Careering through academia: Securing identities or engaging ethical subjectivities?

Abstract

This article reflects upon careering, securing identities and ethical subjectivities in academia in the context of audit, accountability and control surrounding new managerialism in UK Business Schools. Drawing upon empirical research, we illustrate how rather than resisting an ever-proliferating array of governmental technologies of power, academics chase the illusive sense of a secure self through ‘careering’; a frantic and frenetic individualistic strategy designed to moderate the pressures of excessive managerial competitive demands. Emerging from our data was an increased portrayal of academics as subjected to technologies of power and self, simultaneously being objects of an organizational gaze through normalizing judgements, hierarchical observations and examinations. Still, this was not a monolithic response, as there were those who expressed considerable disquiet as well as a minority who reported ways to seek out a more embodied engagement with their work. In analysing the careerism and preoccupation with securing identities that these technologies of visibility and self-discipline produce, we draw on certain philosophical deliberations and especially the later Foucault on ethics and active engagement to explore how academics might refuse the ways they have been constituted as subjects through new managerial regimes.

Exploring character in the new capitalism: a study of mid-level academics’ in a British research-intensive university

“…In contrast to depictions of career-building as a highly individualistic activity in the literature (Clarke and Knights, 2015), in my data the notion of being a 'good academic' was paramount. For twenty senior lecturers this meant being student centred:…”

“…The growing demand for demonstrable efficiency in all aspects of academic work, has been reported to conflict with what is seen as academics' moral responsibilities to students, colleagues, discipline, self and family/community (see Jump, 2011;Harley et al 2004;Sparkes, 2007). Some commentators suggest that academics are increasingly complying with performance demands, enticed by its potential rewards (see Clarke and Knights, 2015). Outside academia, the supposed transformation of the workplace and its effects on employees is a significant HRM concern.…”

Being an Early-Career CMS Academic in the Context of Insecurity and ‘Excellence’: The Dialectics of Resistance and Compliance

“…Spurred on by our own experiences and drawing on a dialectical approach to resistance, we have set out in this paper to examine the predicament in which CMS ECAs find themselves in the current times of academic insecurity (Clarke & Knights, 2015), as captured through this group's understandings of themselves as resisters and participants in the complex and contradictory forces constituting their field. From 24 semi-structured interviews, we have mapped ECAs' accounts of themselves as resisters and compliers in terms of different ways of dealing with the tensions, contradictions, overlaps and alliances that make up the conflicted and ambivalent relationship between CMS and the business schools context (Butler & Spoelstra, 2014).…”

“…Anderson, 2008;Harris, 2005;Trowler, 2001;Willmott, 2013). Studies of academic working lives have emphasised the extent to which uncertainty, insecurity, stress and anxiety have been exacerbated by the new academic environment (Clarke & Knights, 2015;Knights & Clarke, 2014).…”

“…domesticating critique through its legitimation (Bristow, 2012)) and impacting academic labour (e.g. in terms of subjecting it to nearimpossible, alienating demands (Clarke & Knights, 2015;Knights & Clarke, 2014)). Yet, to choose the term '(re)constitution' over 'erosion' of CMS is to acknowledge, alongside the damaging elements, the productive side of working upon this cauldron of conflicting forcesof resisting and reshaping aspects of institutionalised versions of CMS ethos at the same time as resisting and reshaping aspects of institutionalised business school norms and values.…”