Management as ideology: “New” managerialism and the corporate university in the period of Covid‐19

Abstract

In this paper, we examine how Covid‐19 was utilized by the management of a university as a catalyst for ideological change, with the objective of transforming the ethos of a university management school and the role(s) of the academics employed within. Through new modes of working that maintained corporeal distance between university staff, market‐based ideology was mobilized to institute radical and lasting change within the roles of academics and operations of the institution. We focus on a singular case study: “Blue Management School” (BMS, pseudonym), based within an English mid‐tier research university which has historically embraced corporatization more readily than most of its peers. We conducted a qualitative analysis of management email communications and from interviews with nine academics (both current and former employees) who were working at BMS during the time concerned (March 2020 onward). We observe that Covid‐19 posed significant challenges to corporatized universities, and that university managers at BMS sought to address these challenges by undertaking further steps toward corporatization and mobilizing organizational change legitimized by the need to manage the Covid‐19 situation. This included hierarchical forms of accountability, with academics answering for module content to teaching convenors and the management team (“manager academics”). We draw attention to how management communications carried profound effects for the mobilization of ideological change within the institution, during this period. In addition, academic identity was affected, moving away from traditional research and teaching scholars toward revenue‐generating customer service workers, facilitating a power shift away from academics and further toward managers.

This is not an exit: accounting education and attempting to escape the capitalist realist “cage”

“…The need to challenge this ontology is evident now more than ever. The swallowing up of the sector to function within symbolic elements synonymous with capitalism and market-based competition and management [9] (Al Mahameed et al , 2023). It seems, as discussed in subsection 4.1, that the UK higher education sector has fallen into the signifiers provided by the capitalist symbolic order at the highest levels of management, and offering yet another example of how capitalism can flex and morph to engulf and assimilate almost any aspect of everyday life (Žižek, 1989) that can (in theory) be marketised.…”

“…More recently, both Gebreiter and Hidayah (2019) and Rintamäki and Alvesson (2022) note how marketisation is received by academics, and various “coping strategies” that academics employ to continue with their roles. These two studies show the filtering down of managerialism based on a marketised model, and the consequential behavioural implications for academic staff (Al Mahameed et al , 2023).…”

“…The need for a more holistic form of accounting education is well recognised in the literature (Fleming, 1996; Gebreiter, 2021; Gebreiter et al , 2018; Gray and Collison, 2002; Helliar, 2013; Yates and De Loo, 2021). Against a backdrop of increasing corporatisation and public policy changes that priories economic rationality (Al Mahameed et al , 2023; Boyce, 2004; Thomson and Bebbington, 2004), perhaps accounting education, with its associated accountability implications, is a potential vehicle where challenges against this narrative can be levied (Dyball and Thomson, 2013). In doing so, accounting education may be a vehicle for academics to transcend disciplinary boundaries and instead focus on the socio-historical contexts of accounting practice (Boyce, 2004).…”

“…Teaching-focussed staff often cover more than twice as much teaching and administration as their research-active counterparts, often for similar, or lower salaries. With fee income remaining as the main source of funds for recently marketised UK universities (Al Mahameed et al, 2023), maximising surpluses from teaching activity has become a key success factor for universities who do not generate significant research income. At the same time, increasing managerialism in universities and increasing emphasis on compliance with guidelines on areas such as quality for example, has led universities to employ specialist managerial staff to satisfy this agenda (Deem, 1998(Deem, , 2004Deem and Brehony, 2005;Deem et al, 2007), and preserve teaching income in a competitive market for students.…”

“…Key changes in the direction of some university departments that were previously centres of critical inquiry, turning towards more technically-focussed courses and modes of study also contribute to our anxieties around this subject (Komlik, 2021). This has been exacerbated by the responses of some universities to following the COVID-19 pandemic (Al Mahameed et al , 2023; Fleming, 2022), with academia in the UK plagued by a crisis of managerialism and demoralisation (Rolfe, 2013) that threatens the role of the university as “a vital institution for a vibrant democracy” (Letiche and Lightfoot, 2014, p. 81).…”