The 21st century University – dilemmas of leadership and

organisational futures

Rosemary Deem, Professor of Higher Education

Management, Royal Holloway, University of London

Introduction The lecture will explore:

1. Recent debates about of the purposes of universities

2. Some autobiographical reflections on becoming and being a manager-academic

3. Five dilemmas of university leaders

4. Key factors shaping the future organisational forms & cultures of universities

Draws on three projects about higher education and public services (ERSC New Managerialism, HEFCE Equity, ESRC Change Agent Project) as well as much other research

Debates on the purposes of universities

The university professes to be a community and to derive from this fact much of its educational power … but for the majority of students … their university has been less an Alma Mater than a bargain-counter, at which certain specific articles they require are purveyed (Moberly ….) p. 24

Why are there still debates on the purposes of universities?

The move from elite to mass HE systems

Academic capitalism & resource dependency focus attention on relationship of funding to purpose

The rise of overt ‘management’ of academic work

The development of internet-based technologies and new forms of learning & learning spaces

A new emphasis on public engagement and the ‘impact’ of academic research

Debates on the purposes of universities

There are three main strands to these debates over the last two decades:

i. How to be world class &/or why universities compete for international rankings

ii. How to be an entrepreneurial university or why universities want to be enterprising (a 1990s debate?)

Iii. How research & teaching are responding to the challenges of the 21st century (following Newman & Humboldt 19th century debates)

A new emphasis is now emerging within strand iii about how to reconcile the social & cultural roles of universities as institutions with the desire of governments to make universities into mini-industries which add to wealth creation

Tensions of conflicting ideas about universities

‘the dominant legitimating idea of public higher education has been moving away from the idea of higher education as a social institution, and moving toward the idea of higher education as an industry … from the perspective of higher education as an industry, public colleges and universities are seen increasingly as a sector of the economy … to produce and sell goods and services, train some of the workforce, advance economic development, and perform research … In contrast, from the perspective of higher education as a social institution, public colleges and universities by definition must preserve a broader range of social functions that include such essential educational legacies as the cultivation of citizenship, the preservation of cultural heritage(s), and the formation of individual character and habits of mind. The tension between the two legitimating ideas is profound. (Gumport 2000) pp 70-71 referring to the USA

Debates on the purposes of universities

 

Universities are being constructed ‘as vectors of the contemporary skilling of an increasing segment of the population and as providers of innovation that can be translated into advantage in a fast changing global economic environment. This involves the use of regulation and incentives (especially financial) to obtain forms of behaviour in universities that provide outcomes defined as desirable within this short-term frame of reference’

(Boulton and Lucas 2008) p 5. (referring to Europe)

Debates on the purposes of universities

Few if any universities have yet resolved the social & cultural versus economic purposes tensions

Resource dependency means many embrace economic purposes in search of funding but unclear if believe in it (bi & tri-lingualism?)

The headlong race for world class status is leaving many universities behind

Is it possible to have a world class university which lacks a sense of its social and cultural purposes?

 Becoming and being a

manager-academic The term manager-academic came from an ESRC project

on New Managerialism in UK universities at Lancaster 1998-2000 with Reed, Watson, Fulton, Hillyard, Johnson

The concept refers to academics who temporarily or permanently undertake management & leadership roles in universities – distinguished from academic managers who may be HR, finance, research, QA or other specialists

My own career reflects a series of journeys down different paths (Deem 1996), not the straight line to the top preferred by head hunters – shaped by the effects of gender, discipline, location & recent changes in the career paths available to UK manager-academics

 Becoming a manager-

academic1975 – 1979 North Staffs Polytechnic

1980 – 1991 Open University

1991 – 2000 Lancaster University

2001 – 2009 University of Bristol

2009 – Royal Holloway

In all but the first of these posts, academic and manager-academic roles were combined. From 1996 on I became a higher education researcher.

 What constitutes a managerial role?

