerogatives....