The Impact of External Forces on Academic Identity
Laurie Lomas and Simon Lygo-Baker, King’s College London
Paper presented at the European Conference on Educational Research, University of Geneva, 13-15 September 2006
Abstract
As universities in the United Kingdom (UK) concentrate on the large scale production of public service, tighter control has taken over the decision-making processes. The movement towards greater customer orientation, public accountability and a performance culture suggests the manifestation of a managerialist paradigm. Pluralism and professional autonomy are being replaced by indicators and standards. Although it is still possible to identify a range of organisational cultures, the reductionist approach is removing difference to enable action and outcomes to be predictable. This paper considers the impact of the shift towards a managerialist paradigm upon academic identity.
Introduction
To understand the impact of external factors on academic identity it is important to consider the complex change that universities are undergoing. Change now appears a constant within higher education as institutions respond to a range of developments. These include economic change, such as the reduction in public spending, political change such as the pressure to increase student places and the direct effect of technological advances, such as new and faster methods of communication.
As universities become more customer-orientated they have increasingly focused on performance measures and accountability (Henkel, 2000). Departments are increasingly required to maximize teaching and research performance and income. An audit culture has developed which, according to Kinman and Jones (2004), has significantly increased the level of stress experienced by academic staff. The previously dominant, but slow collegial form of decision-making is being superseded by a corporate style of top-down managerialism (Dearlove, 1998).
According to Nixon (1996), such change, whether inspired for the right moral reasons, creates a significant shift at the level of an individual’s values and the underlying belief structures. As an individual’s values underpin and help explain their identity any change in these values will have an impact upon identity. As the “supercomplexity” (Barnett, 2000; 2005) increases academic staff are regularly required to re-evaluate the values they hold. The stimulation for change is increasingly instigated at a macro level by factors external to individual universities. For example, in the UK the Higher Education Academy (HEA) has developed a framework for national professional standards for teaching based on a set of shared values.
This paper traces the rise in managerialism and then reports upon a short research project which considered whether academic staff identified that they were being pressurized towards a professional identity that is being shaped, and can largely be explained, by external factors.
The Managerialist Paradigm
The growing impact of managerialist influences on identity can be considered as a paradigm switch with the managerialist superseding the previously dominant professional paradigm. The managerialist paradigm is based on managerialism which has been defined as ‘a generic package of management techniques’ (Randle and Brady, 1997, p.15) and can be summarised as the three ‘E’s of economy, efficiency and effectiveness (Morley, 1997). Managerialism is in the ascendancy in universities and this can be linked to the influence of government values such as public accountability, the efficient use of resources and the establishment and measurement of performance (Henkel, 2000). It has involved closer supervision of academics’ professional activities and a reduction in their autonomy (D’Andrea & Gosling, 2005).
Managerialism was not so necessary when universities were well-resourced, elite organisations. However, the pressure on universities to achieve more with less from the 1980s onwards (Salter and Tapper, 2002) meant that there was a pressing need for efficient and effective governance (Dearlove, 1998). The ‘steer’ towards managerialism in universities was encouraged as early as 1985 in the UK by the Jarratt Report which suggested that Vice-Chancellors should be seen as Chief Executives and recommended that lay people should become more involved in the governance of universities (Dearlove, 1998).
Two years later the Croham Report (Croham, 1987) recommended performance indicators for university teaching and research, finance and management. In 2003, the Lambert Report recommended the form of governance used in business, with a more executive style and far less use of the traditional committees and sub-committees. Shattock (2004) has argued that the business approach advocated by Lambert could be far too homogeneous and fail to take into account the great diversity of institutional missions found in the higher education sector.
