# Neo-collegiality: restoring academic engagement in the managerial university  ## Metadata - Author: Edwin Bacon - Category: #Source/articles - [Article link](x-devonthink-item://B075D40A-5DE8-45F7-A74F-2C9D5B74B37B) ## Summary - Academics are intelligent and capable people who should be brought into management decision. - Advocates for structural neo-collegiality- structured form of collaborative decision making. This is alongside many other academics and commentators who have suggested the same. - Jarratt Report of 1985 stratified the power in universities, moving away from collective decision making. - Going back to collegiate ways can be criticised as romantic, however the most recent academic literature suggests that this is the best way forward. - Change in HE is big enough to reconsider the structure of Universities. - Neo-collegiality can exist alongside NPM and managerialism. - Existing collegiate structures are really an extension of managerialism. This is hollow consultation ("insulation not consultation"). - A 'them and us' culture exists. "Univeristy" is a separate organisation! Collegiality and doing the right thing for students can result in too much bureaucratic burden. Volunteering for an initiative means you're stopped from doing the initiative. - Systemania- the cult of constant change which stops people thinking rationally. - Students would benefit from neo-collegiality too, as they could be brought into decision making. - Links to distance fallacy. Subsidiarity. ## Highlights - “Around four in 10 university employees feel unable to make their voices heard within their institutions, according to preliminary findings from the first Times Higher Education Best University Workplace Survey”.1 This figure was confirmed by the survey’s final results.2 Excluding the “don’t knows” from this 2013 survey, around half of all employees in UK universities say that they are unable to make their voice heard within their institution (Page 4) - Universties have been termed “supercomplex” institutions by Ron Barnett (Page 4) - it is staff at a distance from central management who, arguably, know best the specific concerns which matter to students within their department or unit. (Page 5). - he possibilities of decentralised, multi-vocal and disaggregated approaches in motivating employees to engage and innovate (Page 5) - Denial of voice represents an anachronistic approach to running universities. Much management research demonstrates the advantages to be had, particularly in knowledge-based sectors, when ==self-managed professionals interact reciprocally with peers,4 and when the watchwords are autonomy, mastery, and purpose==.5 (Page 5) - Disempowerment promotes disengagement from the institution and its mission, leading to what Bruce Macfarlane terms “the retreat from academic citizenship” (Page 5) - Collegiality” and “neo-collegiality” in this paper refer primarily to a structured form of collaborative decision-making (Page 6) - The paper’s focus therefore is the formalised structuring of a collegial decision-making process (Page 6) - This paper’s focus is on structural rather than behavioural collegiality (Page 6) - Increasingly, so some of the literature argues, such organisational change sparked a corresponding decline in collegiality in its broader behavioural sense (Page 7) - Jarrat Report of 1985 led the way in recommending a reduction in the power of senates and the designation of vice-chancellors as chief executives (Page 7) - The essential, oft-repeated critique of such a shift is that ==it prioritises questions of money over “intellectual, educational, scientific and cultural” concerns==.12 (Page 7) - To advocates of “new managerialism”, collegiality is romanticised nostalgia, seeking a return to some imagined cloistered past. Contrived collegiality is simply a mythologised reaction to managerialism deployed as a weapon against necessary change. (Page 7) - The overwhelming support for a more collegial approach, shown in the survey and literature discussed later in this paper, stems from contemporary judgement and observed need, not from conservative and nostalgic outlooks (Page 8) - UK universities, and the environment within which they operate, are currently experiencing changes (higher fees, less direct reliance on the state, an austerity-led stripping away of previous certainties about purpose and sustainability) ==of a nature fundamental enough to require a re-consideration of existing management and governance paradigms== (Page 8) - allow the re-introduction of appropriate elements of collegiality, renewed to fit today’s university (Page 8) - managerial approaches were put in place in response to fundamental developments such as the massification of higher education, huge increases in the size of both the sector and of institutions within the sector, global competition, and responsibility for huge sums of money, much of which stems from the taxpayer. (Page 8) - restoration of more collegial decision-making processes can work alongside the essential features of NPM to restore some of the virtues of collegiality while maintaining a professional and efficient management structure appropriate to the needs of the 21st century (Page 9) - even where collegial structures remain – for example, with a senate being the body with formal authority over academic matters – they often function not as a forum for democratic debate and discussion but as a top-down mechanism. (Page 11) - In practice the preoccupations of the senior management team (SMT) nearly always determine the direction of major decisions and the decisions that my colleagues make are largely about the way they will implement policy decided at SMT. (Page 12) - rubberstamped – by a representative body (Page 12) - A strong theme emerging from survey respondents is anger at hollow consultations (Page 12) - What too often occurs might better be termed – to