It has become common within universities to identify and criticise something described as ‘managerialism’. in 2007 a research team led by Professor Rosemary Deem of the University of Bristol published an article in which they identified a pattern called ‘New Managerialism’, which in essence was said to consist of a drive to create a centralised strategic direction in universities, administrative structures to implement the strategy, and control mechanisms that allow the strategy to be transformed into action.
If this is the essence of ‘new managerialism’, then what this tells us is that the legitimacy of university strategy as a concept has not been accepted everywhere in the academy. This reminds me of an experience I had in the earlier years of my term of office. I was present at a meeting of university heads at which one president told us that he could talk about a ‘strategy’ for his university without some staff telling him that no university should claim to have a strategy: this should be a matter solely for departments or maybe even only individual academics. In that setting any attempt to use management structures of whatever kind to supervise a strategy formulation and implementation meets resentment among staff.
Clearly here is a distinction between criticism of managerialism as a claimed excess or even abuse of power, and management as a tool of organisational oversight. But in some people’s eyes the gap between the two is not large.
Universities are much more complex organisations than they used to be, and frankly I doubt that many could now operate successfully as loose coalitions of academics. On the other hand, there are contradictions between the desire to keep the overall control of the institutions in academic hands, and the need to professionalise key functions such as finance and human resources and ensure that they are run in accordance with best practice.
Academic institutions have not worked out properly how they should be run, how within a necessary management structure the integrity of scholarship and learning can be assured, and how they can build up institutional success through focused strategies. And because there is no consensus around this, universities are dogged by suspicion and tensions within.
I think it is time to stop using what are in essence terms of abuse such as ‘managerialism’ that suggest that all management is illegitimate, no matter how it is exercised. It is also time to ensure that management in universities secures consent and cooperation and recognises the special ethos of the academy. All of which is probably more easily said than done.
Ferdinand von Prondzynski, President of Dublin City University
'Watchdog' on Higher Education in Ireland 