ILPC2014paper-Academic Work and the Neo Corporate University ILPC_20140402_095104

Not to be reproduced without author’s consent d.balsamo@chester.ac.uk Academic Work and the Neo Corporate University David Balsamo Dean of Social Science, University of Chester U.K Abstract Academic work and the labour process of academics are poorly accounted for in the existing literature Analyses of higher education in the U.K.,U.S.A and Europe are constituted by diverse and divergent themes, the most prominent being a developed understanding of the dynamics of pedagogy and structural changes to higher education driven by marketisation, commodification and mass provision However, these accounts largely fail to examine how teaching and research, the definitive components of academic work, are affected by either so called pedagogic advancement, or more significantly, management changes that seek to shape and intensify work within the changing university When academic work is scrutinised by the lens of labour process theory this is invariably initially achieved by an unexpurgated application of Braverman (1974) Commentators, for example, Miller (1991), Wilson (1991) and Dearlove (1996) provide such analyses, but their accounts fail to grasp the specificity of this work as expert, professional, labour Several consequences emerge from this Most notably an ambivalent conceptualisation and application of 'degradation', arguably Braverman's central focus, (Elger,1979) and a parallel neglect of critics of Braverman who cogently argue that skill has the potential to increase 'value' rendering over enthusiastic applications of deskilling counterproductive (Storey,1985) Most telling in these accounts is a confused depiction of work in higher education as 'craftwork' whilst also insisting that work in universities is in many ways quite different from the original contexts of production that inspired Braverman's thesis This provides both an uncomfortable fit with the realities of professional work and a too ready acceptance of the inevitability of 'proletarianisation' This paper presents findings of a study of the management of teaching and research within four English universities Based on semi structured interviews, the account examines how the pressures of mass provision are reflected in attempts to intensify the performance of academic labour The idea of 'hybridisation' of management methodologies is developed and empirically examined Traditionally, teaching and research are depicted as constituted by process and output respectively (Barnett,1992); evidence of 'hybridisation', found particularly in two research intensive institutions, unsettles existing conceptualisations of research and teaching's 'inner structures' and questions pre existing assumptions about how autonomy is constructed in the academy However, despite the emergence of new management technologies, as universities attempt to manage the totality of their operations in an environment of increased neo liberal competition, (Olsen and Peters, 2005) the distinctive qualities of key aspects of work in higher education: 'knowledge production', rather than 'knowledge produced for production' (Harney and Moten, 1998), and most notably the resistance of academics, was found to render managerial control restricted and incomplete The concept of 'responsible autonomy' (Friedman,1977) is deployed to understand the current situation of academic work, particularly the construction of autonomy within the boundaries of institutions, rather than as a resource brought in from the outside - a traditional, definitive, trait of professional work This is seen as congruent with the arrival of the neo corporate university (Musselin, 2007) where emphasis on corporate loyalty attenuates the influence of the subject specialism and compliance with institutional priorities becomes an overriding concern Finally, the conclusions are briefly related to Hardt and Negri's understanding of 'immaterial labour' Page | Introduction Teaching and research endure as the foundational components of academic work within universities, often appearing as the substantive targets of attempts to increase performance in the face of new ‘realities’ However, less is known about how these ‘constants’ are managed within the changing environment of higher education Whilst a wealth of complex narratives charting the transformative, often deleterious, effects of managerialism in the academy exist, for example, Chandler et al (2002; Deem and Brehony, 2005), these stop short of either empirical description or comprehensive analysis of the ‘on the ground’ mechanisms and processes by which academic labour is subject to management control and regulation In fact, with the exception of some notable examples, Miller, 1991; Willmott, 1995; Harney and Moten, 1998) there appears to be somewhat of an analytic blind spot when it comes to understanding how teaching and research are managed This lack of analysis is not easy to reconcile with the burgeoning literature on higher education A significant proportion of which does focus on the inter relationship between teaching and research, as universities are shaped by exogenous forces, transforming, in turn, their internal modes of operation (Barnett, 2003) Alternative analyses, relate teaching and research to an evolving understanding of pedagogy, Colbeck (1998) providing a classic example A missing ingredient in both types of approach is the lack of focus on those that the work and critically how they are managed Whilst there is widespread acknowledgement of change, as mass higher education modulates traditional ideas of the structure and purpose of the university, current understandings of the management of the core components of teaching and research remain underdeveloped, based largely on analysis of ‘labour process’ undertaken in the nineteen nineties A distinguishing, prevalent, dynamic in contemporary U.K higher education, is the attempt by institutions to gain management control over their complete range of functions This is necessary in order to secure effective survival within the framework of competition generated and secured by neo liberal governance (Olsen and Peters, 2005) and has determinate effects on the work of academics League tables provide the codified outward manifestation of competition, designed to provide apparently easy access to the complex facts informing ‘consumer’ choice, by disguising the knowledge asymmetries existing between producer and consumer under the guise of simple metrics Whilst not in themselves definitive of Page | competition, league tables are an important component in understanding the current realities of academic work and will be returned to later More generally, the competitive context of English higher education can be seen at a sector wide and institutional level, as an attempt to create universities as neo corporate entities For