University Management, the Academic Profession, and Neoliberalism

Ariadna I. López Damián, Marie C. Martin, John S. Levin

Description

This book examines tensions and challenges in the professional lives and identities of contemporary academics. Drawing on extensive interviews conducted over seven years with academics in the United States and the United Kingdom, the authors analyze the experiences of four types of academics as they respond and adjust to the demands of neoliberalism: part-time faculty, full-time faculty, department heads and chairs, and deans. While critical of this phenomenon, University Management, the Academic Profession, and Neoliberalism also recognizes that neoliberalism cannot be driven out of academia easily or without serious consequences, such as a perilous loss of revenue and public support. Instead, it works to shed light on the complex—sometimes contradictory, sometimes complementary—relationship between market values and academic values in the roles and behaviors of faculty and administrators. In providing an unprecedented in-depth, data-based look at the management of the academic profession, the book will be of interest not only to educational researchers but also to professionals throughout higher education.
Preface

Introduction: The Management of the Academic Profession

1. Full-time Tenure Track Faculty: Academic Professional Identity and Managerialism

2. Non-Tenure Track Faculty: Professionals with Commitment and Self-Worth in an Exploitative Environment

3. Department Chairs: Dual Roles, Dual Identities

4. Academic Deans: Double Agents of Two Institutional Logics and Two Institutional Domains

5. Higher Education Management in the U.S. University

Appendix
References
Index

Sujets

• Tertiary education
• Political economy
• History of education
• Sociology

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 août 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438479118
• Langue: English

