In the service of a higher good: Resilience of academics under managerial control

Abstract

This article extends the literature of resistance in organisational settings by examining the forms and sources of resistance that endure even in the face of successive adversities. This article characterises such resistance as resilience and elaborates on this concept empirically in the university context by showing how academics find new ways to maintain and promote their professional agendas despite successive, unpredictable managerial interventions typical of the contemporary university. In our analysis, we identify three forms of resilience – protective, independent, and adaptive – each of which draws on specific professional values that we term constitutive goods. The focus on constitutive goods highlights the moral grounding of resistance that comes into play, especially in situations in which the actors have something fundamentally valuable at stake, and which they feel compelled to defend. Moreover, resilience extends the focus beyond situated resistance tactics to a process geared towards protecting constitutive goods against control over the long term.

Balancing between accountability and autonomy: the impact and relevance of public steering mechanisms within higher education

“…ter Bogt and Scapens (2012) note that the external standardization of the criteria for excellence has become increasingly central in HEIs today. However, the institutionalization of these new models is not complete in many cases, and different types of critique and resistance have been shown (Boitier and Rivière, 2013; Siltaloppi et al , 2019). Some authors have argued that such quantified evaluation criteria result in the overvalorization of quantity over quality (Kallio et al , 2017) or that evaluations become constrained by standardized scores based on rankings and ratings (Lane, 2010).…”

The Performative University: ‘Targets’, ‘Terror’ and ‘Taking Back Freedom’ in Academia

“…With respect to new forms of activism and collective resistance (e.g. Alvesson and Spicer, 2016), the academic actors portrayed within several papers here appear to be using the freedom and autonomy which are still prevalent within HE, albeit in a diminishing way, to craft an individualistic restorative escape (Mumby et al, 2017; Siltaloppi et al, 2019). Moreover, through the collective caring and generosity within such restorative counter spaces, a reflexive collegiality is enacted (Gherardhi and Rodeschini, 2016; Smith and Ulus, 2019).…”

“…Alakavuklar et al (2017) use a Lacanian perspective to show how the pleasure of contesting the suffering around managerialist, university discourse, reflexively develops into a hysteric academy. It appears that academics in fact employ a wide array of tactics to survive under managerialism and to subvert the system, ranging from open protest, avoidance (feigned ignorance, 'forgetting'), qualified compliance to quietly throwing 'sand in the (admin) machine' (Anderson, 2008;Contu, 2018;Siltaloppi et al, 2019). Moreover, we feel the significant contribution of this special issue is around other alternative ways we as academics can come together, acknowledging and sharing vulnerability, care and generosity to impact on their institutions.…”

Examining the Contemporary Worker and the Workplace From a Leadership-as-Practice Perspective: A HRD Opportunity

“…The response of workers to threatening forms of control has been found to be diverse, ranging from compliance to covert and, ultimately, overt forms of resistance. For example, to maintain their identities, they may collectively display a gesture of compliance while deploying such tactics as cynicism, irony, foot dragging, boredom, staged performance, or reinvention of meaning (Fleming & Spicer, 2008; Noury et al, 2022; Siltaloppi et al, 2022; Ybema & Horvers, 2017). Ultimately, any movement towards the practices entailed in resistance appears to arise from contradictions between the attempts by management to define an organizational identity and the corresponding response of workers who maintain their own sense of personal and collective meaning.…”