Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education Responsibilisation and leadership in the neoliberal university: a New Zealand perspective (original) (raw)

Responsibilisation and leadership in the neoliberal university: a New Zealand perspective

We examine how discourses of leadership and responsibilisation are used in contemporary universities to deepen neoliberal administration and further the corporate university's business plan by restructuring and redescribing academic work. Strategically, responsibilisation discourse, promoted as 'distributed leadership', is a technology of indirect management. Responsibilisation language stipulates 'expectations' for workers and integrates academic work (teaching, learning, research, service) into an administered regime recognising and rewarding successful conduct ('leadership') in the university. We intervene in this responsibilisation discourse by critically analysing texts about distributed leadership in one New Zealand university context. Linking Foucault's analysis of earlier forms of liberal governmentality with critical discourse analysis, we explore how administrative structures, power relations, and regulating management discourse seek to reshape employee behaviour in the neoliberalised, post-democratic university. We present a case study of one university's 'Leadership Framework', which exemplifies a new form of 'post-neoliberal governmentality' in higher education, embedding self-governance within increasingly instrumentalising centralisation.

Academic Leadership in the Context of Neoliberalism

Canadian Social Work Review

Driven by neoliberal principles, new managerialist demands for austerity and accountability are reshaping the practices of directors of Canadian schools of social work. In this paper, we discuss research that aimed to clarify how directors of social-justice-oriented social work schools engage in academic leadership in the context of new managerialism. We were especially interested to know how this engagement affects them. Our data come from five interviews and one focus group with five directors of schools of social work in Canada. Four themes emerged from the data: directors’ fight for resources; directors as agents for resource management; directors as ‘buffers’ to shield their faculty from stresses associated with resource cuts; and resistance through relationship-building. Pushed to act as resource managers, directors’ efforts are largely unknown and sometimes unappreciated by faculty members. Our findings will be useful to professional schools negotiating their future in the un...

After Neoliberalism: The Reform of New Zealand's Higher Education

This working paper series is published by the research unit "Transformations of universities and organizations" at the Department of Educational Anthropology at the Danish University of Education. The series brings together work in progress in Denmark and among an international network of scholars involved in research on universities and higher education.

Beyond collusion and resistance Academic–management relations within the neoliberal university

As an early pioneer of market-led institutional reforms and New Public Management policies, New Zealand arguably has one of the most 'neoliberalised' tertiary education sectors in the world. This article reports on a recent academic dispute concerning the attempt by management to introduce a new category of casualised academic employee within one of the country's largest research universities. It is based on a fi eldwork study, including document analysis, interviews and the participation of both authors in union and activist activities arising from the dispute. Whilst some academics may collude in the new regimes of governance that these reforms have created, we suggest that 'collusion' and 'resistance' are inadequate terms for explaining how academic behaviour and subjectivities are being reshaped in the modern neoliberal university. We argue for a more theoretically nuanced and situational account that acknowledges the wider legal and systemic constraints that these reforms have created. To do this, we problematise the concept of collusion and reframe it according to three different categories: 'conscious complicity', 'unwitting complicity' and 'coercive complicity'. We ask, what happens when one must 'collude' in order to resist, or when certain forms of opposition are rendered impossible by the terms of one's employment contract? We conclude by refl ecting on ways in which academics understand and engage with the policies of university managers in contexts where changes to the framework governing employment relations have rendered conventional forms of resistance increasingly problematic, if not illegal.

The reform of New Zealand's university system: 'after neoliberalism

Learning and Teaching, 2010

This article explores the legacy of three decades of neoliberal reforms on New Zealand's university system. By tracing the different government policies during this period, it seeks to contribute to wider debates about the trajectory of contemporary universities in an age of globalisation. Since Lyotard's influential report on The Postmodern Condition (1994), critics have frequently claimed that commercialisation and managerialism have undermined and supplanted the social mission of the university as governments throughout the developed world have sought to transform the university 'from an ideological arm of the state into a bureaucratically organised and relatively autonomous consumer-oriented corporation' (Readings 1996: 457). Against this I argue that the new model of the entrepreneurial and corporate university has not so much replaced the traditional functions and meaning of the university as added a new layer of complexity to the university's already diverse and multifaceted roles in society. Drawing on an ethnography of one university and personal observations, I explore the effects of that reform process on the culture and character of the university and, more specifically, its impact on academic identities and the everyday practices of academics and students. As in other OECD countries, New Zealand's universities are now required to deliver a bewildering plethora of government priorities and strategic economic and social objectives whilst simultaneously carrying out their traditional roles in teaching, research and scholarship. The challenge for the modern university, as reflected in the case of New Zealand, is how to negotiate these diverse and often contradictory missions.

