University corporatisation: Driving redefinition

Lee Parker

CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, 2011, vol. 22, issue 4, 434-450

Abstract: Drawing on international research into changing university environments, profiles, and structures, this study applies a neo-institutional perspective to the analysis and critique of underlying developed country trends in public sector university corporatisation and commercialisation. Identifying primary environmental and historical influences, the paper focuses upon key environmental factors that have promoted the importation of new public management and private sector philosophies into universities of which a significant proportion have been traditionally identified as operating within the public sector. The findings reveal an underlying neoliberal political and economic agenda, that has laid the foundations for the profound transformation that has reconfigured universities’ governance, missions, core values and the roles of their academics. These changes emerge as mimicking private sector corporate philosophies and governance structures, as well as returning to scientific management approaches of a century ago. Accounting and accountability are revealed as conduits supporting these significant shifts in university identity and role. Their realignment with shifting societal economic preoccupations and priorities is revealed as permeating their intellectual core, commercialising knowledge production and transforming the identity and role of the academic community.

Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (46)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1045235410001796
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:crpeac:v:22:y:2011:i:4:p:434-450

DOI: 10.1016/j.cpa.2010.11.002

Access Statistics for this article

CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING is currently edited by Marcia Annisette, Christine Cooper and Yves Gendron

More articles in CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().