Reconstructing Relationships in Higher Education

Challenging Agendas

Celia Whitchurch, George Gordon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317608837
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Drawing on two international research projects, Reconstructing Relationships in Higher Education: Challenging Agendas looks behind formal organisational structures and workforce patterns to consider the significance of relationships, particularly at local and informal levels, for the aspirations and motivations of academic faculty. In practice, and day-to-day, such relationships can overlay formal reporting lines and therefore inform, to a greater or lesser extent, the overall relationship between individuals and institutions.

As a result, from an institutional point of view, relationships may be a critical factor in the realisation of strategy, and can in practice have a disproportionate effect, both positively and negatively. However, little attention has been paid to the role that they play in understanding the interface between individuals and institutions at a time of ongoing diversification of the workforce. For instance, they may provide space, which in turn may be implicit and discretionary, in which negotiation and influence can occur. In this context, Reconstructing Relationships in Higher Education also reviews ways in which institutions are responding to more agentic approaches by academic faculty, particularly younger cohorts, and the significance of local managers, mentors and academic networks in supporting individuals and promoting career development.

The text, which examines the dynamics of working relationships at local and institutional level, will be of interest to senior management teams, practising managers at all levels, academic faculty, and researchers in the field of higher education.

Part I

Structures

Chapter 1

Introduction

In contemporary global environments there is a sense in which the academic profession is increasingly embedded within layers of relationships, within and between institutions, and across continents. Traditionally these have centred around disciplinary networks, but increasingly they reflect other activities, such as knowledge exchange and professional practice. It has also long been recognised that extended academic networks are likely to transcend the relationship of faculty with individual institutions. At the same time, however, within increasingly complex institutional structures, the perceptions of individuals are likely to be shaped by a local network of relationships, which can overlay formal reporting lines. The significance of such overlapping networks of relationships may be heightened because there is no formal, superordinate professional body across disciplines, such as those associated with medical, legal and health professions, with which individuals identify closely.

These various relationships are evidenced in day-to-day conversations, interactions and communications, across academic and social workspaces, on and off campus, and via social media. They may be invisible except to local actors such as heads of school and department, programme leaders, research investigators, and the colleagues with whom they interact. They may be discretionary or even serendipitous, but nevertheless are a critical factor in the realisation of strategic intentions, with the potential for both positive and negative effects on the goals of an institution or section of an institution. This monograph aims to demonstrate that although facilitative relationships may be seen simply as a helpful addition, they are in practice more likely to be a pre-requisite, and indeed that a lack of such relationships can have a disproportionately negative effect. Furthermore, when relationships are not taken into account in the implementation of institutional policy, this can create what might be seen as a ‘blind spot’. Relationships might therefore be described as the arteries of an institution, connecting all aspects of its activity.

Despite an extensive recent literature on higher education institutions as organisations and their relationships with states and governments (for instance Huisman 2009; Locke, Cummings and Fisher 2011; Pritchard and Karlsen 2013; Stensaker, Valimaa and Sarrico 2012; Stensaker 2015; Weerts, Freed and Morphew 2014), and also on issues around changing academic careers and identities (for instance Fumasoli, Goastellec and Kehm 2015; Kehm and Teichler 2012; Locke, Cummings and Fisher 2011; Teichler and Hohle 2013), less attention has been paid to the different sets of relationships, formal and informal, that define an individual’s positioning within their institutional community, and to the role that relationships (as opposed to organisational structures) might play in understanding the interface between individuals and institutions. Where relationships are referred to in the literature this tends to be in the collective sense, for instance between senior management teams and institutional sub-structures such as schools and departments. Moreover, accounts about the workings of higher education institutions tend to be viewed as cumulative, and to be judged in temporal terms, whereby change is seen as incremental or radical. Less attention has been paid to spatial relationships, including relationships between people, and the impact that these might have on institutional effectiveness, whereby ‘[s]ocial reality’ is:

made up of different and competing cognitive frameworks – discourses, normative and symbolic structures, frames and master frames, repertoires, modes of legitimation and cultural models – which create the social world in situations of contestation. (Delanty 2005: 145)

