Perceptions of the Contemporary Academic Employment Relationship
Graham Benmore
Paper presented at the Higher Education Close Up Conference 2, Lancaster University, 16-18 July 2001
1. Introduction
This paper seeks to provide some insights into how a group of nineteen academic staff experience their contemporary academic employment relationship. These insights derive from an ethnographic study conducted throughout the calendar year of 1999 at the university sector college of higher education where I am employed. This research was carried out for my Ed.D thesis at the University of Sheffield, which I completed in January this year.
The college of higher education in which my study took place is a higher education, (HE), establishment which does not have the authority to award its own degrees. These are validated by another university. In order to provide the subjects of this study with some anonymity I shall refer to my employer simply as CC, (these initials representing the pseudonym City College). Whilst I recognise that this is not a particularly imaginative choice it does carry some plausibility as the institution is located on a city centre site.
CC is principally a teaching institution. It attracts relatively little research funding and has been a very low performer in Research Assessment Exercises. CC’s mission statement: ‘courses for careers, research for results’ reflects the essentially vocational nature of its undergraduate and postgraduate curricula. During the 1990s CC grew at a spectacular rate. In 1991 there were 3,500 full-time enrolments compared to over 13,000 at the time of this research study in 1999. Between 1990 and 1998 CC expanded at five times the rate at which the HE sector itself was growing, (CC Principal 2000). Resources have failed to keep pace with the increase in student numbers and most studies indicate that income per student is amongst the lowest in the sector at CC whilst staff-student ratios are amongst the highest.
The nineteen academics who, in 1999, made up a subject group in one of CC’s nine faculties. In my research I wanted to explore their values, feelings, perceptions, aspirations and anxieties in relation to their academic work at a time when the context in which this work was carried out was continuing to present new pressures and uncertainties. Although this paper is not concerned with methodological issues it is perhaps appropriate to indicate that my research data was acquired principally through a series of lengthy interviews and diary keeping. In addition to the nineteen subjects I also interviewed three managers. These were the Director of Academic Operations, the Head of the Human Resources Service, and the Dean of the Faculty in which my research is located. All of those who featured in my research were given an alphabetical coding which I have replicated here. In this paper I have focused primarily upon the perceptions of the academics themselves. However the research data generated from my interviews with management elicited some particularly interesting views and I have therefore attempted to offer some brief examples here.
This paper comprises five sections. Following this introduction I shall discuss the conceptual frameworks which informed my study. Thirdly I shall present some perceptions of contemporary academic employment, which my research revealed. These perceptions concern the changing nature of academic work with a particular focus on the management of the employment relationship. I shall also indicate examples of behaviours which such perceptions stimulate. Fourthly I will discuss the significance of my research findings with specific references action, practice and change. My conclusion will add support to the claim made by Trowler, (1998), and Henkel, (2000), that academics are often resourceful enough to find ways of adapting to changes in the nature of their work, and that such adaptations will mediate the implementation of policy. Additionally where such changes are perceived by academics to represent a significant deterioration in the experience of work, damaging consequences are likely to ensue for HE organisations as defensive responses are perpetuated.
2. Conceptual frameworks informing the research study
My research was rooted in the notion that the nature of the academic employment relationship has changed significantly in recent years, particularly in HE organisations such as CC which as ‘market bureaucracies’, are ‘most exposed to market forces’; (Thorne & Cuthbert: 192). Attracting very little funding for research, such organisations must compete for students by offering courses for which there is significant demand since income is almost entirely dependent upon student recruitment. So although teachers within such institutions retain high levels of ‘operational power’ they experience limited ‘criteria power’. Before considering the nature of changes in the academic employment relationship I will briefly review the reasons for them.