With the need to rely less on direct government funding and because universities are operating in a fiercely competitive market, finding additional and/or alternative sources to enhance their income has become essential. This has led to a rise in entrepreneurialism. Entrepreneurial universities have broken free from reliance on state policies and funding in order to develop flexible, innovative strategies designed to avoid organisational decline (Clark, 1998; Land, 2004). The Lambert Report (2003) provides an agenda for universities to follow in order to develop a more entrepreneurial culture (HEA, 2004). Universities are now businesses that promote themselves aggressively in order to compete in the worldwide Higher Education market (Salter and Tapper, 2002). As a consequence universities more closely monitor and regulate the activities of their staff.
Organisational Culture
Organisational culture involves a ‘taken-for granted way of life’ and an identifiable difference between those on the inside and those on the outside of the organisation or a particular part of it (Barnett, 1990).
Dopson and McNay (1996) identify four main cultures (Collegial, Bureaucratic, Entrepreneurial and Corporate) although any organisational culture tends not to be pure but rather a blend of all four with, perhaps, one or two of them dominating. The dominant culture of a university helps determine the types and intensity of the influences on lecturers in a university, particularly on their identity.
Cultures have varied greatly in the higher education sector with, for example, Oxford and Cambridge universities having a dominant collegial culture and regarding themselves principally as a self-governing community of scholars (North Report, 1997) with significant lecturer autonomy in decision-making. With a predominant collegial culture, the individual has a high level of autonomy and there are far fewer external influences on the formation of an academic member of staff’s identity. However, although academics may welcome a collegial culture, university senior managers are aware of the problems associated with it. A series of departmental collegial cultures means that a university lacks coherence and a clear sense of direction and is far slower at responding to change (Bergquist, 1992). These managers have welcomed the greater centralisation associated with the growth of managerialism (Barnett, 2005).
McNay (1995) has identified a change in dominant culture in the higher education sector “from the collegial academy to corporate enterprise” where, even at the University of Oxford, “the preconditions for good collegial governance have been undermined” (Tapper and Palfreyman, 2000, p.143). Sawbridge (1996) argues that employer-led management initiatives such as appraisal, performance-related pay and centralised staff development have led to greater standardisation which, in turn, has threatened the collegial ideal. Generally, quality assurance systems have shifted the balance of power to the centre (Kogan and Hanney, 2000). The recent external pressures on universities have meant that there are fewer communities of scholars where identity based largely on academic discipline can flourish.
Customer Orientation
Government reforms of higher education have been designed to develop universities into business-like organisations (DES, 1985; Shore and Roberts, 1995). Lessons in management have been sought from the private sector. The development of line management, together with strategic planning, mission statements, objectives, action planning and performance indicators are examples of the growth of managerialism in the educational sector. Trowler (1998) cites modularisation, semesterisation and the use of Accreditation of Prior Learning (APL) and Accreditation of Prior Experiential Learning (APEL) for credit accumulation and transfer schemes as relatively recent specific manifestations of managerialism in universities. Universities are now businesses that market themselves in order to compete in the worldwide higher education market (Salter and Tapper, 2002). According to Scott (2000, cited in Morley, 2003) universities are now archetypical ‘Fordist’ organisations that are involved in the large-scale production of a public service. Scott calls this phenomenon massification. Similarly, Morley (2003) refers to the industrialisation of higher education.
There is now the prevailing notion of the student as a customer (Scott, 1999) with lecturers being encouraged to meet the needs of students. Many academics are uncomfortable with this idea although those from professional and vocational backgrounds are probably less so (Macfarlane, 2004). The argument for regarding the student as a customer is supported by a statement in the Higher Education Funding Council for England Strategic Plan 2003-2008 that, “students increasingly see themselves as consumers, entitled to agreed standards of provision and to full information about the quality of what is provided” (HEFCE, 2003, para 3).
The Government belief in market competition, its emphasis on the importance of customer choice, together with the tightening of accountability through Quality Assurance procedures, performance indicators and publishing of league tables (Naidoo, 2005) have led to the emergence of managerialism in universities with the accompanying customer-orientation. The introduction of tuition fees in UK universities from October 2006 is likely to increase the responsiveness of universities to market forces and the needs of the students (Peters and Olssen, 2005).
