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