the purposes of the discussion that follows this means: (i) as institutions U.K universities are concerned with the aforementioned attempt to secure control of their across the board activities (ii) in doing this they need to deploy management techniques that increasingly promote identification and commitment to organisationally defined objectives Both can involve attempts to intensify the conditions under which academic work is performed and this is potentially resisted by academics Musselin (2007) in her description of the “late industrialisation” of higher education expresses the shift from the idealised collegial institution to the neo corporate entity indicated above: The affiliation to one’s institution is progressively transformed in to a work relationship The responsibilities and duties of academics are not only defined by their professional group but also by their institutional work arrangements Musselin, 2007:6) Musselin suggests an important rationale for examining how work in universities is managed under the changing conditions Her signification of a “work relationship” is of vital importance Firstly, it underscores that what academics in universities is work – potentially similar in a number of respects to work that is undertaken in other settings Secondly, it allows the possibility of providing specific form to phenomena identified in the literature such as commodification and marketisation, for example, Naidoo (2005) which hitherto appear as structural trends not anchored to the university as a specific type of institution The first acts as a corrective to the neglect of academic labour as work, perhaps because it is seen as privileged; therefore ‘immune’ from the contingencies affecting the labour processes in general The second updates perspectives constructed in the nineteen nineties when universities were in the earlier stage of transition away from their collegial roots This paper presents the summary findings of a study of the management of teaching and research based on a study of four English universities In order to provide necessary contextualisation to the existing literature, some specific characteristics of teaching and research are outlined along with a review of labour process theory and its application to higher education The problems associated with ‘degradation’ and ‘deskilling’ in the context Page | of higher education, are also highlighted Finally, a tentative conclusion, linking academic work and its management to the neo corporate university, is provided Teaching and Research as the Core of Academic Labour: The Antimonies of Process and Output Teaching and research are often regarded as different and incommensurate activities seen with the corollary, assumption that they are managed differently Incommensurability is explained as a function of their ostensibly different nature, delineated by a focus on process and output respectively These terms are important in understanding the management of teaching and research because they represent the material and symbolic consolidation of the inner structures of both activities as academic labour They also produce the potential that conditions either susceptibility or resistance to management control Wilson (1991) emphasised the latter point when accounting for the variable ‘proletarianisation’ of academic labour to argue that research is based upon “creativity” and “knowledge” consequently: the skill that is involved therefore includes the ability to think in various ways and possession of a vast body of knowledge it is hard to conceive how ‘thought’ itself could be deskilled (1991:259) By contrast, teaching is susceptible to the pressures of control and externalised management direction ‘Proletarianisation’ is facilitated by institutional policies to separate teaching from research, where shorn of the protection offered from relatively impenetrable reserves of knowledge, it can be managed a routine manner For example, modularisation allows the delivery ‘off the shelf’ knowledge and its re packaging by apparently research deskilled academics Process/output distinctions, as taxonomies for understanding the organisation of academic work, are most highly developed in Barnett (1992) where an influential conceptualisation of teaching and research is presented These are distinct activities, subject to differing types and degrees of institutional regulation Barnett is clear that teaching (“higher education” in his terminology) is unambiguously concerned with matters of process as it is concerned with the continuous development of individuals, without determinate outcome Writing in the early 1990s, at the dawn of the emergence of developed technologies of accountability, he does concede that the government and employers may have an interest in what he, somewhat confusingly, describes as the output of the process, namely the emergent graduate, but has Page | little to say about how this interest may translate in to the detailed management of teaching Research is solely output oriented according to Barnett He suggests: “except for the historians and sociologists of knowledge, the process of getting there is signally uninteresting” (1992: 625) Barnett’s analysis is significantly influenced by the prevailing context of its creation Recent developments, driven by the cumulatively closer engagement of the state with English higher education (Taylor, 2006) and the response of university management systems in promoting greater accountability were not predicted Deem (2004) draws attention to the creative capacities of both teaching and research She claims that this quality renders both relatively resistant to the regulatory ingress of management activity Although stating teaching and research are unified in their immunity to regulation: “not remotely comparable to managing retailing or industrial production” more prominence is given to the resistive capacities of research (2004:111) Deem suggests that outside of laboratory sciences, research is an individual, rather than collective activity It is endowed with resistance to management because it is difficult to keep track of disparate work practices, which lack central reporting lines Further specifying the resistant nature of both teaching and research, she indicates how academics have loyalty to their subject area and its institutional location, which is amplified by academic training producing “critical thinkers”, relatively impervious to management direction Both Barnett and Deem align themselves with the traditional sociological literature on professional and occupational power For Barnett, although unstated, the idea of process conveys the actuality and potential for control as indeterminate ‘secrets of production’ gradually become revealed to be made subject to rationalised codification By contrast, research, as an output focussed activity, retains its opaque and indeterminate