Fish-Out-of-Office: How managerialised university conditions makes administrative knowledge inaccessible to academics
Article
Article Title | Fish-Out-of-Office: How managerialised university conditions makes administrative knowledge inaccessible to academics |
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ERA Journal ID | 19329 |
Article Category | Article |
Authors | Wheeldon, Anita Louise (Author), Whitty, Stephen Jonathan (Author) and van der Hoorn, Bronte (Author) |
Journal Title | Higher Education Quarterly |
Journal Citation | 77 (2), pp. 342-355 |
Number of Pages | 14 |
Year | 2023 |
Place of Publication | United Kingdom |
ISSN | 0951-5224 |
1468-2273 | |
Digital Object Identifier (DOI) | https://doi.org/10.1111/hequ.12404 |
Web Address (URL) | https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/hequ.12404 |
Abstract | Academics report feeling unable to cope in the managerialised university. To confirm these feelings are symptoms of managerialism's tightening grip, we use Bourdieusian concepts of field and capital to compare academics and professional staff experiential statements in an Australian university. We compare their field conditions and examine how their differences enable or hinder the accumulation of capital that defines their field. Findings show that managerialism requires professional staff to share work tasks and be on-campus, which enables them to accumulate the capital they require. Managerialism also permits and resources academics to working out-of-office to accumulate their required capital. Consequentially though, university operational knowledge becomes informal and only accessible to professional staff who accumulate the required social capital to access it. Professional staff are thus fish-in-water; easily accumulating social capital through day-to-day activities. But academics become fish-out-of-water (office); they flounder to access operational knowledge, which leads to feelings of not coping. |
Keywords | Bourdieu, managerialism, capital, academic work conditions |
ANZSRC Field of Research 2020 | 350711. Organisational planning and management |
390303. Higher education | |
Public Notes | File reproduced in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher/author. |
Byline Affiliations | University of Southern Queensland |
Institution of Origin | University of Southern Queensland |
https://research.usq.edu.au/item/q775q/fish-out-of-office-how-managerialised-university-conditions-makes-administrative-knowledge-inaccessible-to-academics
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