Art of Management & Organization Conference 2018 University of Brighton

Performing ‘A New’ in higher education

Jo Trelfa

In June 2017 I and 4 other colleagues took voluntary redundancy from a UK HEI. A team of 7 were faced with having to compete with each other by interview for 2.4 jobs; we five decided to leave. This was not on my horizon; it was sudden and a shock; and, I am my family’s main wage earner.

On the 4^th September 2017 I started a new post at a new university.

In this paper (presented via a ‘Smore’ flyer) I explore the relevance of John Urry’s thesis of ‘consuming places’ for professional identities and performing ‘a new’ in higher education. He suggests that identities “emerge… out of particular structures of feelings that bind together three elements of space, time and memory” (166). Whilst his argument is framed within the sociology of place and tourism, I was struck by how his three elements of resonate with debate around professional identities (for example, see Korthagen 2004), and in particular critical extension to understanding of professional identity formation. For example, Caprara & Cervone’s (2003) argument that competencies are behavioural potentials that rely on circumstances (space and time) to be practices; Kelchtermans and Vandenberghe’s (1994) work on the significance of professionals biographies (memory); and, Bergner & Holmes’ (2000) concept of the ‘status of self concept’. Here, rather than a fixed organisational structure comprising of an “informational summary of perceived facts about oneself” (2000:36), self-concept is proposed as “one's overall conception of one's place or position in relation to all of the elements in one's world” (2000:37). Moreover, embedding this into Urry’s analysis of the consumed and consuming nature of place brings in an added dimension. What can be learned from the experience of space, time and memory and its impact in consuming professional identity as one academic moves from one place and into another?

If this should suggest a passive, fragmentary and reactionary engagement, my ‘story’, interweaving journal entries to theory, will implicitly and explicitly theorise “the unicity and dignity of the individual” (Joyce (1975:130) within a frame of self-understanding, a platform on which increasingly more conscious professional action can be taken (Kelchtermans and Vandenberghe, 1994), and, importantly, a theorisation that reflects a position of disruptive pedagogy, of movement away from ‘resilience’ (Neocleous, 2013) towards ‘resistance’ and ‘transgression’ instead (Lotz-Sisitka, et al 2015). In the general context of education with its “erosion” of pedagogy towards “instructional cognitive aspects” Klaassen (2002:152) and award based models of attainment (individual, institutionally and societally), and the specific context of the precarious landscape of higher education (UCU, 2016), this is arguably a timely presentation. Whilst White (2016:np) highlights that “we know precious little about the extent of precarious work in higher education” (emphasis added), this paper presents an account of experience from within it.

Lights, Camera, Action: Performing in Academia

Rachel Cockman, Yvonne Novakovic, Leigh Morland, Liz Rivers

[e-mail]

University of Huddersfield
Our contribution enacts metaphors of the visual performing arts. Proceeding from Goffman (1959), who articulated his theories on social interaction through the imagery of the theatre, an ensemble of four women academics perform as cast and crew in a piece about contemporary academia from their specific perspectives. Our casting director, a young senior lecturer, explores visibility in academia. Our set designer offers a multi-media story about being an accidental tourist researching in a Business School, our costume designer examines the relationship between clothing and performance throughout their academic career, and our visual director, through photo-elicitation, examines how it feels to work as an Early Career Researcher. In the telling of our stories we seek to expand the possibilities of understanding, illuminating, rather than disappearing, the contradictions and complexities of our performances and the nexus of our individual roles and relationships with others.

Although each player gives a solitary performance, our work also privileges the practice of community, rather than individualism, and reflects the episodic (patchwork) nature of women’s lives. We ask how far our experiences are theorised in and articulate with the current literature, attending specifically to the differences in our stories and the extent to which these might be seen as embodied. We choose stories because they give us access to the emotional organisational life (Czarniawaska, 2004) and to that which ‘lies behind the normal and mundane’ (Gabriel, 2000: 240). Transcending the auto/biographical (Stanley, 1992) and autoethnographic, they place us within the past, present and future (Pye, 2005; Auvinen, Aaltio & Blomqvist, 2012). We avoid closure to acknowledge that we will each continue to perform on other stages, but the unending connections between bodies, identities and performativity are made explicit in the telling of our stories.

Title: Manifestations of Managerialism: A Study of Social Order

Caroline Bolam [e-mail]

University of Westminster
Higher Education has gone through significant changes within the last sixty years (Deem et al, 2007, Bell et al, 2009, Molesworth et al, 2011). The issue of academic identity under this new regime of performativity is also a concept that has been explored (Henkel, 2005, Fanghanel 2012). Lyotard’s (1984) performativity identifies the pressures to commodify higher education, Humberstone et al (2013) explore this concept of commodification in terms of student learning, and they conclude that students are indeed focused on their individual success, rather than an urge to learn. This implies that changes to higher education are firmly embedded in the social contract and how we learn. Williams (2013) alludes to learning no longer being a privilege, but a right. What was initially seen as a mutual contribution (student to a university, and university to the student) is now seen as an entitlement, irrespective of ability. The concept of learning has changed.
This research explores how this manifests itself in the daily interactions between students and staff, and how this impacts on academic performance and identity practices. Academic standards are managed, but student expectations have changed (Winter 2009).
Garfinkel (1967), in his studies of social contexts, emphasizes the importance of a shared understanding to the social environment. To accomplish the role of academic, the academic must perform their role in such a way as other parties (students) also understand it. Cooley (1902, cited in Rawls & Duck 2016) referred to the “looking glass self”, a concept further explored by Rawls and Duck (2017). They assert that if your identity is presented in such a way that it is not reflected back, this will cause issues of trust in the social order. Winter (2009) alludes to schisms in academic identity, and Fanghanel (2012) refers to “turbulent moments of practice” (pg. 1) in her exploration of overlapping academic identities. Yet little research is done to explore what these changes of expectation mean to everyday practice.
This presentation will draw on ethnomethodological research (Garfinkel 1967) to understand how academics accomplish their role on a day-to-day basis. It seeks to understand how they understand their role, and present it, to the shared understanding of their students. It will draw on discussions with, and observations of, business school lecturers in a new university to investigate how they accomplish their different academic identities, which may have competing or conflicting identity values. It will investigate incongruities of practices, to understand how lecturing staff deal with breaches in expectation. Garfinkel’s (1967) breach experiments demonstrate the fragile nature of social order, and just how finessed our expectations are, in our understanding of accomplishing social situations through a shared understanding.
Initial findings show that although there are misunderstandings of purpose, these are not as pervasive as is often portrayed. Williams (2013) asserts that students do not want to be “just” consumers, and lecturers do not see themselves delivering a service. The values of the institute are under threat from the constraints imposed, but is this so in our interactions?