‘When realism attacks! Qualitative Research and ‘structural imperatives’ in Higher Education’
Craig Prichard, Massey University of New Zealand
Paper presented at the International Research Conference 'Higher Education Close Up 2'
July 16-18 2001 Lancaster University
Characters:
Morgan Craig: Young antipodean education researcher; forthright, un-phrased by status and position, passionate about theories, ideas, politics and practice.
Scott Peters: Vice-chancellor in early 50s, relatively recent appointment at Regentville University. An avid reader and reviewer of recent books and advice on managing/leading universities.
Conductor: Long serving British rail, now Maiden Trains, conductor - enthusiastic and ironic user of customer service ‘speak’.
Train travellers No. 1 and No. 2
Waiter
______
Setting: interior of Intercity train (large slide of window with one table and two bench seats on either side. Sound of train moving away from a station. One man, Peters, enters from right carrying soft brief case. Places case on table facing audience, takes out book (making managers) and mobile telephone and sits on right seat, ponders the scene, begins to read book. One woman, Morgan Craig, enters from left, carries backpack moves to point where Peters is between her and audience turns to audience and Peters.
Train sounds 20 seconds
Craig: Excuse me, is this seat taken?
Peters: No help yourself.
Morgan places bag on table retrieves book (university leadership) sits on the left seat and begins reading.
Pause of about 10 seconds
Peters rises, both look at respective books they are each readings. Peters reach for the window closes it. Sound of train noise muffled.
Peters: Is that better?
Craig: yes that’s fine thanks. (pause) I see you’re reading that book by Craig Prichard, ‘Making Manages in Universities and Colleges’.
Peters: yes, it’s quite amusing, some of the time, a little irritating at others. Do you know it?
Craig: actually I’m off to a conference where Prichard is one of the speakers. A conference on qualitative research in higher education, at Lancaster.
Peters: Well I hope he’s got some jokes to tell, for your sake, the theory comes on thick and fast.
Craig: Is this a problem with it?
Peters: I’m writing a review of it from the Times Higher. I guess I’m struggling with the book a little. It’s full of these charming, realistic stories. Actually here’s one. He quotes a university pro-vice chancellor as saying: ‘The university is not one that welcomes the concept of direction’
Craig: Something of an understatement in most places
Peters: Can’t you just hear the words? And I like this story about a group of senior staff that called themselves the ‘rat pack’.
Craig: Didn’t they spend, allegedly spend, twenty five thousand pounds on a senior staff retreat in Montpellier.
Peters: That’s it yes, and the new VC introduces this code of conduct for them, you know, thou shalt not spend excessive funds on foreign travel. Actually I know a few Vice-chancellors who could do this that one.
Craig: So what do you make of the book?
Peters: Well aarh (surprised at directness) I’m not sure it tells us, well it doesn’t say much about the real work of university managers. It tends to treat university management as a cultural phenomenon. You know, the vice-chancellor and the senior group start talking like business managers just for the hell of it. Seems to me that they simply don’t have much choice in most cases.
Craig: Sounds like you’re speaking from the heart on this one?
Peters: sorry yes Scott Peters, (extends hand toward Craig), Regentsville University.
Craig: Oh, of course you’re the vice-chancellor there. Morgan Craig, Amassing University, New Zealand.
Peters: Amassing, shouldn’t that be Amazing, would make for some good advertising copy?
Craig: Well it’s pretty AMAZING, amazing astonishing at times.
Conductor (over microphone): Good morning customers. Maiden Train would like to welcome you aboard this the 9.37 service to Glasgow Central. Unfortunately delays are inevitable today. This is due to, yes here comes the list, a shortage of coaches, sick-leave among staff, track maintenance and of course buckling of the track due to this hot summer weather. We are also likely to get some overcrowding later in the journey as just 4 of the 10 coaches scheduled for this train joined us this morning for this journey. Sadly our buffet car was among these. The buffet car and it’s crew are , I believe, resting in a siding in Milton Keynes. Isn’t that lovely! But do we have a splendid engine for you ladies and gentlemen . Of course we do, and if the fat controller would only speak nicely to it I’m sure it will be really useful engine. In the meantime a small refreshments trolley serving coffee, tea, and a dazzling selection of sugar and chocolate covered treats has agreed to come aboard at the next station. We certainly look forward to that. In the meantime Maiden trains sincerely apologises for any inconvenience caused by these problems and the delay. This train is currently running three hours behind schedule, but we do intend, as ever, to make every effort to delivery you safely to your destination so please relax and enjoy the scenery. I shall be around shortly to collect your tickets, to console you with my winning smile and to win your repeat business with my new customer care repertoire. God Bless you all!
Peters: (Peters' shakes his arms above head in mock rage). But tell me Morgan is that what I think you’ve got there?
