managing changing practice dcad symposium 6 th november 2009 paul blackmore king’s college london
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Managing changing practice
DCAD Symposium 6th November 2009
Paul BlackmoreKing’s College London
The session
The context for higher education Academic work and motivation What universities are like What universities might become Implications for leading and managing
Dissolving boundaries
Mass education system Education as a commodity in a market Globalisation Third stream activity Mode 2 knowledge Differing missions
Mass Education
Growth in students (40% UK, 57% Ireland participation)
Growth in staff (up 25% in UK 2006-11)
More diverse student population Vocationalism
Education as a commodity
Competition for students Transferable academic credit Modular curricula Learning outcomes Student as a consumer with rights
Changes in purposes of learning
From “is it true?” to “what use is it?”
“…doing rather than knowing, and performance rather than understanding … there is a mistrust of all things that cannot easily be quantified or measured”
Barnett
Globalization
International competition leading to state intervention in HE
Concern for quality Staff and student flows – real and virtual
Borderless education? E-learning?
Third stream activity
Trans-disciplinary “mode 2” knowledge produced in the context of application
Closer links with industry and commerce Emphasis on highly applied research Research parks, spin-out companies For some, third stream as a second activity
Research
Increasing concentrationIn UK 75% QR and 80% RCGs to 25 institutions
Internationally collaborative Often interdisciplinary Evaluated partly on impact
Government policy
Universities now seen as economic necessitiesSocial and cultural contribution?
Business links UK Skills agenda
Leitch – low productivity per hour; skills holding UK back
Sainsbury – Review of science and innovation - the race to the top
Mandelson – Building Britain’s future - New industry, new jobs
CBI – Stronger together - Businesses and universities in turbulent times
Funding reductions (5%pa to 2014)UK and Ireland 1.3% US 2.9% GDP (1% public)
Managerialism
Customer and market orientation Strengthened right to manage- sometimes at a
distance Growth of cross-institutional management Quality and accountability Weakening academic influence
Universities as a product of their context
‘… the autonomies that the university has enjoyed for eight hundred years are being reduced as it becomes interconnected with the wider society both nationally and globally.’ (Barnett, 2003)Market-led discourses of excellence have replaced the traditional relationship between scholarship and society (Readings, 1996)‘Academic capitalism’ (Bleiklie & Powell, 2005) In some universities, ‘corporate colonisation’ with the hallowed corridors of academia being taken over by the forces of marketisation and corporatism (Casey, 1995)
BUT
Myth of a ‘golden age’? (Burgess, 2007)
Questions arising …
Where do we ‘place’ ourselves in this? How are teaching and learning changing? What capabilities do we need – individually and
collectively?
…. and who are “we”?
What sort of organisation is a university?
“in order to succeed in its various joint endeavours … all the university’s staff should be encouraged to develop a
shared sense of purpose and direction.
“.. but is a university really that sort of organisation? Is it an organisation at all?”
(Thackwray, Chambers and Huxley, 2005).
Academic change
“You think … that you have only to state a reasonable case, and people must listen to reason and act upon it at once. ..has it occurred to you that nothing is ever done until everyone is convinced … and has been convinced for so long that it is now time to do something else? …conviction has never been produced by an appeal to reason … you must address your arguments to prejudice and the political motive”
Cornford: Microcosmographia Academica
Universities as organised anarchies
Problematic goals
Unclear technology
Fluid participation
(Cuthbert)
Organisational Culture
… a shared set of meanings, beliefs, understandings and ideas; in short, a taken-for granted way of life, in which there is a reasonably clear difference between those on the inside and those on the outside of the community.
Barnett,1990
Dopson & McNay, 1996
COLLEGIAL BUREAUCRATIC
ENTREPRENEURIAL CORPORATE
e.g. Oxbridge
cult of the individual
management by consensus
person culture
rules and regulations
management by committees
role culture
awareness of the market
management by marketing
task culture
directorate with power
management by meetings
power culture
Organisational cultures
COLLEGIAL
Anything special about academia?