In some universities only roles with responsibility for staff & budgets really count as management roles e.g as put to me at Bristol: ‘your managerial experience is in the wrong kind of university’, implying that being a graduate dean & running a Subject Centre were not about management or leadership

This excludes much of what academics do – programme directors, research centre leadership, dept/faculty responsibility for teaching, student experience, research – the very posts that provide a training ground for emerging leaders

By contrast, Smith et al (2007) note many UK PVCs have no significant responsibility for staff or for budgets, yet these are sought after roles that lead to head of institution posts

Some thoughts on an academic and manager-academic career

Importance of retaining academic credibility (Goodall 2009)

Carving out the space to reflect & remaining human (Alban-Metcalfe & Alimo-Metcalfe 2003)

Keeping an eye on cash flow and new buildings (Rowe 1997)

Having a clear sense of direction but not telling academics what to do (‘speaking as your line manager’)

Learning from research on & about higher education

Arranging activities involving food and laughter

Maintaining trust; not becoming managerialist (Rowland 06)

Leadership dilemmasLeaders of universities are beset by many

dilemmas

Here the focus is on five dilemmas which have arisen in some of my recent research on the management and leadership of universities

How leaders resolve dilemmas is contingent on their own biography & identity, the team in which they work, the cultures & values of their institution and the challenges they face, as well as on the features of the HE system within which they work

Struggling with dilemmas  

Because we’re a public service, because we’re a people business, you actually can’t. I mean I, I’m struggling currently with directions I’d like the university to go in terms of the subjects we offer, aren’t we all? I just went through the exercise of applying a business model to that, because my governors asked me to; here’s the product, here’s the outcome. What stops me from going from A to B is that I don’t want industrial action.

(Vice-Chancellor, post-1992 University, generic academic body focus group, ESRC New Managerialism project )

Doing the day job or planning for a career?

In the UK even fifteen years ago becoming a Vice Chancellor was largely an end of career position

Only the former polytechnics had a career structure of externally advertised management posts for academics

Rise of ‘leaderism’ in public services (O’Reilly & Reed 2010)

Now the elected or rotating temporary leadership post in HE is in decline even in the pre-1992s and headhunters roam the corridors of academe

Those who want to be leaders are going on the TMP and planning their careers at a younger age

But does this present a conflict between doing the day job and preparing for the next career move?

Which role? the most recent thing is that I've been accepted on to the Top

Management programme … I had to have the support of my Vice Chancellor, and the financial support, because it's jolly expensive, I mean it's about, I think, about £14,000 ... that is both to support me in my current role, but I've also got a very strong eye on its use in terms of my further career paths … I was interviewed for a Vice Chancellor position recently, and the first question that I was asked was why I hadn't been on the TMP (Female PVC, Longley, post-1992)

I’m looking to the future, to be honest with you. I've chosen to go on the course which is aimed at, well, it's sort of aimed at Associate Deans, and newly appointed Deans, and it's preparing for senior strategic leadership, with a view to being able...to be in a position to apply for a Dean’s post (male Associate Dean, LittleOaks)

Both from ESRC CAP study

Line management or collegiality ?

Universities have traditionally thrived on collegiality, even though it has its deficiencies (Bensimon 1996)

Collegiality ostensibly replaced by distributed leadership (Gronn 2000, 2002) in universities (Bolden et al 2008)

It is also being replaced by line management, even though it is difficult to herd academic cats (Deem 2009)

Plus ‘performance management’ of academics (like planting seedlings, then digging them up to see if they are growing)

Line management often proposed when trust between academics and leaders declines

Streamlining decision-making

I think that the way in which higher education is moving and developing means that you need to think about a structure whereby decisions can be taken quickly and effectively, and translated into practice, and having an organisation where either things trickle up from the bottom or trickle down from the top… may have served the university well when it was devised in the 1950s … it doesn’t serve us well [now] … you need a sort of quick turnaround and you need an agreement among those who head up organisational units, whatever those units might be, in order to implement the policy, the agreed policy very quickly, and I think that’s why, to me, a [new organisational] model is most appropriate (male VC, Hopton, ESRC CAP project)