properties, resistant to codification and managerial regulation (Jamous and Peloille, 1970; Johnson, 1977) Deem similarly emphasises the challenge of subjecting research to management; the way it is organised as work creates less tractability than teaching, which is itself permeated by subject specific allegiances and a critical ‘consciousness’ rendering it dissimilar to work in other contexts in terms of its susceptibility to management Her analysis suggests the management of academic activity is subject to particularistic specificities, as a form of expert labour, where knowledge, definitive of occupational functioning, carries profound implications for the organisation and control of work Work in higher education may be subject to specific conditions, deriving in part from a labour process where subject knowledge Page | has a primary significance; however, there are questions as to the stability of these conditions as universities change Harley and Lee suggest discipline centred collegial relations have been “idealised” and managerialism concurrently de-emphasised in analyses of the academic labour process Their examination of research selectivity for economics in U.K universities highlights the influence of subject based performance indicators in establishing a novel intellectual/professional hierarchy Their impact is ‘managerial’ because the technology registering achievement is founded on principles of standardisation and control (1997:1427) In addition, the widespread use of financial performance measures, deployed within academic subject areas to mitigate risk, and enacted by academics who are also managers also suggests that the discipline can provide a conduit for control (Johnson, 2002; Deem and Johnson, 2003) Below some of the factors that may serve to modify the process/output distinction in the neo corporate university and which also impact upon the academic labour process are explored Dissolving Antimonies and ‘Hybridisation’ Embedded within Barnett’s epistemologically based separation of process and output is the foundation for claims that research, in particular, offers resistance to the exercise of management prerogative An alternative proposition, based on ‘hybridisation’ is suggested here: process and outcome not exist as indissoluble categories, structuring teaching and research as separate, bounded, entities Methods for the management of teaching may ‘spill over’ in to the way research is managed Similarly, output based approaches, commonly found within the institutional management of research, can be deployed to manage teaching – ‘spill over’ results in the generation of complementary management methodologies Two examples illustrate the possible connections between ‘hybridisation’ and mass higher education in the neo corporate university The first relates to the ways in which demand for greater accountability, regarding the deployment of funding, may lead to the process output distinction in respect of research activity being transgressed A Comprehensive Spending Review in 1998 established an ongoing Transparency Review to analyse income and expenditure in higher education The results are returned to the English funding council on a yearly basis The Transparent Approach to Costing (TRAC) is a particular accounting process dedicated to the analysis of costs associated with teaching TRAC (T) , research TRAC(R) and other core activities (HEFCE,2005) TRAC has been progressively implemented since 2000Page | 01 and is allied to Full Economic Costing (fEC), which is an attempt to measure and monitor the ‘real’ costs associated with the range of activities undertaken in higher education (FSSG/TDG, 2009) Originating earlier, the methodology surrounding TRAC (R) is more advanced than TRAC (T), currently under development in many universities Initially, institutions were required to detail costs related to research, teaching and ‘other activities’ In 2002 the methodology was refined allowing it to be deployed to discrete projects; from 2005 all applications to research councils were required by the government to be TRAC compliant and fEC costed The methodology attempts to account for the inputs to research activity: time, laboratory and support costs, etc and to separate these, direct costs, from the indirect, infrastructural associated with university estates (Lewis, 2000) It is not the intention to evaluate TRAC or fEC here However, it is suggested that their implementation is illustrative of attempts to actively manage academic activity For example, by codification of the inputs that constitute research activity fEC is able to breach a hitherto indeterminate sphere to scrutinise its constitutive elements As a consequence, the regulatory potential presents a direct challenge to accounts that situate process and outcome as inviolable categories, structuring teaching and research respectively The accounting measures associated with the methodology allows research to be conceptualised, and importantly, managed as a process This has a clear significance for the workplace autonomy of researchers as it provides a tool for academics, who act as managers, to exert control over their colleagues Potentially, the once idealised ‘secrets’ of research production become transparent allowing for the inputs of time and resources to be externally monitored and controlled TRAC presents an example of the ‘hybridisation’ of management approaches, where process orientated management, associated with teaching, is applied in a complementary manner to the management of research Finally, the progressive introduction of TRAC to monitor research and then teaching is indicative of an imperative to regard both activities as, in essence, managerially similar The seeking of complementary connections leads further to the evolution of embedded cultural practices in the university workplace evidenced, for example, in workload management schemes (Burgess et al, 2003; Barrett and Barrett, 2007) A second example provides an example of ‘hybridisation’ operating in reverse: output orientated management applied to teaching In an environment where universities increasingly compete to attract students, protecting their income against a diminishing unit of resource, the perception of the institution in the outside world becomes crucial League tables, Page | ranking universities against various output measures of achievement, are now the most common method by which institutions project an external perception Hazelkorn suggests ranking systems have grown to become increasingly important as a means to remedy the apparent lack of information available to the public regarding “the quality and performance of higher education” (2011:187) The extent to which this was a genuine need, or constructed in the midst of general consumerist, pressures is beyond the scope of discussion However, the effect of the injunction by Dearing (1997) for “greater explicitness and clarity” has propelled the once recondite world of the university in to the mainstream It is a consequence of the pressures associated with a corporate presence and provides an example of the alignment of higher education with private sector practices noted by Deem (2004; 2005) in her elaboration of the ideological character of new managerialism National league tables published in broadsheet newspapers together with international rankings, such as the THES-QS World University Rankings, classify and rank universities according to a number of discrete output measures Recently, the online and interactive Complete University Guide has increased the volume of information available Ranking criteria include: entry standards, graduate prospects, percentage of ‘good’ honours degrees, completion/dropout rates, research output/productivity and student satisfaction Whilst the penultimate category is evidently research related, the rest represent measures of output directly related to teaching and complement the data now routinely produced by the National Student Survey, which is the Guide’s primary data ‘feed’ Research by Locke et al (2008) presents a critical review of the propriety of league tables suggesting they have been extended beyond their original remit, becoming a highly influential management tool within universities, often as key arbiters of decision making Originally, tables and rankings were intended to inject an element of consumer sovereignty in to the undergraduate market However, as the Locke et al indicate they are now significantly embedded within the management and decision making apparatus of universities: Rather than being of merely intermittent concern, the case studies suggest that league tables are becoming incorporated in to the routine management of the institutional environment and internal constituencies by managers (including academic managers) and administrators (2008:60) These authors highlight how externally projected output measures are being actively deployed to exert management control within universities As the majority of measures utilised by Page | league tables attempt in some way to gauge and assess the impact of teaching, they reflect the imposition of output criteria applied to teaching activity, constituting the decision making context from which it can be managed League tables, conceived initially as simply marketing tools, are becoming management tools This is a development that transgresses the process outcome distinction adopted by conventional accounts, providing an example of output criteria being applied to the management of teaching It is a development that is also indicative of ‘hybridisation’ and the complementary merging of methods for managing teaching and research Both examples of ‘hybridisation’ can be directly related to the ways in which universities seek to manage their range of operations in a mass system and can be seen as illustrative of the evolution towards neo corporate structure and identity The regulation of the research process, through the management of inputs was developed initially as a concerted attempt to manage research activity, prompted by the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) in 1988 The RAE attempted to provide external evaluation of the fiscal value of research in an environment of reduced public funding (Lucas, 2006) to: “uncouple the development of research from the expansion of student numbers” in an era of mass provision (Scott, 2005) Its successor, the Research Excellence Framework shares these objectives with a much greater emphasis on the ‘impact’ of research in its contribution to economy and society (HEFCE, 2012) It drives research intensive universities, in particular, to corral researchers in to thematic groupings and to concentrate their efforts towards institutionally derived and approved research outcomes, which are judged to produce impact in the competition to secure current and future funding The accounting technologies operationalised in TRAC attempt to ensure correspondence between the costs of inputs and the value of research outputs As this value is increasingly seen in the form of impact, and consequent income incentives, process style management can be seen as incorporated in the decisions university managers make, directly impacting on the ways in which academic labour is in turn managed The second example illustrates the significance of competition as institutions struggle with ambiguity concerning institutional identity in a differentiated, variegated, sector This drives the need for the external reference point created by league tables, to which universities respond Output measures become increasingly deployed to manage teaching as consumer sovereignty becomes transformed in to a technique to inform institutional management It is apparent from both examples how ‘hybridisation’ can be related to the need of universities to Page | gain greater managerial purchase on their range of activities in as part of a strategy of neo corporate consolidation Understanding the Management of Teaching and Research in Four English Universities Senior managers (registrars, pro vice chancellors and deans) as well as middle managers (heads of department and senior administrators) were interviewed in four English universities Two research intensive institutions – Highland and Townside and two teaching intensive – Callybrook and Wateredge were selected to grasp the extremes of differentiation in a variable sector and to compare the management of academic work in institutions with very different purposes and associated designated incomes Care was taken to interview across the range of disciplines representing the humanities, social sciences, science and engineering In semi structured interviews participants were asked about the management of teaching and research in their institution in order to gauge the extent to which they deployed hybrid or complementary methodologies and how this fitted with overall institutional strategies Management in the universities examined was regarded as shaped by the institution’s structural profile, including its research or teaching intensiveness, but also by the action and orientations of the managers interviewed This is because it is an activity consisting of a repertoire of potential actions and involving a balance of choices, albeit within a field constrained by operational, strategic and wider political considerations An a priori perspective, viewing academic work as a form of expert labour, suggested that its management should be considered as complex and multi dimensional; involving a range of contradictions and compromises connected to the overall character of the institution The sample of interviewees was constructed to reflect this through the deployment of a taxonomy of management decision making (Currie and Vidovitch, 1998), which