This article considers gender and managerial identities in organizational life, taking the recent change in higher education in Sweden and England with the coming of the new public management as the context in which to explore these issues. In reviewing the literature on gender identity and organization/management, which has moved from a pre-occupation with difference to an examination of the complex inter-relationship between gender and organization, an attempt is made to operationalize the concept of positionality, using insights from the work of Alcoff and Melucci. It is argued that Academic Shape Shifting is developed by academics during their time in academia, as well as in defensive and proactive response to the recent managerial reforms. A number of indicative responses to the recent changes are identified. These are: the Stressed Professor, the Managerial Advocate, the Administrative Patrician, the Accidental Female, the Academic Chameleon and the Resolute Researcher. As Academic Shape Shifting is used by social individuals in interaction with others, at particular moments in time and in different circumstances, it is concluded that the implications suggest complexity in the changing character of university life, with female academics in middle range positions facing more difficult compromises than their male counterparts. Key words. academic positioning; gender; higher education; identity; new public management; Sweden and England Volume 13(2): 275-298

This paper considers some of the ways in which neoliberalism, through the processes of managerialism, has impacted on the occupation of social work in Sweden and the UK. It is argued that there are similar implications in both countries, through the managerial drive for increased performance in economy, efficiency and effectiveness, but also in the development of evidence based practice. Whilst the key focus of the paper is on similarities between these two countries, differences are also noted. There is also recognition of the way in which resistance to the reconfiguration of social work is taking shape.

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The article opens by considering recent change in higher education, examined through the literature on new public management. In this literature the direction of change is decided in advance, assumed to emanate from above and conceptualized as moments fixed in time. As a consequence, it is argued, the rich processes of change enacted through time, which seek to take account of the motives of those involved, are elided. It is further argued that change is more appropriately understood as contested than as consensual, and that civil society is implicated in processes of public sector change in the organizations affected. An attempt is made accordingly to analyse the presence of civil society influences through social movement processes in universities, as organizations that are not social movements. Arguments are considered for and against the status of the new public management as a social or managerial movement, which is taken to be a coalition rather than a social movement, acting as the organizational glue of many neoliberal regimes. It is then shown that women's movements, understood conventionally as social movements in the literature of social movement theory, are alive and well in the halls of academe, engaged in direct and indirect struggle and forms of symbolic contestation in the furtherance of gender equity in the milieu of management reform. It is concluded that empirical work that makes use of social movement theory is necessary to explore management change attempts in order to take fuller account of those involved, and of movement and coalition in contention.

This article considers change in academe in Sweden and England, focusing on gender equity and the new public management reforms. In drawing on social movement theory, it is argued that public sector agendas in these countries have been affected by the infl uences of their respective women ' s movements as well as by the new public management. The article explores these developments through the experiences of a group of employees whose voices are heard infrequently in the literature, those in middle-level academic positions in universities who are responsible for delivering change. It is argued that the rational, hierarchical, masculine discourses of the new public management offer challenges to women ' s movement supporters, whose infl uences and responses are examined. It is contended that the use of social movement theory, as a vehicle through which to conceptualize change, offers a number of insights. These are: the contribution made to gender equity by women who are not self-defi ned feminists or strongly committed to equal opportunities, known as femocrats; the contribution made by some supportive men to gender equity; and the potential for future collective opposition to the new public management from women ' s movements.