borrow a neologism from a former colleague – an insultation than a consultation (Page 13) - third common theme among survey respondents was that of distance between senior management and lower levels within the institution (Page 13) - More collegiality “would help to reduce the ‘them and us’ culture (Page 14) - the idea of “the university” as a separate entity from the respondent or her department prevails (Page 14) - good citizens’ don’t get promoted. Those who don’t teach or contribute to admin but get bought out for research grants do. This creates a lot of resentment and undermines collegiality further.” (Page 15) - hiding is a strategy for personal survival … collegiality can look like a recipe for losing control over one’s academic life, since voluntarily engaging with important issues will result in the burdensome overload (Page 15) - It would foster and develop the practice – among staff and students – of open and critical communication with institutional power. This in turn enhances institutional governance - when management goes unchallenged, efficacy atrophies (Page 16) - Note: Link to student voice - the notion of universities as institutions for the collective good has been largely usurped by the need to survive in an increasingly cut-throat marketplace.” 18 (Page 16) - the need for “disruptive innovation” in contemporary organisations: “Hamel suggested that there is a need to challenge the status quo in organisations. Interestingly, ‘challenging the status quo’ is one of the five leadership practices of exemplary leadership in Kouzes and Posner’s model (2003), also identified as relevant for higher education settings.” (Bryman 2007).19 (Page 16) - Middlehurst (2013, p290) (Page 17) - Systemania, the cult of constant change, as one of the “gods of mismanagement” in the UK higher education system. “In the cult of Systemania … every new year brings a new system … ==she brings exhaustion as her changes exceed human speed and defeat human rationality== (Page 17) - I do object to being expected to defend decisions that I have had no input into making (Page 17) - without embedding real authority and power in collegial structures, those structures are susceptible to becoming window dressing, irrelevant and ignored when matters of substance and contestation are to the fore. (Page 19) - Stephen Rowland has advocated a “renewed collegiality”.25 | Tapper and Palfreyman talk about “collegial rejuvenation”.26 | Robin Middlehurst writes approvingly of institutions endeavouring to “update collegiality”.27 | Dorothy Spiller argues that the term collegiality itself is “too tired, too muddled and misused” and that what matters is finding “fresh ways of articulating these common aspirations”.28 | Mark Taylor, drawing on US models, makes a strong case for wider staff engagement in university governance structures, arguing that the “centralisation of decision-making to the exclusion of academics is likely … to foster academic alienation from institutional strategy and objectives”.29 (Page 20) - A potential area of collegiality which arises often in the literature is that of a collegial appointments process for senior university figures (Page 20) - The collegiality of bygone years revolved around a dominant professoriate. Neo-collegiality promotes a more inclusive approach (Page 22) - Second, student participation in neo-collegial decision-making processes fosters a sense of institutional membership, appropriately dilutes the notion of student as customer, and meets government’s intention that the student should be at the heart of the university sector (Page 22) - The roles of employee and manager are not compromised by collegial governance structures (Page 22) - unwillingness among busy academics to take on the extra responsibilities, committee meetings and administrative engagement which they associate with collegiality (Page 22) - I am certain that if I put up my hand for ANYTHING (say further recruitment of pg students) I would be incorporated into a process that prevented me from doing anything but that.” (Page 22) - There is a long and rich tradition of ==faculty embracing their citizenship responsibilities as an integral part of their academic identity serving a variety of communities== (Page 23) - changes in the conduct of committee business to facilitate wider engagement and the voicing of alternative opinions (Page 23) - groups of staff (for example, via an online petition reaching a certain proportion of signatories) could mandate discussion of an issue at senior level, either within the senior management team or within the university’s senior representative body (Page 24) - For example, an annual or biennial institution-wide binding consultation on the university’s strategic plan, including a formal process for confirming its broad approval through mechanisms such as majoritarian voting, or the consent of discrete units (faculties, schools, departments). (Page 24) - ==Subsidiarity==. The principle of subsidiarity holds that decisions should be made at the lowest level capable of making them effectively (Page 24) - Note: Opposite of distance fallacy - Collegial appointments. This paper’s survey saw several respondents relate cases of a lack of collegiality in relation to appointments (Page 25) - Middlehurst, R (2013). “Changing Internal Governance: Are Leadership Roles and Management Structures in United Kingdom Universities Fit for the Future?” Higher Education Quarterly 67(3): 275-294 (Page 29) ## APA reference Bacon, E. (2014). Neo-Collegiality: Restoring Academic Engagement in the Managerial University. Advance HE. Retrieved on 27/09/2022 from [https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/knowledge-hub/neo-collegiality-restoring-academic-engagement-managerial-university](https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/knowledge-hub/neo-collegiality-restoring-academic-engagement-managerial-university)