Extrait

University Management, the Academic Profession, and Neoliberalism
University Management, the Academic Profession, and Neoliberalism
JOHN S. LEVIN, MARIE C. MARTIN, ARIADNA I. LÓPEZ-DAMIÁN
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2020 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: John S. Levin | Marie C. Martin | Ariadna I. López Damián.
Title: University Management, the Academic Profession, and Neoliberalism / John S. Levin, Marie C. Martin, Ariadna I. López Damián
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, [2020] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: ISBN 9781438479095 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438479118 (ebook)
Further information is available at the Library of Congress.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020937135
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Contents
Preface
Introduction: The Management of the Academic Profession
Chapter 1 Full-time Tenure Track Faculty: Academic Professional Identity and Managerialism
Chapter 2 Non-Tenure Track Faculty: Professionals with Commitment and Self-Worth in an Exploitative Environment
Chapter 3 Department Chairs: Dual Roles, Dual Identities
Chapter 4 Academic Deans: Double Agents of Two Institutional Logics and Two Institutional Domains
Chapter 5 Higher Education Management in the U.S. University
Appendix
References
Index
Preface
Background and Acknowledgments
This is the work of three compatible people with decidedly different backgrounds who found each other at the University of California, Riverside. Ariadna from Guerrero, Mexico, Marie from Utah, the United States, and John from British Columbia, Canada, took separate paths but all developed a curiosity for the behaviors and experiences of postsecondary education academics and administrators. They brought to the subject their experiences as students in the three countries and as scholars in the United States. Ariadna had a particular interest in the work and experiences of part-time faculty, especially those who were engaged with organizational life and their work. Marie was attracted to the development and work of administrators, especially university deans and their managerial roles. John gravitated toward full-time tenure track faculty and their professional identity, with attention to the ways in which they represented themselves as professionals. All three were dissatisfied with the state of scholarly knowledge about their areas of interest.
U.S. scholarship has neglected not only the work and professional identities of academics and academic managers, collectively, but also the management of the academic profession. This neglect included scholarly knowledge of university faculty both full-time and part-time and academic administrators in their roles and interactions. We decided to remedy some of the deficiencies through attention to the management of the academic profession in U.S. universities. Management of this profession includes the ways in which academics in their role as administrators, such as vice presidents, or provosts, deans, and department chairs, or heads—by policy and regulations—direct the behaviors of faculty. It includes as well direction and influence by administrators and self-regulation of faculty according to institutional norms. These norms are derived from what we refer to as institutional logics.
The doctoral dissertations of Ariadna and Marie and our investigations of faculty and department chairs at public universities, as well as the immense quantity of reading on academics, academic managers, and universities, served as sources for this project. Analysis of interview data from dozens of interviews of faculty and academic administrators conducted from 2010–17 and the production of conference papers and journal articles furthered our understanding and knowledge of the two twin populations. We traveled to Denver, Washington, Budapest, Calgary, Columbus, Ohio, Dublin, Toronto, Houston, and New York to present our work at scholarly conferences. We were aided by Virginia Montero-Hernandez, Evelyn Morales Vázquez, Raquel Rall, and Tiffany Viggiano, who worked with us on one or more of these presentations and papers or with our analysis of our data. In addition, we became fluent in the concept of neoliberalism and presented papers and published work on this topic related to higher education. We worked with Michael Hoggatt, Evelyn, Tiffany, Laurencia Walker, Aida Aliyeva, and Raquel in this area. We also ventured into the area of academics internationally and Siqi Wang was a research assistant for us. As well, with Jianxiu Gu in China we researched faculty evaluation policies in China and the United States, and John interviewed academics in a UK university to determine their altered identity as their institution underwent sectoral change from college to university status. We investigated the social psychological domain of identity and specifically professional identity and the role of emotions, with Evelyn as our guide and our interviewer. Finally, we completed an investigation of university department chairs and their managerial and academic roles—a topic without much adequate supporting literature—and again Evelyn worked with Ariadna as an interviewer. Siqi complemented our work with explorations of entrepreneurial faculty, her dissertation topic. We are grateful to those who contributed to our work and in some part influenced what we have to say in this book. Vicky (Virginia Montero-Hernandez) was the person (then a post-doctoral fellow) who helped John to initiate a project on faculty at three California public institutional types—community college, comprehensive university, and research university. Vicky interviewed faculty, along with the assistance of Sarah Yoshikawa, a doctoral student at University of California, Riverside, and then Vicky, Sarah, and John began initial analysis of data of the approximately fifty interviews. That project was the foundation for this book.
Although the initial interest in this project focused upon public higher education faculty work and the academic professional identity of faculty in research universities, comprehensive universities, and community colleges, the question of who manages these academic professionals and their work and how they are managed became a central concern. In part, this concern was a consequence of the growing body of literature we had consumed on neoliberal policies and practices in higher education. This body of literature suggested or claimed that the autonomy of academic professionals was eroding or indeed had disappeared, a condition that undermined the academic identity of faculty. This condition of erosion or disappearance pointed toward an ideology that favored practices inimical to academic professional values. But, who or what implemented this ideology and practiced its preferred behaviors in higher education organizations? What specific neoliberal and managerial behaviors were enacted? These questions sharpened our focus and guided our examination, which led to our discoveries.
Our Approach and Sources
In this book, we go beyond traditional scholarship on the management of academic professionals, including professional identity of academic professionals and the context that shapes their work, particularly the organizational management of their work. We look at traditional understandings of institutional and organizational management and governance and the place of academic professionals within universities. We offer a wide array of perspectives on organizational management of universities and the condition and identity of academic professionals. We attempt to provide new understandings of academic management, academic professional identity, and the implications of academic management for academic professionals.
We rely upon several theoretical perspectives for our analysis and discussion. Institutional theory (Scott, 2014) points us to the deep structures and values as well as to the patterns of behavior of the university. Relatedly, we turn to institutional logics (Thornton, Ocasio, Lounsbury, 2012) to specify the presence and dynamics of values and assumptions that shape and direct university behaviors. Furthermore, we rely upon identity theory (Burke Stets, 2009; Gee, 2000–01) to capture and explain the professional identity of faculty and academic managers. As well, we follow Mintzberg’s theory of power (Mintzberg, 1983, 1989) to guide us and enable us to explain the systems of authority and power within the university. Finally, we turn to neoliberalism (Harvey, 2005) and the critique of this ideological system (Olssen Peters, 2005) to provide us with concepts and categories that describe and explain the context of the university, the practices of universities and their academics, and the values that underlie these practices (Campbell Pedersen, 2001). These values point toward the quantifiable, economically productive worth of human behaviors and humans themselves.
The public university in the United States is one prominent venue where neoliberalism has become or is becoming institutionalized. The assertion that the public university is a neolibera