Changes in the academic employment relationship can be traced back to the public sector reforms which began in the early 1980s. In those industries which were not directly suited to privatisation, successive Conservative administrations were concerned to ensure that managers adopted private sector management practices. Pollitt, (1990), Farnham & Horton, (1996), and Flynn, (1997) were amongst those who drew early attention to how successive government ministers made use of restrictions in funding, the introduction of new measurements of accountability and uncompromising rhetoric to ensure compliance by managers in public sector organisations. Within HE, the infiltration of private sector values attracted widespread attention during the early 1990s, (for example Walford 1992, Salter & Tapper 1994, Tasker & Packham 1994 and Tierney & Rhoads 1995). In addition to the adoption of private sector management priorities such as the creation of internal markets, heavy investment in planning and marketing, and the use of quantifiable performance measures, the growing influence of private sector thinking within the sector has also been manifested through changes in the design of curricula, (i.e. Winter 1995); through the management of research activity, (i.e. Thorne & Cuthbert 1996); to the configuration of governing bodies, (i.e. Bargh et al 1996). At the same time external accountability has also been made more demanding through the introduction of monitoring bodies such as the Quality Assurance Agency and its predecessors, and also events such as the Research Assessment Exercises.
The term managerialism has become associated with the changing approach to management within HE and elsewhere in the public sector. For Pollitt, (1990: 1), managerialism represents the belief that more effective management practice is the key to improved efficiency. Trow, (1994: 11), referring specifically to HE, has distinguished between ‘soft’ managerialism, which seeks to utilise improved managerial techniques to achieve productivity gains without compromising university autonomy, and ‘hard’ managerialism which is rooted in the belief that external controls are essential to ensure that universities improve managerial effectiveness through a system of financial rewards, for meeting targets; and penalties, for failing to do so. With both variants the managerial imperative is apparent. So HE managers have asserted managerial prerogative in order to implement new structures and systems dsesigned to bring about productivity increases in a system where resourcing levels continue to decline relative to the number of students admitted to courses. Frequently managerialist regimes attempt to fashion unitarist cultures. Shore & Roberts, (1995: 16) argue that the surveillance systems increasingly used within HE are intended to ‘discipline the service’ and ‘normalise judgement’, as per Foucault. Elsewhere within the public sector, in the environment of the primary school, Menter et al consider how the use of fashionable managerial techniques such as Human Resource Management and Total Quality Management can be used to ‘manufacture consent’; (1997: 65). The pluralistic interests which have traditionally been associated within universities has meant that ‘whatever forms of conflict emerge, managing and resolving them take enormous amounts of time and energy’; Farnham (1999: 18). For managers responding to more rigorous external expectations it is perhaps not surprising that some have elected to adopt measures which promote conformity and discourage conflict. However the limitations attached to such attempts are not difficult to see. As Trowler, (1998: 151) indicates ‘universities provide the context for multiple discourses and attempts to impose a dominant discourse are likely to result in failure’.
Changes in approaches to managing HE institutions has inevitably generated implications for academic work. Clearly increased student numbers without a commensurate rise in resource allocation has led to an intensification of work; (for example Pritchard 1994, Court 1996; and Farnham 1999). Here there have been impacts upon both the quantity and quality of academic work; (Soliman & Soliman 1997 and Taylor et al 1998). Additionally there is evidence that the professional autonomy traditionally enjoyed by university lecturers has declined; (for example Miller 1995, Winter 1995, Bargh et al 1996, and Thorne & Cuthbert 1996). Serious concerns have also been raised about the degradation of academic work. Willmott, (1995: 1002) contends that increasing references to students as ‘customers’ perpetuates the idea that a degree is a commodity to be exchanged for a job, rather than a ‘liberal education that prepares students for life, citizenship, or the continuation and enrichment of a cultural heritage’. For Bargh et al there are similar concerns. They argue that in the new HE environment financial considerations become paramount and override important educational issues associated with the generation and transmission of knowledge; (1996: 29). It is clear that these developments are likely to have a significant impact upon the ways in which academics experience their employment relationship. Job satisfaction is certainly at risk. Soliman & Soliman argue that ‘continuous increases in workload’ together with the ‘managerial approach’ will ‘erode the satisfaction that academics still derive from their work’; (1997: 152). Taylor, (1999: 98), identifies the causes of dissatisfaction more precisely.