emphasises how purposeful action operates within the increasingly controlled environment of higher education The table below provides example of how the interview schedule engaged with the structural dimensions of ‘hybridisation Examples of ‘structural’ indicators of ‘hybridisation’, possible effects and their representation as questions in the interview schedule Page | 10 For Wilson the unmodified deployment of RA in university contexts is doubly problematic Firstly, in the traditional (pre 1992) universities described, management was shared between Government, institutional leaders and prominent academics The direction of managerial influence was correspondingly diffuse, entailing opacity in discerning who among the interest groups represented were responsible for influencing others to identify with institutional aims Secondly, RA was conceived by Friedman as engineered or constructed within the workplace In contrast, Wilson argues that the autonomy associated with academic labour is generated and sustained by a value system, definitive of academic identity, operating externally to the workplace Because autonomy already exists, as an extra organisational resource, potential management control develops not from active management intervention to engineer identification, but from academics surrendering what they already possess Despite the generation of autonomy lying outside of the realm of engineered compliance, it is a highly significant motivating force binding the subjectivity of academics to the objective conditions of their work In fact, for Wilson, the externality of academic identity to the institutional regime provides a major source of its potency The strength of Wilson’s analysis is in the recognition of some of the specificities of academic labour This facilitates an unstated, and implicit, alignment with critics of Braverman, such as Storey, who note that ‘value’ can be enhanced by skill rather than by deskilling Unfortunately, there is a difficulty in the transposition of Friedman’s analysis, of skilled labour, to higher education because work in universities is founded on expert knowledge based labour Wilson acknowledges this in the primacy he accords to academic values constructed around knowledge and its application Indeed, it is the values of “collegiality” and “professionalism” focussed on the “freedom to conduct research” that endows academic labour the capacity to “transcend” the university workplace and act as the foundation for what is in effect a modified form of “responsible autonomy”(1991:257) Although eventually rejecting RA as a means of capturing academic work, Wilson’s eschewal is based on disagreement as to where autonomy is created and sustained, rather than what constitutes and sustains it in universities As a consequence his portrayal of the specific nature and conditions surrounding work in universities is partial and limited The central problematic in the three accounts above is the incorrect identification of academic labour as a derivative of craftwork Whilst the authors exhibit some discomfort with this, hinting at its specificity, little in the way of an alternative proposed Arguably, analysis of Page | 23 work in universities has remained in somewhat of a contradictory limbo since these accounts were developed Affinities to craft based work are suggested, which are corrected by a concern there are peculiarities rendering analysis either difficult or incomplete Surprisingly, a potential way out of this impasse was available in the contemporary literature of the time Both examples, which will be briefly discussed, provide potential analytical transparency regarding the nature of academic work Derber, in particular, providing a solution to the unhelpful over generalisation of proletarianisation, including its application noted in the work reviewed above Firstly, Harney and Moten emphasise “the political, ideological and material conjunction of subjectivity in the workplace” Drawing on Burawoy they suggest Braverman was incorrect in identifying deskilling as the driving, and definitive, imperative of the labour process In contrast, academic work is distinguished by “knowledge production”, rather than “knowledge produced for production” (1998:179) This constructs particular subjectivities based on enrichment, not degradation Although, for them, politically problematic because the ideological and symbolic constructions accompanying, largely, individualised work create both an illusion of control, based on the “absence of immediate supervision”, which is further amplified by the impression of alienation free labour, arising from the “lustre of authorial imprimatur”, academic work is a very specific form of expert labour Knowledge produced as a non instrumental end, not as an adjunct to aid production, infuses academic activity with particular qualities (1998: 156 -7) These insights are significant in both isolating the specificities of academic work and in stressing the interaction between the material structures of work, subjectivity and potential action Harney and Moten not exemplify their analyses with empirical examples, but their ideas can usefully be applied to theorise the findings reported above Secondly, Derber differentiates between “technical and ideological proletarianisation” (1983:312) in order to highlight the shortcomings of what he describes as “orthodox proletarianisation theorists” and “post industrialists” The former, represented by commentators such as Oppenheimer (1973), proposed that professional workers become proletarianised as a result of many becoming salaried employees, which establishes a gradual, but cumulative, erosion of their autonomy and degradation of their labour process as they become increasingly subject to management imperatives By contrast, post industrial theorists, most prominently Bell (1974), emphasised the centrality of knowledge to Page | 24 contemporary socio - economic conditions (Doogan, 2009) consequently, the position of professional knowledge infused workers is elevated, allowing them control within their labour process as a counter to proletarianisation Derber’s analysis in both historical and dynamic; indicating that capital’s control over labour was gradual and progressive At first workers produced in their own workshops, at their own pace, the product being handed to a “putter outer” whose role becomes cumulatively more essential in finding a market for the product (1983:314) The producer ceded control of the product, but at this stage retained control of the labour process In fact Derber’s contention is that workers maintained control of the technical aspects of the labour process for a long period following the loss of control of the products of their labour The movement from “putting out” was gradual, eventually involving the direct management of labour in the controlled and institutionalised environment of