Journal Article

The managerial turn in higher education?

Kloke, Katharina, Blümel, Albrecht, Krücken, Georg

2013

Overview

The managerial turn in academia is currently broadly discussed. Based on empirical data gathered from a sample that includes all German universities, we can give a broad and fine-grained account of this turn. What we can clearly see is that whole new categories of administrative management positions have been created over the last years. Furthermore, within the non-academic staff we can see a profound restructuration. Lower-level positions like those for clerical work decreased, while higher-level positions in the administration increased. However, and in contrast to studies of countries, we do not observe a general shift from academic to non-academic positions. In addition to the statistical analysis of survey data and personnel data, we conducted seventy in-depth interviews with heads of administrative management units, in particular those being created over the last two decades, for example, on quality control, technology transfer, and career service. Although we clearly see important changes indicating a managerial turn in higher education, core characteristics of a professional organization whose basic processes are ultimately controlled by academics and not by administrators or managers have been retained. These findings call for further cross-national research.

• Publisher: Springer,Springer Netherlands
• Subject: Academic profession / Administrative change / Administrative Organization / Administrators / Careers / College Administration / Control systems / Cross-national analysis / Education / Educational administration / Federal Republic of Germany / Foreign Countries / Germany / Higher Education / Hochschule / Hochschulreform / Human resources / Interviews / Management / Management education / Managerial Occupations / Managers / Middle management / Organizational Change / Organizational effectiveness / Personnel Data / Quality management / Research universities / Science and Technology Studies / Social Sciences / Sociology / Sociology of education. Educational systems. Lifelong education / Sociology of organizations and enterprises. Bureaucracy and administration / Sociology of work and sociology of organizations / Staat / Statistical Analysis / Support personnel / Surveys / Technology Transfer / Universities / University administration / University management / Verwaltung