...... while academics are relatively content with their work, there are considerably lower levels of satisfaction with their relationship with their conditions of employment and the managerialist practices associated with these conditions. Two issues seem to dominate the dissatisfaction: recognition and reward and loads associated with non-core work.
How then might academic staff interpret the changes in the ways in which they are managed and the more demanding expectations of them? During the 1990s there has been considerable debate about the changing nature of the psychological contract existing between employers and employees. The psychological contract can be defined ‘ the beliefs of each of the parties to the employment relationship as to what their mutual obligations are’; (Herriot: 106). Prior to the 1980s the understanding which existed in many organisations was that employees who offered loyalty, steady work performance, dedication to work tasks, rule adherence, and a willingness to improve their knowledge and skills would be rewarded with a stable working environment, job security, incremental progression, and predictable workloads and remuneration; (for example Rousseau 1995, Herriot & Pemberton 1995, Hiltrop 1995 and Sparrow 1996). However more recently, as organisations have increasingly delayered, restructured, and pursued more flexible methods of working this understanding has changed significantly. So, for example Harris & Beaver, (1995: 9), have argued that whereas employees seek ‘security of employment, income stability, equity between task and reward, opportunities for personal recognition and development, a balance between work and personal life, and opportunities to maximise earnings’ employers ‘increasingly offer low job security, non-standard employment contracts, rewards based on performance outcomes, skills development specific to organisational needs, unsocial\long hours, and lack of career structure’. According to Rousseau, (1995), Robinson, (1996), and Turnley and Feldman, (1999), such a change represents a violation of the psychological contract. Turnley & Feldman indicate the potential consequences of such violations.
This research suggests that psychological contract violations may result in increased exit, increased neglect of in-role job duties, and a reduced willingness among employees to defend the organisation against outside threats. Thus the negative consequences of psychological contract violations are likely to extend beyond just the hurt feelings of employees; psychological contract violations may result in behaviours which are damaging to the organisation as well. (1999: 912)
It is clear that not all academic staff will interpret changes in the nature of their work and the ways in which they are managed as violations of the psychological contract. So, for example, the research studies undertaken by Trowler, (1998), Martin, (1999), and Henkel, (2000), indicate that such interpretations might be positive or negative. Indeed Henkel’s research suggests academics belong to a ‘relatively adaptive profession’, (2000: 265); and Trowler contends that ‘policy reconstruction’, associated with contentment rather than discontentment, represents ‘potentially the largest’ category of the alternative academic responses to change within his model, (1998: 126). My own research too suggests that there are some academics who have welcomed the changes to which I have referred. However there is also plenty of support for Martin’s claim that her study ‘is not alone in telling a predominantly dispirited tale’; (1999: 24). If a significant proportion of academic staff do regard changes in the nature of academic employment as being tantamount to a violation of the psychological contract then there are likely to be serious consequences for HE organisations as well as the academics themselves.
I have suggested here that changes in thinking about how public sector organisations should be managed has led to the development of managerialism within HE institutions. Managerialism has also, at times, been associated with attempts to fashion unitarist cultures as threats are externalised and common objectives, for those within the organisation, are promoted. These developments, together with a declining resource base, have led to significant changes in the nature of academic work. Academics will attach meanings to these changes through their interpretation of the psychological contract with their employer. Although such interpretations are likely to be wide-ranging, if such changes are regarded as a violation of the psychological contract by a significant number, then deleterious consequences will ensue for the university as well as the individuals themselves.
3. The experience of academic work at CC: perceptions and responses
In my research study I asked the subjects to identify the particular issues which they considered to be significant in relation to their experience of academic work. In my analysis of their responses I considered that four principal concerns emerged. These were related to work values, the nature of contemporary academic work, the management of academic staff, and work culture. In this paper I have attempted to consider how the subjects respond to the management of their employment relationship. Here I have identified four particular responses: exit, reinterpretation of the effort-reward bargain, self-development, and conformity. Where possible I have tried to offer lengthy quotations to give readers the opportunity to make up their own minds about the meanings which might attach to what is being said.