the factory This constituted “technical proletarianisation”, leading inexorably to Taylorist rationalisation, including the separation of the control of work from its execution, and the degradation described by Braverman Derber is clear that professional work had lost control of the ends to which its ‘products’ are put, but at the time of his research were free from “technical proleterianisation” However, he is equally clear that the later stages of “technical proletarianisation”, associated with industrial work, have become “synonymous with proletarianisation itself” and incorrectly applied by traditional theorists when they seek to understand professional and expert labour (1983: 315) This inappropriate equivalence assumption, present in Miller, Dearlove and Wilson, is largely responsible for the ambiguities they experience in attempting to reconcile LPT with work in universities The analytical insights provided by Harney and Moten and Derber illuminate the research findings on work in the context of the evolution of the neo corporate university, specifically the role of knowledge in the academic labour process In fact, knowledge was found to exist in a complex – double – relationship with the management of teaching and research; providing both the means to manage academic work and the basis of resistance to its management An example, from Townside, the most highly managed research intensive, is illustrative The R Factor was the method used to manage knowledge, eventually contributing to the institution’s research outputs One Dean was explicit that the method provided a means to Page | 25 manage the performance of researchers, consolidating control of the labour process with institutional objectives The importance of the R Factor was underscored by the seriousness surrounding the evaluation of score profiles and by an air of undisguised triumphalism that a ‘tool’ with enhanced possibilities for management control was now available It was also clear from the PVCs comments that the R Factor directed research toward the big, income yielding, challenges providing greater “certainty” in turbulent environment Management intrusion did not extend to direct interference with the operation of the disciplinary knowledge base – materials physicists were not influenced about their choice of theory or experimental approaches – however, the managed identification of research directions is significant in determining how knowledge is applied and the application is rewarded The prominent inbuilt reinforcement between R Factor scores and future funding opportunities leading to interaction with contractual matters – probation and advancement – demonstrated the grasp and reach of process in to the operation of knowledge based work In terms of resistance, the Head of Physics Townside clarified that he challenged the “brigading” of research by exemplifying the use of knowledge as a resource for resistance His suggestion, that academics could make systems work for them, was achieved through specific recourse to the fundamental principles of the discipline’s knowledge base Darr and Warhurst in a recapitulation of the debate between Freidson and Bell, questioning the location of knowledge in “advanced societies” (2008:35), identify Freidson’s insistence on the influence of “occupational communities” operating outside of organisations as sites of power that exact influence over work within organisations This example illustrates how, on occasions, knowledge drawn from sources external to institutional boundaries intercedes within the dynamics surrounding internally constructed responsible autonomy, mitigating its potency to secure unquestioned compliance with over arching institutional aims This example also suggests Harney and Moten may have too readily accepted that academics have a limited capacity to resist because of false consciousness they claim is engendered by the organisation of their work Resistance was found to be relatively limited and it is therefore important not to over state its occurrence However, when present it was trenchant and determined in its assertion of subject sovereignty In the research intensives it was manifest in the disjunction between institutional tendencies to ‘hybridisation’ and the actions of mainly middle managers Whilst it is acknowledged that action and resistance are not the same, the clearest examples of opposition to institutional priorities ran counter to ‘hybridisation’ Perhaps unsurprisingly, and within the constrained circumstances of a semi structured Page | 26 interview, more senior managers in these institutions tended to identify their actions as congruent with the university Conversely at Callybrook, the teaching intensive where the management of research was regarded as a serious priority, action was in the form of resistance to the relaxed approach of the DVC and involved embracing proto ‘hybridisation’ strategies apparently constructed from the practices of research intensive institutions, serving to underscoring the significance of sector based approaches to ‘hybridisation’ Derber also clearly connects to the specificities of university work Ostensibly free from “technical proletarianisation”, the work of academics can be grasped as being expert labour with characteristics serving to distinguish it from the archetypal industrial model Control, for example, in the predetermination of tasks, cannot be separated from execution; management is predominantly by other academics, notionally connected to the subject knowledge base – traditionally this has been an effective form of ‘soft managerialism’ because of its compatibility with collegiality and implied authenticity Trow (1993) and Deem (2008); self organisation, based on internalisation of academic values, rather than direction by an externalised managerial ‘force’, is a key coordinating impetus Finally, self management is facilitated and extended by the imbibing of values at the heart of the academic enterprise; these are subjectively aligned to individualised career aspirations, such as promotion, which both signify what it means to be a ‘good’ academic and secure material advancement Finally, Wilson’s analysis, based in the nineteen nineties firmly rejected responsible autonomy, as a form of management control constructed within the organisation, as irrelevant for the understanding of academic work In direct and absolute contrast, the findings from this research identify process orientated methodologies as engineering a distinct internal organisational locus of control for managing research in the research intensive institutions Examples from the research suggest this is not a ‘contest’ with an outright winner, as opposition, predicated on the external influence of knowledge and it resistive capacities were also apparent Conclusion: Academic Work in the Transition to the Neo Corporate University The findings from