This paper draws on an international study of the management challenges arising from diversifying academic and professional identities in higher education. These challenges include, for instance, the introduction of practice-based disciplines with different traditions such as health and social care, the changing aspirations and expectations of younger generations of staff, a diffusion of management responsibilities and structures, and imperatives for a more holistic approach to the "employment package", including new forms of recognition and reward. It is suggested that while academic and professional identities have become increasingly dynamic and multi-faceted, change is occurring at different rates in different contexts. A model is offered, therefore, that relates approaches to "people management" to different organizational environments, against the general background of increasing resource constraint arising from the global economic downturn. Individuals tend to be much more positive when asked about their current project than when asked about how things are "at work" (Watson 2009). There are, therefore, dynamics within the university that create both common purpose and tensions between diverse groupings of staff who may in the past have worked independently of each other. This phenomenon results in both convergence and divergence between academic and professional identities, and also opens up spaces for new types of identity to emerge, with associated activities. The latter include, for instance collaborative work in relation to the design of appropriate content and delivery in relation to new forms of virtual learning. Key management challenges arise from these dynamics, including the incorporation of new forms of practice-based discipline, changing staff expectations and aspirations, the dispersal of management and leadership activity, and pressure for more fluid structures and processes, for instance in relation to project-and team-working. The global economic downturn provides a further challenge, as resource constraints are likely to reduce opportunities for development at all levels, fostering competition as well as the imperative for collaboration between institutions and the individuals working in them. A more detailed account of the findings of the study on which this paper is based, with contributions from twelve international authors, is given in Gordon & Whitchurch (2010). Under these conditions, it is not surprising that questions are raised in the literature about what it means to be an academic or a professional in contemporary higher education. On the one hand, a separation and fragmentation of functions has been
This paper draws on an international study of the management challenges arising from diversifying academic and professional identities in higher education. These challenges include, for instance, the introduction of practice-based disciplines with different traditions such as health and social care, the changing aspirations and expectations of younger generations of staff, a diffusion of management responsibilities and structures, and imperatives for a more holistic approach to the "employment package", including new forms of recognition and reward. It is suggested that while academic and professional identities have become increasingly dynamic and multi-faceted, change is occurring at different rates in different contexts.A model is offered, therefore, that relates approaches to "people management" to different organizational environments, against the general background of increasing resource constraint arising from the global economic downturn. Individuals tend to be much more positive when asked about their current project than when asked about how things are "at work" (Watson 2009). There are, therefore, dynamics within the university that create both common purpose and tensions between diverse groupings of staff who may in the past have worked independently of each other. This phenomenon results in both convergence and divergence between academic and professional identities, and also opens up spaces for new types of identity to emerge, with associated activities. The latter include, for instance collaborative work in relation to the design of appropriate content and delivery in relation to new forms of virtual learning. Key management challenges arise from these dynamics, including the incorporation of new forms of practice-based discipline, changing staff expectations and aspirations, the dispersal of management and leadership activity, and pressure for more fluid structures and processes, for instance in relation to project-and team-working. The global economic downturn provides a further challenge, as resource constraints are likely to reduce opportunities for development at all levels, fostering competition as well as the imperative for collaboration between institutions and the individuals working in them. A more detailed account of the findings of the study on which this paper is based, with contributions from twelve international authors, is given in Gordon & Whitchurch (2010).Under these conditions, it is not surprising that questions are raised in the literature about what it means to be an academic or a professional in contemporary higher education. On the one hand, a separation and fragmentation of functions has been
For more than a decade, increasingly explicit attention has been made in the policies of, and guidance from, various funding and overarching bodies to the overall concept of good practice in the development and management of research staff in higher education institutions. That has embodied the concept of developing researchers over the career life cycle. After outlining key aspects of the general trend, this article focuses upon some of the nuances and complexities of the concept of the career life cycle of researchers. Reference is made to illustrations of developmental strategies. Traditions and trends for changeResearch may be described as the scholarship of discovery, of advancement of knowledge and of understanding. Academic staff are systematically trained in research in their own higher degree studies. Socialisation into the disciplinary culture occurs in the interaction with the discipline and colleagues through doctoral and postdoctoral study. In the pure disciplines it is through research study that one obtains a professional identity as physicist, historian or sociologist. (Kogan et al., 1994, p. 72.) Whilst that description broadly retains validity and captures the essence of the environment that prepares individuals for the scholarship of research (discovery), the scene has become more complex in recent years. In part, complication has stemmed from the rise in the number of researchers and fluidity and fragmentation of many research fields.
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