This book originated in an analysis of government bureaucracies. Peter Blau was led to wonder whether corresponding patterns are observable in the administrative structures of other types of organisations. This text examines the institutions of higher education, which Blau believes are the formal organisations that differ most in objectives and performance from government bureaucracies.
Organizing Academic Work in Higher Education explores how managers influence teaching, learning and academic identities and how new initiatives in teaching and learning change the organizational structure of universities. By building on organizational studies and higher education studies literatures, Organizing Academic Work in Higher Education offers a unique perspective, presenting empirical evidence from different parts of the world. This edited collection provides a conceptual frame of organizational change in universities in the context of New Public Management reforms and links it to the core activities of teaching and learning. Split into four main sections: University from the organizational perspective, Organizing teaching, Organizing learning and Organizing identities, this book uses a strong international perspective to provide insights from three continents regarding the major differences in the relationships between the university as an organization and academics. It contains highly pertinent, scientifically driven case studies on the role and boundaries of managerial behaviour in universities. It supplies evidence-based knowledge on the effectiveness of management behaviour and tools to university managers and higher education policy-makers worldwide. Academics who aspire to institutionalize their successful academic practices in certain university structures will find this book of particular value. Organizing Academic Work in Higher Education will be a vital companion for academic interest in higher education management, transformation of universities, teaching, learning, academic work and identities. Bringing together the study of the organizational transformation in higher education with the study of teaching, learning and academic identity, Organizing Academic Work in Higher Education presents a unique cross-national and cross-regional comparative perspective.
"One of the best theoretical and applied analyses of universityacademic organization and leadership in print. This book issignificant because it is not only thoughtfully developed and basedon careful reading of the extensive literature on leadership andgovernance, but it is also deliberately intended to enable theauthor to bridge the gap between theories of organization, on onehand, and practical application, on the other." --Journal of Higher Education
This book explores the perceptions of academic staff and representatives of institutional leadership about the changes in academic careers and academic work experienced in recent years. It emphasizes standardisation and differentiation of academic career paths, impacts of new forms of quality management on academic work, changes in recruitment, employment and working conditions, and academics’ perceptions of their professional contexts. The book demonstrates a growing diversity within the academic profession and new professional roles inhabiting a space which is neither located in the core business of teaching and research nor at the top level management and leadership. The new higher education professionals tend to be important change agents within the higher education institutions not only fulfilling service and bridging functions but also streamlining academic work to make a contribution to the reputation and competitiveness of the institution as a whole. Based on interviews with academic staff, this book explores the situation in eight European countries: Austria, Croatia, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Poland, Romania, and Switzerland.
Organizational Culture and Identity discusses the literature concerned with culture in organizations and explains why the term has been invoked with such enthusiasm. Martin Parker presents further ways of thinking about organizations and culture which suggest that organizational cultures should be seen as `fragmented unities' in which members identify themselves as collective at some times and divided at others.
Aims to bring together, present, and discuss what is known about work and organizations and their connection to broader economic change in Europe and America. This volume contains a range of theoretically informed essays, which give comprehensive coverage of changes in work, occupations, and organizations.
Why is there a resurgence of interest in personality in organizational research? Why have organizations turned to personality experts to assist in the early identification of employees who are likely to be motivated, conscientious, prosocial, and stable? Organizations are finding an ever-more-pressing need to select people with high probabilities of adjusting to and succeeding in work situations. To understand how and why individuals frame the same set of environmental factors differently, this thorough review of personality theory and measurement in work settings isolates the specific vital impacts on behavior in industrial and organizational settings. Topics addressed include: Job performance Leadership Team functioning Interdepartmental conflict Tardiness and attrition Mental and physical health Motivation Integrity Personality at Work is an excellent resource for researchers, scholars, and advanced students.
This invaluable source book offers guidance, support and advice for those contemplating or involved in academic careers. The contributions provide rich, personal, sometimes poignant and often humorous accounts of shared and unique experiences of those in the world of academia.
This book provides interesting and critical insights into a common university practice, the academic office hour. Office hours are a discursive site for a variety of different issues, ranging from administrative matters to course-related and study-related concerns. The study offers both an ethnographic account of this speech event within the socio-cultural context of a German university as well as a more detailed analysis of the interactional organization of academic consultations. It draws on natural recordings of entire office hour interactions in order to show how participants’ actions at different stages of the talk organize and accomplish the consultation. The analytical focus is set on the sequential activities teachers and students engage in as they conduct a consultation. This includes, for instance, how participants open an office hour talk, how they establish an agenda, how they manage advice-giving, and how they close the consultation. As such, this book will be of practical use to students and faculty members as well as scholars from different disciplines who work in the areas of institutional talk and talk-in-interaction.