this research and the related discussion suggest that academic work gains much of its distinctive character from the ways in which knowledge inter-penetrates the Page | 27 defining functions of teaching and research Harney and Moten clarify the distinctiveness of academic work as founded on knowledge production, rather than on the instrumental consequences of knowledge application Whilst their dichotomisation is overstated, oversimplifying the relationship between knowledge and its application – universities have long been involved in the application of knowledge (Kerr, 1987; 1991) – and neglects the simultaneous operation of different types of knowledge activity under the rubric of ‘scholarship’ (Boyer, 1990) they identify the central quality of academic work creating an incessant problem for its management In order for academic work to maintain its creative momentum, yielding both applied and productive dividends, it is necessary for it to operate with freedoms facilitative of the exercise of its creative capacities This is particularly, not exclusively, the case in research and illustrated in the examples above In presenting this problem, academic work shares the defining characteristic of ‘knowledge work’, which Darr and Warhurst (2008) suggest is captured by both the management perspectives of commentators such as Drucker and in the classic critical accounts of Mills However, it is also separated from the generality of ‘knowledge work’ by the capacity to produce non instrumental knowledge, which is vital if the fruits of academic labour are to be realised through instrumental application The awkward managerial dilemma involved in subjecting knowledge based creativity to control, is increasingly recognised by analyses of knowledge intensive industries and influenced by critiques of deskilling (Scarbrough, 1999) Here the contrary, and distinct, advantages of responsible autonomy for enhancing productive utility are emphasised, which through the strategy of incorporation, convinces workers they share the aims of management (Friedman, 1977; 1986; Barrett, 2004) Similar scrutiny of work in universities is absent from the literature and is problematic because the dilemma of management control is arguably more acute here, given the specificities attached to non instrumental knowledge production The research in demonstrating the emergence of ‘hybridised’ management suggest that as institutions are further shaped by the dynamics of transition, a key feature of which is competition, there is greater pressure to intensify and control academic work, but given the complexities described this is likely to be a difficult and uneven task Neo liberal governance shaped the original contours of mass provision and is also responsible for maintaining the momentum of transition in the sector towards institutions as neo corporate entities An important operational consequence is the need to mediate and monitor Page | 28 competition as the conversion of higher education from ‘possession’ by producers to ‘ownership’ by consumers accumulates momentum This is tangible in the pre occupation with league tables, the current technology of choice, increasingly being used to mediate competition The tables provide easily digestible arbitration between the merits of institutions whilst reinforcing, and legitimating, the idea that the choice of university is equivalent to selecting any other commodity Operationally and managerially the effects of league table induced competition are ambiguous Institutions strive for upward movement in order to compete with the whole sector, whilst simultaneously acknowledging the advantages of modest, circumspect, gains against a restricted range of ‘benchmarked’ competitors The tables are themselves constituted by different metrics, with the majority providing an admixture of research performance and teaching performance, the latter being almost universally ‘fed’ by the NSS However, the weighting of performance is a ‘constant’, not moderated by the type of institution, impelling university managers to compete by attempting to manage the complete range of operations Clearly, given existing and increasing funding disparities between research and teaching intensive universities it is, in reality, impossible for the latter gain high scores for research However, the need to be seen to manage and to improve performance appears to become real as evidenced in the importance accorded to research by a number of managers even by the teaching intensive institutions examined Here the league table mediated imperative to increase across the board performance illustrates the paradox of a differentiated sector subject to the uniform pressures stimulated by competition In this context ‘hybridisation’ appears to be a sector wide management ‘resource’ as well as a strategy followed in discrete institutional environments The research intensives possess large volumes of funding and need to effectively capitalise on this through elevating research performance in areas that will produce future funding advantages In a discussion of the complexities involved in the management of knowledge workers Darr and Warhurst draw on Scarbrough (2003) to indicate: The exploitation of knowledge requires it to be made explicit and collectivised so that it is no longer the exclusive property of individuals and the centralised in the pursuance of the organisations strategic goals (2008:33) The use of developed process inspired technologies at the research intensives, most clearly exemplified by the R Factor at a prominent research intensive university, is a clear example of collectivised deployment of knowledge in pursuance of institutional goals in the management Page | 29 of research The complementary ‘spill over’ of output inspired methodologies and application to teaching at these institutions, often as at Townside to remedy a previous unilateral emphasis on research, provides evidence of the links between emerging ‘hybridisation’ of management and higher education under evolving neo liberal governance as the pressures to control complete institutional performance take hold They present one managerial solution for dealing with the knowledge based complexities of academic work and for the collateral construction of responsible autonomy within institutions The research findings appear to have captured an important phase in the transition of universities resonating with a number of elements in Roggero’s recent analytic taxonomy of describing the “corporatisation” of institutions (2011:61) Clear imperatives towards ‘hybridisation’ were found creating the potential for greater intensification and control of academic work Importantly, evidence of ‘outcroppings’ of resistance by middle managers, intercepting and reinterpreting ‘hybridised’ imperatives in order to rework them in a manner perceived advantageous for their organisational