Neoliberalism, new public management and the sustainable development agenda of higher education: history, contradictions and synergies

Bessant, Sophie E. F.; Robinson, Zoë; Ormerod, R. Mark

doi:10.1080/13504622.2014.993933

Cited by 75 publications

(74 citation statements)

References 45 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…This results in a paradox between centralization and decentralization: a tension between the imperative to streamline HEIs and the heterogeneity of people and ideas with a stake and an opinion about what HEIs should be doing [44]. One possible impact is that sustainability actors and their goals must compete with a variety of other sectors for relevance and consideration in higher education decision-making processes [2,3,31,[45][46][47]. Wals discusses this, suggesting that a variety of educational goals can be seen as competing for priority in higher education change efforts, such as "concurrent educational reforms towards efficiency, accountability, privatization, management and control that are not always conducive for such re-orientation [i.e., towards sustainability]" [3] (p. 14).…”

Section: Institutional Change and Sustainability In Higher Educationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Wals discusses this, suggesting that a variety of educational goals can be seen as competing for priority in higher education change efforts, such as "concurrent educational reforms towards efficiency, accountability, privatization, management and control that are not always conducive for such re-orientation [i.e., towards sustainability]" [3] (p. 14). Indeed, prior research has shown that institutional change involves tensions between sustainability and other educational aims and values [2,3,31,[45][46][47].…”

Section: Institutional Change and Sustainability In Higher Educationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this context, HEIs are understood as competing with each other in the global economy, and as conducting research and training for this economy [72]. As an emerging body of literature shows, there is no easy answer to the question of whether the politics and practice of sustainability can be accommodated within the dominant norms of the corporate university or whether these ideals require a more fundamental transformation [2,31,[45][46][47]. In the context of these larger political economic shifts, it is important to both recognize the small success stories within current systems of higher education and to continue to fight for paradigmatic shifts away from dominant, neoliberal models, and towards more holistic institutional change for sustainable futures [31,45].…”

Section: Strategic Planning For Sustainability In Higher Educationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As an emerging body of literature shows, there is no easy answer to the question of whether the politics and practice of sustainability can be accommodated within the dominant norms of the corporate university or whether these ideals require a more fundamental transformation [2,31,[45][46][47]. In the context of these larger political economic shifts, it is important to both recognize the small success stories within current systems of higher education and to continue to fight for paradigmatic shifts away from dominant, neoliberal models, and towards more holistic institutional change for sustainable futures [31,45]. This includes moving away from narrow forms of neoliberal accountability focused on economic priorities, and towards recognizing the relational accountability of HEIs to the communities, lands, and places that support them [50,67].…”

Section: Strategic Planning For Sustainability In Higher Educationmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Strategic Planning for Sustainability in Canadian Higher Education

Bieler

McKenzie

2017

Sustainability

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper reviews representations of sustainability in the strategic plans of Canadian higher education institutions (HEIs). A content analysis of the strategic plans of 50 HEIs was undertaken to determine the extent to which sustainability is included as a significant policy priority in the plans, including across the five domains of governance, education, campus operations, research, and community outreach. We found 41 strategic plans with some discussion of sustainability, and identified three characteristic types of response: (i) accommodative responses that include sustainability as one of many policy priorities and address only one or two sustainability domains; (ii) reformative responses that involve some alignment of policy priorities with sustainability values in at least a few domains; and (iii) progressive responses that make connections across four or five domains and offer a more detailed discussion of sustainability and sustainability-specific policies. Accommodative responses were dominant. More progressive responses were typically from institutions participating in the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment and Rating System (STARS) of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education. The paper concludes with consideration of the political and economic contexts contributing to this relative prevalence of accommodative responses to sustainability.

show abstract

Section: Institutional Change and Sustainability In Higher Educationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Institutional Change and Sustainability In Higher Educationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Strategic Planning For Sustainability In Higher Educationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Strategic Planning For Sustainability In Higher Educationmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Strategic Planning for Sustainability in Canadian Higher Education

Bieler

McKenzie

2017

Sustainability

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Firth (2013) points to the tendency within universities to "individualize collective praxis and recuperate their radical otherness for broader, hegemonic (or counterhegemonic) aims" (p. 257). For a good case in point, consider how the narrative of sustainable development has become mainstream in higher education institutions (see Bessant et al, 2015).…”

Section: Expanding the Range Of The Possiblementioning

confidence: 99%

Carpe the academy: Dismantling higher education and prefiguring critical utopias through action research

Gaya

Brydon‐Miller

2017

Futures

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

General rightsThis document is made available in accordance with publisher policies. Please cite only the published version using the reference above. Full terms of use are available: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/pure/about/ebr-terms than shut down, diverse possibilities and democratic debate around this. We focus on critical utopian action research and systemic action research as illustrative of key qualities of prefigurative and critical utopian engagement with educational presents and futures. We conclude that the capture of the university by neoliberal logics can be resisted and challenged through radical methodologies, like action research, which explicitly set out to be ongoingly anti-hegemonic, critical, self-reflexive, pluralistic, and non-recuperative (Firth, 2013;Garforth, 2009).

show abstract

Missing finance in social impact bond research? A bibliometric overview between past and future research

Carè

Carè²,

Lévy

et al. 2023

Corp Soc Responsibility Env

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper provides a bibliometric review of 156 articles published between 2011 and 2021 on social impact bonds (SIBs). We identified five research streams, namely studies that: (i) place the origins of SIBs in the neo‐liberalism framework; (ii) consider SIBs as an evolution of the new public management approach; (iii) focus on conceptualizing SIBs as an impact investment approach rooted in the social finance landscape; (iv) look at SIBs as a funding source for social entrepreneurship; and (v) detect an emerging phenomenon labeled as sustainable financial partnerships for the SDGs. Our results suggest that the current literature is strongly based on those that we have defined as a sort of UK influence, which is dominating the scientific perspective and the current use of SIBs, and that there is still less “finance‐based” research in this field. We conclude by proposing areas for future research.

show abstract

Neoliberalism, new public management and the sustainable development agenda of higher education: history, contradictions and synergies

Cited by 75 publications

References 45 publications

Strategic Planning for Sustainability in Canadian Higher Education

Strategic Planning for Sustainability in Canadian Higher Education

Carpe the academy: Dismantling higher education and prefiguring critical utopias through action research

Missing finance in social impact bond research? A bibliometric overview between past and future research

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About