Loss of trust [first participant] Well, I think they don’t trust us, even

Heads of Department, they don’t trust us completely with money. . . I’m talking about elementary decisions …[second participant] I was looking at the managerial part and I feel that they don’t really trust even up to the Head of Department, they don’t really trust you (science learned society focus group, ESRC New Managerialism project)

you can’t drive academics and tell them what to do… I mean they run around all over the place, don’t they? And the more you try pushing them in one direction, the more obstinate they become … I don’t think even the vice chancellor could persuade them, with professors, to do things that they don’t want to do (Dean of Research, pre-1992 University, ESRC New Managerialism project)

Research or Teaching? Most universities do both, though their missions may give

them differential emphasis

But research and high status are closely linked; academics and institutions like to play the research game (Lucas 2006)

Teaching is often the poor cousin – routinised, lower status, less linked to promotion, used as a punishment

2004 HEFCE CETL initiative meant to raise status of teaching – buildings, secondments, curriculum change - but money now ending – what will be long term outcome?

ESRC CAP study – most effective policy HE levers were perceived to be RAE, NSS, markets and money – but led to different responses (some real, some symbolic)

How to communicate? Surely we would expect communication to be an

important part of leadership?

HEFCE HELIX study of internal communications (Richard Taylor, Leicester, 2009) showed that VCs thought of themselves as good communicators but focus groups of other staff did not always agree

In our HEFCE Equity study we were surprised at how poorly communicated staff equality policies were (Deem, Morley & Tlili 2005)

Some HEIs better at external than internal communication – staff learn important news from national or local papers

Good communication also needs to be followed up by other actions

Inequality or Equality? Legally within the EU there is no such choice but

universities seem to prefer excellence to equality (Deem 2007, 2009)

The HEFCE Equity study found management well- informed but complacent, whilst staff often felt their equality concerns were subordinate to those of students

Gender equality considered ‘complete’, other aspects still in process

Pursuit of equality seen as recognitional rather than redistributive activity

UK still only 20 women VCs and 1 from black ethnic minority group

Organisational futures:Surprisingly little is written about the internal

organisation of universities (Clark 1997, Sporn 1996 & 1999, Taylor 2006)

Institutions often guilty of moving deckchairs on the ship – though moving deckchairs with academics in them has some interesting consequences

Is isomorpism winning (Enders 2009)?

‘for UK universities, and particularly the ancients … they are led as much or more by their culture and history as by their current senior leaders, and indeed the latter are probably more chosen by the former, than the latter produce or design the former’ (Burgoyne, Williams et al. 2009) p 10.

Organisational futures:

2004 OECD scenarios ‘Open networking’ – harmonisation, voluntary

collaboration in research & teaching across national borders

‘Serving local communities’ – publicly funded, focus on teaching and life long learning, only arts/social science research - science research outside HEIs

‘New public responsibility’ part public funded but HEIs legally autonomous, student fees, private applied research

‘Higher Education Inc’ - global competition to provide teaching & research in separate institutions; mostly private funding

Organisational futures: Where do university leaders get their ideas about organisations

from?

In ESRC CAP study some said experience, others the TMP:

what I think the Top Management Programme provided, more than anything else, well, two things; it provided you with exposure to some management techniques and theories … but much more importantly, it gave you a peer group whom you could, you know, just chew over issues that were affecting you, that were affecting them as well, so the support, peer support, and the, you know, the realisation that you're not alone in this, and that everybody else is as baffled about what to do next, and gets as fed up with, you know, the hassle of it all.. (PVC Littleoaks)

Is this radical enough??? Will it lead to new organisational forms, neither loosely coupled anarchy or tightly-coupled vertical/horizontal integration?

Organisational futures: some ways forward

We need to

Decide on purposes – the university as a social & cultural institution or a mini-training company & an arm of economic policy?

Resolve leadership dilemmas – but new ones will emerge

Re-examine the basis of the public/private HE debate – mostly focuses on fees but privatising knowledge is a major threat

See all universities as addressing global, national and local concerns –a glonacal approach (Marginson & Rhoades 2002) but paying attention to issues of environmental sustainability (Nicolaide 2006)

Ameliorate some competition through collaboration, mergers and/or alliances & new technologies and also remain flexible and open