Although this approach has to some extent been explored in the way that individuals construct their identity by situating themselves in relation to others (Delanty 2008; Taylor 2008), it could be pushed further to reveal, for instance, interstitial and often implicit spaces in which negotiation and influence occur, underlying assumptions informing day-to-day interactions, and the collective impact of these on institutional life. Such an approach helps to bring into view the extent of individual agency in relationships and the social capital that may accrue from them, as well as the role of key actors such as, for instance, heads of school and department, in influencing local perceptions of policy and the way that it is experienced. Therefore an exploration of relationships may help to illuminate understandings about an increasingly diversified workforce, with links across disciplines and practitioner settings, internal and external partners and networks, and provide another dimension to cumulative and longitudinal accounts of identities, roles and careers.

The significance of relationships, which may not be articulated in organisation charts or job descriptions, can also be seen through the lens of social capital (Bourdieu 1988, 1993) and actor-network theory (Engeström 2005a and 2005b) to illustrate how practitioners interact, support and learn from each other. Social capital is created that would not exist if individuals operated independently, and has been described as:

the sum of the resources, actual or virtual, that accrue to an individual or a group by virtue of possessing a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition. (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992: 192)

This is particularly significant in complex institutions such as universities, where relationships develop across disciplinary and other domains of activity, internal and external. In turn, actor-network theory demonstrates how systems, be they mechanical or social, may appear on the surface to be working in an orderly manner while being subject to other dynamics arising from the connections between human beings and the artefacts with which they interact.

Although social capital has always been a significant element in the interactions within traditional communities of scholars, the narratives in the study suggest that it may be being constructed in different ways and for different purposes in an environment that is at the same time both more market-oriented and more regulated. There is a sense of making the invisible visible, the implicit explicit, and of unmasking day-to-day interactions within a collective that may not be as coherent as it appears. Thus institutional managers and faculty, individually and collectively, may have a range of perceptions that are influenced by local relationships. In turn, these relationships are dynamic and may shift along a spectrum that includes both co-operative and competitive activity, and are continuously remade. Such relationships may also influence how far the individual identifies with the collective and vice versa.

Individual faculty tend to be categorised formally, in national and institutional datasets, in relation to their discipline, career stage, teaching and/or research focus, and type of institution. At an institutional level, individual roles are framed by institutional structures, for instance formal terms and conditions, criteria for promotion, and workload models. This process is informed by day-to-day relationships, which may be hidden from official view, not fully or only partly articulated, and may be more fluid and open-ended than those described in job descriptions and organisation charts. The relationship between individuals and the institution is, therefore, to a greater or lesser extent, informed by relationships at a local level.

Moreover, as institutions become more complex and diffuse, and working life more dispersed, day-to-day relationships may assume greater significance for the individual in understanding what they perceive the institution to be ‘about’, and their own positioning within it. Thus notions of institutional mission are interpreted by the individual in relation to their own goals, expectations and aspirations, and may in turn be modified both at a local and corporate level to reflect the potentials and achievements of individuals. Low turnover in some institutions means that local relationships become even more significant. The interface between the individual and the institution, therefore, is a dynamic one, reflecting the ebb and flow of multiple relationships, with associated influences and counter-influences. These might be referred to as the cross-currents of academic life.

