Passive and active resistance to performance pressures among academics in UK universities

Liudvika Leišytė

Chapter 23 in Research Handbook on the Transformation of Higher Education, 2023, pp 351-365 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Resistance to organizational change on behalf of academics is part and parcel of the transformation of higher education. The scholars of organizational resistance have concentrated on the power differentials between the employers and employees and have shown how workers resist in terms of appropriation of time, work, and product, where resistance is seen not only as stalling but also as contributing to organizational change (Ford et al., 2008). We aim to investigate how senior and early career academics respond to managerial demands in the UK higher education system. We show that academics respond both in silent as well as in more proactive ways to the new structures and procedures of evaluation imposed on them when it comes to their academic work. Finally, we observe that manipulation, largely used by senior academics, as the proactive form of resistance, may bridge the dissonance between academic and managerial values and facilitate hybridity in academic identities.

Keywords: Business and Management; Education; Politics and Public Policy Sociology and Social Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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