unit, were also discovered In many cases this was aided by reference to the authority of the subject specialism Wilson, discussed above, compared the then polytechnics with universities The former were developing repertoires of sustained management intervention, eroding the autonomy by academic staff by subjecting them to greater levels of institutional control He suggested that the traditional research universities may follow suit, but would that they would always struggle to gain control over knowledge as the external force conferring protection against the advance of managerialism Derber, working on a much larger canvass describes the advance of ideological, proletarianisation in contrast to the safety that professional work then enjoyed from technological proletarianisation Universities were exempt from both varieties of occupational control The management of teaching and research examined in a small sample of universities evidenced the means by which management control can be exercised over academic labour indicating the development of an incipient framework of institutional coordination containing tendencies towards both ideological and technological proletarianisation It is important to reiterate that these are tendencies indicating a potential direction, or a capacity to be actively catalysed, not a description of the current state of affairs and, also, these tendencies are counterbalanced by the specificities that define work in universities The managerial control of academic labour presently remains restricted, and therefore incomplete, firstly, because of its facility to produce non instrumental knowledge Page | 30 and, secondly, as a result of the active resistance of academics to managerial intervention Both of these are sources of protection based on knowledge, which is actualised to interact with the material conditions structuring academic work and indicative of the way that the material, ideological and political coincide in the workplace The first relates innovative properties of knowledge, necessary for institutional survival, particularly in research intensive contexts, the second, to the ability of knowledge to confer protection to practitioners based on its indeterminate qualities Evidence of the second was directly found in the research, whereas evidence for the first is indirect and exists as logical prerequisite for innovation in research leading to institutional competitive advantage Universities have changed since academic work was subject to detailed scrutiny Wilson’s externalisation of academic knowledge as a source of almost untouchable academic power is appears dated and was found to be replaced by responsible autonomy, constructed within institutional boundaries and conditioned by the dynamics attached to knowledge as a force for innovation or resistive capacity These changes clearly resonate with the corporate university as described by Musselin The organisational construction of responsible autonomy at the expense of traditional external sources of occupational power, points to an attenuation of the influence of the subject as the basis for academic allegiance and its transfer to the institution This movement also corresponds with Friedman’s depiction of responsible autonomy as engendering institutional loyalty based on common opposition to an external enemy, a message eloquently conveyed by league tables However, it is necessary to exercise caution in over generalising this as the terms of the transition are both contested and situation specific likely therefore only to be revealed by empirical means Finally, the focus on the material basis of higher education intersects contemporary developments on the understanding of work as “immaterial labour” (Hardt and Negri, 2000) In their approach there is a concern to disperse labour from the workplace, focusing on its relational rather than its structural properties They suggest that this arises because production in contemporary societies increasingly involves outputs that are immaterial, for example, the generation of information networks, which are characterised by intangible properties affording no scope for management activity to gain substantive purchase In this context, relationships in the home, and throughout a multiplicity of dispersed locales, become important in managing the reproductive capacities of labour, which are seen as unaffected by the conventional constraints of time or location Consequently, managers operating in a Page | 31 traditional structural hierarchy are displaced by the growth diffuse non hierarchical relationships An important collateral implication is the blurring of the accepted distinction between production, at a determinate place of work, and reproduction of labour power, conventionally seen as taking place outside of the direct realm of work, but as a vital precondition of exploitation at work De Angelis and Harvie (2008) have recently challenged the unmitigated extension of Foucauldian biopolitics – the cornerstone of his disciplinary society – to work Perhaps because of its ostensible closeness to the archetype of “immaterial labour”, higher education is the ground on which they seek stage the contest Through application of ideas surrounding the “fractal-panopticon” (De Angelis, 2001), which is a composite regulatory mechanism composed of Hayek derived market coordination and Bentham’s inspectorial apparatus, applied to exact self surveillance, they seek to explain how the working lives of academics are increasingly controlled by the “measures” of “quantification, standardisation and surveillance” now integral to academic work (2008:8) This is a direct challenge to Hardt and Negri as it relocates the focus to production in the work place and emphasises the role of management systems in regulating work within higher education, despite it apparently displaying the characteristics suggesting it as an exemplar for the immateriality claimed De Angelis and Harvie share the focus on the material basis underlying higher education developed here; significant for them are tangible workplace practices of material labour, which are increasingly subject to management control as a result of the resource constraints generated by neo liberal governance However, they significantly underplay both the resistive capacities of academic labour and the way in which the ‘measures’ they describe not only serve to discipline academic labour, but gain its 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Academic Work in the Transition to the Neo Corporate University The findings from this research and the related discussion suggest that academic work gains much of its distinctive character from the. .. ‘hybridisation’ and mass higher education in the neo corporate university The first relates to the ways in which demand for greater accountability, regarding the deployment of funding, may lead to the process