The rise in managerialism may therefore significantly limit the spaces occupied by academic staff. As the power of the consumer increases and the organisational cultures become less variable the corresponding impact on academic identity needs to be considered.
Academic Identity
As Green (2004) notes, marketisation is a reality in UK universities but, “it sits uneasily with the values of many academics, who came into higher education with a nobler motivation” (p.14). It is these values that determine our behaviour and develop from our own unique past but become mediated by the groups that we interact with and belong to. Harre (1998) has suggested that individual identity is actually a series of “selves” which the individual shifts between depending upon the space they find themselves in. These ideas are given further credence with the notion of the individual unique self, outlined in the work of Breakwell (1986). According to Breakwell whilst in reality it cannot be separated, the unique self consists of “individual” and “social” identities. The individual self is made up of unique personal events and histories, whereas the social self relates to the groups and associations that we come into contact with, or belong to. Such a division could be seen to relate well with the notion of identity being based on values that are a combination of individual and collective (Inlow, 1972).
An individual who shifts between selves suggests the ability for an identity to be flexible and more complex than a set and bounded entity. The challenge to an identity comes when faced by new challenges that an individual has no experience to relate back to for guidance. The more often that such a situation arises, the more unstable an individual identity can become. With change, and the complexity of it increasing in higher education, the stability of academic identities has become increasingly threatened.
A number of writers have noted the importance that the role an individual undertakes has upon the values and attitudes developed (Holland, 1977, Mischel, 1977, Flanagan, 1996). In higher education the impact of the discipline has been recognized for some time as influential and has been likened to “tribes” (Becher and Trowler, 2001). Indeed it has been suggested that the social identity has a significant influence because the collective values of a discipline, which have their own standards and values (Piper, 1994), are likely to override individual values and individuals are likely to compromise to ensure they are accepted. In other words an individual will shift his or her responses and actions as a result of the colleagues that they come into contact with (Craft, 2000).
However, as the role of an academic changes and becomes less predictable, it is more difficult to explain what academic identity is from the role related to the discipline alone. Rowland (2001) argues this is because the differentiation between disciplines is breaking down and “fragmenting”. He argues that at the same time the institutions are demanding standardization and bringing in bureaucratic measures aimed at creating an appearance of order. These changes may result from the institution itself becoming increasingly influenced by external events and organisations, such as regulatory bodies and government agencies. A succession of government reports for example (Jarratt, Croham, Lambert), have suggested that universities need to become more business orientated. Driven by a desire for greater public accountability, universities have responded, although each institution in its own way.
The influence of the institutional histories (Henkel, 2000) of individual universities may therefore have an impact on the development of individual academic identity. The suggestion here is that the social identity of the institution is gaining strength compared to the disciplinary identity but that the institutional future is being increasingly shaped by external factors.
Methodology
To investigate whether academic staff recognise any impact on their identity of this shift towards a managerialist paradigm sixteen academics from nine English universities, both traditional and modern post-1992 universities, were interviewed. Their length of service, academic discipline and grade varied significantly. There were staff at the beginning of their careers, lecturers, senior and principal lecturers, heads of department and a dean of faculty. In-depth interviews were conducted by the two authors using a semi-structured interview schedule. This research method was chosen to allow two-way communication, with the researcher being able to clarify any questions if necessary. Also, the interchange between the interviewer and the interviewees meant that probing, supplementary questions could follow up any interesting statements made by the interviewees (Cohen, 2000). Each respondent’s comments were coded by their grade, length of service, academic discipline and the type of their university. The qualitative data collected through the interviews was then analysed using the Constant Comparative Method (Strauss and Corbin, 1998) which involves ascribing meaning to a particular note in an interview. This is then compared with other interview notes and, when similarities of meaning are found, they are grouped into themes. If no similar meaning is found during a comparison, a new theme category is created.