Craig: ‘University Leadership, the role of the chief executive’. It’s by that crowd at Leeds, Bargh, Bocock, Smith and Peter Scott, now the VC at Kingstown so I believe.
Peters: Oh yes, a very nice piece. By contrast a more realistic account of the work of vice-chancellors. It talks about of the various systems vice-chancellors are involved in. There’s some quantitative work, and . . . what’s your verdict?
Craig: To be honest, too honest perhaps, it’s pretty stuffy, soul-less, functionalism for the most part.
Peters: But surely . .
Craig: Oh I can see what you mean, but it has its problems too. One thing is that it relies heavily on conventional assumptions about 'systems' . . . and some really interesting events get reduced to a set of tasks to be undertaken by these brave and fearless vice-chancellors (with a smile)?
Peters: well I wouldn’t say fearless or brave
Craig: I keep wondering when the blood will appear on the carpet, you know the real stuff, the battles, the Thames Valleys, Glasgow Caledonians
Peters: Anomalies, the wrong people in the wrong jobs at the wrong time
Craig: The vice-chancellors they do discuss seem more Machiavellian to me, political operators, with enemies who you know some times get the better of them and send them packing – like at Hull for instance. The book sanitises this, renders it down into polite phrases like: ‘adaptation to the external environment’. There’s this really telling little story, where is it now.
Conductor (from the side): Tickets please, all tickets please.
Craig: Yes here it is. The VC takes the senior group away for a retreat, you know two days of indoctrination. One dean protests at a money saving proposal to cut student assessment by 50 percent across the university; the vice-chancellor makes sure he is excluded from the group!
Peters: I remember, the dean wanders off into the hotel courtyard
Craig: here it is :
‘The Vice-chancellor intervened to ensure no one followed, adding ‘he needs to learn that he’s on his own’. Surely this is how it works: through silence, exclusion, control. But the book makes no comment on this, it’s just another day at the office, another task achieved.
Peters: I guess the authors could have discussed this in a little more depth, but let me give you an example of what I mean!
Conductor: Good morning, welcome aboard (Craig and Peters hand tickets to conductor) I hope you’re both having a pleasant journey and if there’s anything at all
Craig: A few problems expected up the line then?
Conductor: Oh nothing the mighty Maiden trains can’t turn its hand to. Hope you're not in any hurry though, we could be sometime out here. Just a note sir, madam, I think you’ll find you’re tickets are for the seats just there (points up the train). You might just have to move your positions a little. No need to shift now of course.
Craig: Oh I’m sorry - no need to change is there, at present at least?
Peters: I’m quite comfortable here, and you?
Craig: Fine, yes! I’ll move, if I need to. (Conductor moves off)
Peters: Here it is (in book). There’s this rather farcical scene, where a new pro-vice chancellor bought sticky buns, I’m not sure what you call them in New Zealand, to her first meeting with some of her male colleagues. Prichard goes on to say, now where is it, that these,
‘Introduce different spatial, physical, verbal and desiring micro-practices into these managerial sites, and thus challenge the existing embodied practices and knowledges of the managerial station’.
I mean really! Managing universities is not about sticky buns and micro-practices. It’s about legal frameworks, collective agreements, funding systems, accountability regimes, you know real things!
Craig: But can you say that without moving your lips?
Peters: Sorry (looks quizzical) can I say that without moving my lips?
Craig: Yes. I was also wondering what it was about 'sticky buns', that was so so provocative?
Peters: It's just silliness!
Craig: Perhaps but that’s just what the pro-vice chancellor wanted, silliness or rather some surprise, upset, you know shift people out of their comfort zone, outside their square. She found the usual routines of the meetings stuffy, blokish, boyish , boring. It’s a different way of thinking of organization.
Peters: Well Prichard is right to point this out that meetings can be very macho, and routine, and this is one of the features of the book, but he is confusing the culture of meetings with what they are there to achieve - the real work - making sure we're doing things right, distributing work, checking that all the bases have been covered, that kind of thing!
Craig: And it's possible to distinguish between one and the other?
Peters: Yes I think you can!
Craig: So senior staff can say ‘Oh look, my assumptions, my learning, my behaviours my speech patterns all point us in this direction, but following this rational debate we should go in this other direction’.
Peters: of course we do bring our backgrounds to the table, it's always a bit more complicated by this but
train begins to fill with passengers
Peters: (pause) of course there are tactics involved
Craig: and the need for lots of routine bodies doing lots of highly routine things.
Peters: If you say it that way, but that provides some structure some coherence.
Craig: all the way down to what we eat the way we speak, the way we move our lips even. What a surprise to bring a lump of icing sugar covered dough to a grand old university committee meeting!
