Transcript Surrey 2017 - DRHEA - Dublin Region Higher Education Alliance

Managing changing practice
DCAD Symposium 6th November 2009
Paul Blackmore
King’s College London
The session
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The context for higher education
Academic work and motivation
What universities are like
What universities might become
Implications for leading and managing
Dissolving boundaries
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Mass education system
Education as a commodity in a market
Globalisation
Third stream activity
Mode 2 knowledge
Differing missions
Mass Education
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Growth in students
(40% UK, 57% Ireland participation)
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Growth in staff
(up 25% in UK 2006-11)
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More diverse student population
Vocationalism
Education as a commodity
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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
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International competition leading to state
intervention in HE
Concern for quality
Staff and student flows – real and virtual
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Borderless education?
E-learning?
Third stream activity
Trans-disciplinary “mode 2” knowledge produced
in the context of application
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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
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Increasing concentration
In UK 75% QR and 80% RCGs to 25 institutions
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Internationally collaborative
Often interdisciplinary
Evaluated partly on impact
Government policy
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Universities now seen as economic necessities
Social and cultural contribution?
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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
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Funding reductions (5%pa to 2014)
UK and Ireland 1.3% US 2.9% GDP (1% public)
Managerialism
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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 …
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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
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Problematic goals
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Unclear technology
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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
Organisational cultures
COLLEGIAL
COLLEGIAL
BUREAUCRATIC
e.g. Oxbridge
rules and regulations
cult of the individual
management by committees
management by consensus
role culture
person culture
ENTREPRENEURIAL
CORPORATE
awareness of the market
directorate with power
management by marketing
management by meetings
task culture
power culture
Dopson & McNay, 1996
Anything special about academia?
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Free availability of knowledge?
Disciplinary basis?
Autonomy?
Creativity?
Critique?
Ethics?
Surveying academic role
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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
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Less satisfied than UK workforce as a whole
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Research major source of satisfaction but
increasing pressure
Most prefer a job involving teaching, but
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Salary
Qualitative aspects of job
Promotion and job security
Student assessment
Admin (inc QA) are negatives
Fixed term contracts reduce satisfaction level
UUK
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
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Ideas
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Publications
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Citations
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Exhibitions
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Keynotes
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Leading disciplinary / professional groups
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Expert status on reviews and other panels
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External examining
Intersecting economies
Intrinsic
motivation
Academic
habitus – in
tension /
negotiation
Academic
socialism?
Learning
Cultural and
social
capital
Economic
capital
Money
economy
Prestige
economy
Extrinsic
motivation
Intrinsic /
extrinsic
motivation
Applied research
Academic capitalism
Some ways forward
TEACHING AND RESEARCH
ADMIN., MANAGEMENT, LEADERSHIP
Lecturer
Senior
Lecturer
H.O.D.
Dean
PVC
VC
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
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 Responsibility but not authority to act
 Institutional procedures unhelpful
 Hard to describe how they had learnt anything
Leadership?
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Conceived of largely as administration,
mainly dealing with:
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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.
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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
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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 goals
Manage tension between tradition and change
Focus on outcomes
Relationships are important – it is colleagues who
determine whether you are the leader
Be transformative
(Ramsden, 2000)
Preparing for uncertainty
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A bedrock of sound academic work
Fast decision-making
Distributed leadership
Developing capacity to learn:
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Strong networks
Evidence-informed and aware practice
Interdisciplinary and interprofessional capability
Efficient and effective use of resources
Recognition and reward of initiative