Knowledge, Higher Education, and the New Managerialism

Knowledge, Higher Education, and the New Managerialism

Knowledge, Higher Education, and the New Managerialism
The Changing Management Of UK Universities

This book explores some of the main findings of a piece of research funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (award 00 23 7661) that the authors, Rachel Johnson, Oliver Fulton, and Stephen Watson conducted at Lancaster University from 1998 to 2000, on the theme of New Managerialism and the management of UK universities. Our main focus in that research, although academics, career administrators and other university employees were also part of our investigations, centred on the accounts of practice, values, and career development provided by those whom we term manager-academics, that is, academics who, whether temporarily or permanently, have taken on managerial and lead- ership roles in their university. Although some features of the UK higher education system and higher education policy directions have changed since the study’s conclusion in 2000, we believe (and this is borne out by other evidence) that the processes, technologies, and narratives involved in running universities as organizations and the perceptions, motivations, and practices of those engaged in managing UK universities have not substantially changed in the intervening period. In any case, we also place the ESRC research in a broader theoretical and empirical setting, focusing on a conceptual understanding of recent changes to the ways in which public services are managed in Western societies and have grounded this in an analysis of the organizational forms, processes, technologies, nar- ratives, learning, identities, practices, values, and cultures involved in the management of academic knowledge work in publicly funded universities more generally.

Rosemary Deem, Sam Hillyard, and Mike Reed