UK national and regional contexts

Since Gordon and Whitchurch (2010), the 2011 White Paper in the UK (Department for Business, Education and Skills 2011) placed increased emphasis on the idea of higher education as a market, with the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) funding for teaching being replaced by student fees (except for high cost subjects, including science, technology, engineering and mathematics [STEM]) (Department for Business, Education and Skills 2011; Brown and Carasso 2013). In 2013 the cap on student numbers (ie student quotas for publicly funded institutions) was removed to encourage universities to compete for students (Crawford 2012; Callender and Scott 2013). Public funding for research has also become increasingly dependent on success in the Research Evaluation Framework (HEFCE 2014), and there has been a shift from higher education being seen as a public good to a service or product operating in a global market environment, with a consequent emphasis on the student experience and high performance in research. This also includes an underpinning of the curriculum by research that links into professional practice and employability agendas. At the same time, the proposed introduction of a Teaching Evaluation Framework (Department for Business, Innovation and Skills 2016), in parallel to the Research Evaluation Framework, will increase accountability requirements, and the 2011 White Paper also enabled a wider range of private providers to enter the system.

In the UK, institutions are also under pressure to respond to external drivers such as demand for a widening of participation in higher education, expectations of more flexible modes of delivery, the integration of employability skills into the curriculum, and participation in knowledge exchange and regional agendas. HEFCE (PA Consulting) outlined key challenges for institutions as being an increasing diversity of mission and strategy, with a move towards more collaborative models of teaching, research and service delivery; capability to deliver a range of activity; and a consequent diversity in future workforce requirements involving a need for agility and flexibility, seeing these as likely to challenge standard terms of employment (2010: 1–2). Universities may compete with each other for students and research and consultancy funding, but also collaborate via partnerships and consortia in relation to, for instance, library and IT provision, and the sharing of teaching. Overseas campuses add another dimension, involving local and/or ‘flying’ faculty from the home country. All these factors have had an impact on the role of academic faculty, with greater attention being given to the contribution that each individual makes to teaching, research and/or knowledge exchange, often calculated according to workload allocation formulae.

Internationally, governments continue to seek to widen participation in pursuit of socio-economic agendas as systems of mass higher education develop, leading to increased focus on the student experience. The Changing Academic Profession (CAP) study also lists internationalisation, a strengthening of management functions and increased value placed on the impact of research as key influences on academic roles (Teichler, Arimoto and Cummings 2013). Thus:

The university as a collegial system is turning more and more into an organisation where different actors are involved … differentiated roles and positions are created and new paths are experimented with to manage the variety of human resources. (Fumasoli, Goastellec and Kehm 2015: 204)

Commentators have also argued that the university of the future is likely to include the production of knowledge via both pure (Mode 1) and applied (Mode 2) research, involve external partners, and serve both business and community interests. It will therefore be increasingly global, with diversifying roles for academic faculty and students in online environments. It has also been suggested that second and third careers will become increasingly common, and that mass higher education will require a wider range of teachers for students who are less well qualified, and in order to address employability agendas (for instance Blass, Jasman and Shelley 2010). Such drivers represent a mix of both market and public service imperatives.

However, despite well-documented external pressures to become more adaptive, national agreements and codes of practice are not necessarily designed to address local considerations, and institutions have been left by and large to determine their own ways of doing things in ways that are appropriate for them. This monograph therefore focuses on institutional rather than national policy frameworks. It considers ways in which institutions are addressing challenges in what are often devolved organisational structures with distributed management responsibilities, what seems to work, and how rank-and-file academic faculty might buy into, but also influence, this.

Institutional contexts

It is a truism that higher education is a people-intensive business. In the UK, for instance, 54.9% of institutions’ expenditure was on staff costs in 2014/15 (HESA 2016). Some institutions spend significantly more than this. Formal contractual arrangements for academic faculty are negotiated with the University and Colleges Employers Association within a National Framework Agreement which determines an agreed pay spine. In accordance with that Framework, individual institutions can make adjustments, for instance in relation to discretionary increments. In practice, and with no prescribed hours in their contracts, faculty have traditionally been flexible in the way that they approach their roles, often as a result of informal agreements with colleagues and line managers. Within their institution they may interact with committees and working groups, heads of schools and department, deans, directors of teaching and research, principal investigators, programme leaders, co-supervisors of students, line...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures and tables
• Preface
• PART I: Structures
• PART II: Relationships
• PART III: Towards a constructive alignment
• References
• Appendix: Details of the two studies
• Index