University leadership as engaged pedagogy: A call for governance reform

Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice, 2022

Responses to COVID-19 impacts have shown how quickly universities can change, given the impetus. However, global disruptions to university learning and teaching have not yet been matched by any significant change to university leadership. Taking gender equity as our focus, we argue that pedagogical disruption should extend beyond the classroom to reshape academic leadership. In this commentary we critically reflect on the question ‘How can university leaders share power to nurture caring and ethical academic leadership’? Taking some cues from disruptions to university learning and teaching, we call on the work of bell hooks to propose a holistic vision of university leadership as a form of critical pedagogy — ‘engaged pedagogy’. We draw on combined experience in professional and academic roles at six universities in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand to share composite vignettes of holistic leadership practices grounded in integrity, collaboration and personal wellbeing. Our comment...

Regimes of Performance: Practices of the Normalised Self in the Neoliberal University

British Journal of Sociology of Education, 2015

Universities today inescapably find themselves part of nationally and globally competitive networks that appear firmly inflected by neoliberal concerns of rankings, benchmarking and productivity. This, of course, has in turn led to progressively anticipated and regulated forms of academic subjectivity that many fear are overly econo-centric in design. What I wish to explore in this paper is how, emanating from prevailing neoliberal concepts of individuality and competitiveness, the agency of the contemporary academic is increasingly conditioned via ‘regimes of performance’, replete with prioritised claims of truth and practices of the normalised self. Drawing upon Michel Foucault’s writings on governmentality, and Judith Butler’s subsequent work on subjection, I use findings from a series of in-depth interviews with senior university managers at National University of Ireland, Galway to reflect upon the ways in which academics can respond effectively to the ascendant forms of neoliberal governmentality characterising the academy today. I contemplate the key task of articulating broader educational values, and conclude by considering the challenge of enacting alternative academic subjectivities and practices.

From collusion to collective compassion: putting heart back into the neoliberal university

Pastoral Care in Education, 2017

As neoliberal ideology has come to dominate higher education, the roles and relationships of managers, academics and students have changed radically. This article outlines ways in which neoliberalism and its companion ideology, neoconservatism, have impacted on higher education through a move to individualism, managerialism, measurement and accountability. While the context for this article is New Zealand, the experiences will resonate with academics worldwide. Using a conceptual framework highlighting conscious, unwitting and coercive complicity, the authors analyse their experiences of teaching in the neoliberal university. They discuss three themes to emerge from their findings: (a) universities as instruments of neoliberalism; (b) academics as managed subjects; and (c) students as entitled consumers. They conclude by offering examples of ways to resist the competitive and individualising regime by creating a culture of care and compassion.

Being an Academic: An analysis of Governance in a University

Within the human resources development sector, workplace identities are theorised heavily in terms of psychological predispositions and socio-psychological structures. This thesis aims to broaden the conception of workplace identity through exploring the effects of institutional policy and programs in the development of an academic identity. Using Michel Foucault’s ‘governmentality’ theory, the discourses contained within publicly accessible policy and planning documents are analysed for their contribution to the development of a ‘mentality’ of government. These mentalities are historically-bound and dependent upon contemporary technologies, knowledge, expertise and practical developments. This study explores the construction of an enterprising academic identity implicit within Monash University’s Performance Development Online (PDO) technology. This performance management platform, combined with periodic supervisorial reviews is characteristic of what Foucault terms a ‘technology of the self’. PDO is positioned as a gateway which requires academics to reflect upon the development of their careers and identities within the academia, encouraging the production of marketable identities. Secondarily, this thesis aims to map the discursive underpinnings of the present governmentality of academic selfhood within wider discourses of ‘advanced liberal’ governance. This work of social commentary aims to open up the possibilities for thinking about, and acting upon, our selves.