This study compares the explanatory power of two models of academic governance: dual and managerial control. The research is based on characterizations by chief academic officers of the primary decision-makers involved in 13 types of recurrent academic decisions. We examine change between responses to surveys fielded to US four-year colleges and universities in 2000 and 2012. We find limited support for the dual control and the managerial control models in both years. As an alternative to the two dominant conceptual models, we develop an empirically grounded classification based on multidimensional scaling and cluster analysis. In each year we find high faculty participation and management-dominant clusters. The other identified clusters do not map well onto either of the two dominant conceptual models. Given these results, we argue that configurational analysis should be used as a supplement to future studies monitoring the incidence of dual and managerial control in academic governance.