First train traveller: Excuse me but I think you might be sitting in my seat!
Peters: Yes, yes, sorry you're absolutely right (stands up and moves out to the isle and stands there new passenger take his seat)
Peters: (to Craig): A bit like guerilla warfare by Food! Sounds like Dr. Prichard will have at least one supporter a the conference.
Craig: Exactly the politics of food, sorry I don't mean to go on but I'm writing a paper about the renaissance of realism in the social sciences, and this seems important. I'm interested in the kinds of positions, we can take up, sorry are you comfortable there?
Peters now standing up looking down at Craig from the isle. He is leaning against the rear of the seat.
Peters: yes fine thanks.
Conductor: Thank you for your supreme patience ladies and gentlemen, Preston station next stop, Preston is your next station stop.
Train sound: Sound of train stopping
Craig: But why has Prichard got it right with the stories and anecdotes but not in his discourse-based analysis?
Peters: There’s this big gap. The book hasn’t got close enough to all those nagging, routine, systems that demand attention. Before I left the office this morning I was dealing with a raft of them: a new employment contract, memo for the finance director about next year’ budget, reading revised guidelines from the quality people.
Train traveller 2 moves on stage and stand around seats
Craig: And where is the real in this?
Peters: If these don’t get done, we don’t survive. Well we don’t survive as well as we might. Is that real enough.
Craig: But is it the system that’s real, or is it real-ized at the level of these practices, with your engagement in them? You’re suggesting that Prichard misses the ‘system’ and goes for the culture – you mentioned culture earlier.
Peters: It’s both of course, one feeding into the other.
Passenger two: Excuse me I’m sorry but I think you might be sitting in my seat.
Craig: Yes sorry you’re right (Craig gets up from seat and stand in the isle next to Peters). But where are these systems MOST REAL. Seems to me Prichard is saying they are most real right there at the desk, in the meeting, in fine grained, nuances of conversations, the way we move our lips and say ‘funding regimes’, in the claims made in the name of the system.
Peters: But surely you’re making artificial distinctions here.
Craig: And you’re not?
Jolt and sound of train moving away
Craig: When someone claims to speak for something called ‘the system’ that’s a pretty powerful way of making some distinction, and claiming distinctiveness, is it not?
Peters: but they are very real
Craig: But aren’t such claims irrelevant unless the ‘system’, as you call it, is right down here, in the pores of people’s lives, in the way they actually live?
Peters: Vice-chancellors don’t speak for the system; indeed as a group they have a surprising lack of commitment to it at times. They must smooth the passage of some very fundamental, real relations - real reliance on public funds for one and reliance on a whole range of others to show the university in the best possible light. Of course there are rituals and tactics, but these tasks help the system along.
Craig: But it’s code, a code word. You’ve almost admitted it yourself.
Peters: What do you mean ‘code’?
Craig: The ‘system’, it’s a code word, a rhetorical flourish, a discursive ploy, a metaphor – it stands in for all the power plays, domination, exploitation, you know, the nasty bits. Let me give you an example. A university I know just wiped out about 100 jobs and sent about 70 people down the road. The manipulation around this was astonishing. The vice-chancellor began this little ‘task’ by giving the university’s 58 senior staff a 4 percent wage rise – more than twice what everyone else got - and dished out hundreds of thousands of dollars in bonuses. Oh and a nice friendly consultant also convinced council to up his own salary by 9 percent. Then he send 1000 staff letters saying their jobs were not secure. The suits then bullied academic board and university council into accepting the job cuts. Why? Why was this necessary? Two years earlier enrolments bubbled up, way above expectations. On the strength of this the bosses began pouring money into buildings and other ‘things’ like expensive TV advertising. When the bubble burst and enrolments dropped it wasn’t the building work that was cut or the TV advertising but 70 people and their one thousand years of accumulated experience, skills and knowledge. What a travesty. So don’t give me that line about simply responding to the needs of the system. It’s brutal politics all the way down.
Peters: This puts ‘sticky buns’ in its place then don’t you think?
Craig: I’m not saying that sticky buns are potent magic in all settings.
Train traveller one ( in Peters former seat) gets us and moves to the end of the train
Peters: After you, please.
Craig sits in Peters former seat
Craig: Well perhaps then, there is some movement here, some middle ground between ‘structural imperatives’ and ‘management cultures’. The problem is that when we claim to know what’s real everything else is cast as ‘idealistic icing on the cake’, if you like.
Train traveller two (in Craig’s former seat) then gets up and move to the other send of the train. With this Peters sits in Craig’s former seat.
Peters: I think that’s little crude but
Craig: OK but this ‘real-ideal’ thing, imperatives versus cultures doesn’t give us much room to move? Perhaps we could say that these imperatives ‘attack’ from time to time.