Free availability of knowledge? Disciplinary basis? Autonomy? Creativity? Critique? Ethics?
Surveying academic role
Motivated by work not salary Work hours increasing, esp administration Satisfaction and security falling Late career most negative Mid-career most stressed Part-time and casual staff increasing New and established staff teach similarly New staff more research orientated
McInnis
Job satisfaction Less satisfied than UK workforce as a whole
Salary Qualitative aspects of job Promotion and job security
Research major source of satisfaction but increasing pressure
Most prefer a job involving teaching, but Student assessment Admin (inc QA) are negatives
Fixed term contracts reduce satisfaction levelUUK
Performance review
Universally – makes no difference
Instead: standing of role among colleagues intrinsic interest or otherwise career benefit doing a good job / supporting students
CML project
Negative effects
“Absolutely none with me, that’s not what drives me. In fact I think it’s a very negative thing in my experience in leading within the team. There are the experiences when you say to someone: “Oh do you think you could do that?”, whereas in the past they’d say “yes, no problem” because they know that you would do something else to help them out, and now they will say: “Well it’s not on my appraisal, it’s not one of my targets, so I'm not going to do that, so there”.
Interviewee, CML Project
Prestige economy
On literary prizes:
“How is such prestige produced, and where does it reside? In people? In things? In relationships between people and things? What rules govern its circulation?” (English, 2007)
NB: prestige can be “cashed in” for money.
Features of the prestige economy
Ideas Publications Citations Exhibitions Keynotes Leading disciplinary / professional groups Expert status on reviews and other panels External examining
Intersecting economies
Money economy
Prestige economy
Learning
Academic habitus – in tension / negotiation
Applied research Academic capitalism
Academic socialism?
Intrinsic motivation
Intrinsic / extrinsic motivation
Extrinsic motivation
Economic capital
Cultural and social capital
Some ways forward
ADMIN., MANAGEMENT, LEADERSHIP
TEACHING AND RESEARCH
LecturerSeniorLecturer
H.O.D. Dean VCPVC
The CML project
29 role holders in two institutions
Critical incident technique (Flanagan, 1954) No prior professional training Often given responsibility very early on Roles were seldom set out as formal job
descriptions Responsibility but not authority to act Institutional procedures unhelpful Hard to describe how they had learnt anything
.
Leadership?
Conceived of largely as administration, mainly dealing with: students colleagues QA
NOT pedagogic leadership discipline leadership
Leaders, managers, academics and administrators
leaders make it wanted, managers make it happen, administrators make it work.
McNay, I. (2003)
Everyone leads …
“a practical and everyday process of supporting, managing, developing and inspiring academic colleagues”
“…can and should be exercised by everyone, from the vice-chancellor to the casual car parking attendant”
Ramsden (1998)
… in a particular context
Distributed and embedded in context
“much of the work of leading is contingent … it involves dealing with the specifics of a time, a place and a set of people”
(Knight & Trowler, 2001)
Universal leadership?
“Leaders tend to possess and exemplify the qualities expected or required in their working groups … the head of an engineering group ought to exemplify the qualities of an engineer, otherwise he will not gain or hold respect. Thus a leader should mirror the group’s characteristics.”
Adair, 1998
Challenges for Leadership
creating a climate of creativity focusing on outcomes, results and delivery rather
than process and procedure joining things up - addressing issues rather than
bureaucratic boundaries ‘outside in attitudes’ - bringing inspiration and
information from outside creating a new style of leadership based on trust
and fairness: coaching, adding value, challenging creating coalitions and partnerships
Sir Michael Bichard, Rector of University of the Arts SRHE Forum, April 2002
Principles of Academic Leadership
Establish clear goalsManage tension between tradition and changeFocus on outcomesRelationships are important – it is colleagues who determine whether you are the leaderBe transformative
(Ramsden, 2000)
Preparing for uncertainty
A bedrock of sound academic work Fast decision-making Distributed leadership Developing capacity to learn:
Strong networks Evidence-informed and aware practice
Interdisciplinary and interprofessional capability Efficient and effective use of resources Recognition and reward of initiative
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