Neo-collegiality: restoring academic engagement in the managerial university

Bacon, Edwin (2014) Neo-collegiality: restoring academic engagement in the managerial university. The Leadership Foundation for Higher Education, London, UK.

Abstract

University staff are their institutions’ key resource. They are an intelligent, articulate and highly educated group. Despite this, university staff in the UK have little say in how their institutions are managed. As the survey in this paper shows, they would like a more decisive and influential voice. It is over two decades since the collegiality of yesteryear was deemed unviable for modern universities and a new managerial approach became the norm. However, the managerial initiatives which seemed shiny and new then have lost both lustre and novelty now. Current management research argues that hierarchical models are outdated and inappropriate in knowledge-based sectors. Technological advances offer previously undreamed of ways for staff across universities to influence, interact and take decisions. Flatter structures enable greater autonomy and flexibility serving more effectively the needs of student and academic, teaching and research. Neo-collegiality is not about a return to some largely imagined cloistered past. It recognises the necessity of many of the changes wrought by the New Public Management reforms of previous decades. However, neo-collegiality asserts that the time is now ripe for managerial paradigms to shift. Neo-collegiality offers the restoration of broader, more collegial decision-making processes to create a professional, efficient and appropriately 21st century management approach. Such processes engage academic and professional staff across institutions, adopting and adapting a range of flexible and innovative means as appropriate to the distinctive features of individual universities in the UK’s large and varied higher education sector.

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