Academic Leadership and Governance of Professional Autonomy in Swedish Higher Education

ABSTRACT

This article concerns how spaces of professional autonomy are defined and formed in Swedish higher education institutions (HEIs). Swedish HEIs have become increasingly characterised by rivalling principles of management and professional autonomy. The relational aspects of how a professional habitus is formed and negotiated in relation to management ideals and practices are investigated. The research methods used in this study were interviews with HEI management, strategic human resource management (HRM) representatives and research and teaching staff at three HEIs under different conditions of collegial influence and forms of management. The results show that professional negotiations are undergoing conversion pressures under New Public Management (NPM)-implemented governance, but because professional identities are strongly rooted in academic core values, they are relatively resistant to NPM imposition and encroachment. In light of this, the article offers a discussion on the dilemma of conforming to managerial demands and priorities without losing a professional self.

KEYWORDS:

• Higher education
• academic autonomy
• professional identity
• habitus
• doxa

Introduction

The changes that are taking place in Swedish higher education institutes (HEIs) are seemingly following an overall New Public Management (NPM) understanding of streamlining goals and performances in what is considered a sluggish and bureaucratic public sector (Ankarloo & Friberg, 2012). The NPM-inspired logic follows a set of assumptions and conclusions on how organisations in the public sector should be operated and run, based on business principles. It can be defined as a strategic initiative but also an ideological one, based on the goal of making public organisations and those working in the more market-oriented (Diefenbach, 2007).

In general, the competitive development of HEIs has led to increased institutional and financial autonomy that seems to be at the expense of the professional autonomy of researchers and teachers (Baltaru & Soysal, 2017; Beck & Young, 2005; Enders et al., 2009; Ginsberg, 2011; Raaper, 2016). This development has been particularly evident in Sweden, following the implementation of “autonomy reform” in 2011 (Gov. Prop 2009/10:149). The increased institutional autonomy has contributed to strengthening line management organisation, which, in addition to more managers, has increased the powers of strategic and administrative coordinators and expanded bureaucratic processes in many HEIs (Widmalm et al., 2016). A similar development is apparent in Scandinavian countries where managerial logic has either come to replace or complement traditional collegial decision-making and professional logics (Geschwind et al., 2018). The managerialistic turn implies a loyalty to new institutional objectives relating to cost efficiency, budget responsibilities, assessments and, accordingly, new institutional strategies that are developed. This would appear to follow the international development towards a “managerial university” (Teichler, 2019, pp. 7–12).

Thus, the question is how professions deal with new forms of leadership and organisation of HEIs in practice in an increased institutional autonomy. The issue of autonomy is addressed via the aid of Pierre Bourdieu in terms of a capacity to act relatively independently of external influences and to maintain its own criteria for what is desirable. Bourdieu’s (1988) studies on French higher education underline the high degree of autonomy in the academic field. However, according to contemporary research, what has become prominent is that increased heteronomy appears at the expense of autonomic principles (Deer, 2003; Pinheiro et al., 2019). This is partly because constitutional principles are increasingly being defined outside of the field and partly as a matter of how heterogeneous principles of the field affect the identities of academic professionals and negotiations that take place in the field (Collyer, 2015). Academic practices are increasingly justified by various evaluations, output measures and the applicability of research as well as the objective of producing employable students. In addition, the development of HEIs is moving towards promoting institutional logics within the academic field by implementing management ideals to encourage a self-reflective practice that can meet externally defined criteria (cf. Pinheiro et al. 2019). This need for professionals to be subjected to economic values and practices has been described as a “crisis of habitus” in academia (Deer, 2003, p. 201). Essentially, the issue is how professional negotiations occur in higher education and how spaces of autonomy are defined and formed. In other words, negotiation is a prerequisite for social relations in this context, depending on how issues of authenticity and legitimacy are established and form identities and ideals that are recognised and attributed a value. This is not necessarily a rational deliberation; rather, it is based on a sense of what constitutes the reasonable and how actors become actualisers, in what Bourdieu (1991, pp. 9–11) labels “socially instituted potentialities […] for agent endowed with the socially constituted dispositions […]”.

The purpose of this text is to examine the relational aspects of how a professional habitus is formed and negotiated in relation to management ideals and practices. In practice, this is conveyed by incorporating the perspectives of teachers, managers and strategic human resource management (HRM) representatives in three HEIs with different internal organisational structures and forms of management. Significant attention has been given in the research literature to how changed conditions for HEIs are affecting organisation and governance, which, in turn, affects academic identities and professional motives (Archer, 2008; Clegg, 2008; Deem & Lucas, 2007; Henkel, 2005). The growth of administrative bodies and audit requirements leads to changed preconditions in how to identify as an academic and boosts practices and ideals of managerialism in higher education (Briggs, 2007; Teelken, 2012). Professionals in academia have been described as frustrated and disillusioned since HEIs have become increasingly commercially oriented, and university teachers and researchers are experiencing a growing sense of uncertainty and ambivalence (Ball, 2015; Davies & Petersen, 2005). Their concern is centred on a lost sense of meaning and lack of influence in formulating what is sacred in academic work. Professional academics are, however, a diverse group, and in addition to an increased difference between education and research, academic preconditions for work increasingly include staff groups in management, strategic functions and occupational groups, in different forms of evaluation and control bodies (Beach, 2013). Even if there is a shift in ideals in higher education, it is not clear how distinctive professional values and motives of teachers and researchers in academia, are converted or colonised by management doctrines with regard to the heterogeneous principles of the academic field (Archer, 2008; Clegg, 2008; Fransson, 2012; Slaughter & Lesley, 1997).

Professional Negotiations in HEIs

Bourdieu argued that a field’s relative autonomy is characterised by the extent to which those involved are more dependent on each other than on others outside the field when defining the rules of the game (1984). What determines belonging is agents making efforts in the field and being familiar with the rules, that is a habitus that guides what is valuable knowledge and recognition of the processes that gain legitimacy (Bourdieu, 1988, pp. 49–51). Essentially, it is how the “reasonable” in agents’ practical reasoning occurs in the field, that is the dialectic between aspirations and the guiding senses of limits and possibilities in relation to objective changes (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 468). The theoretical point of departure is basically to capture how agents make social and cognitive sense of a certain institutional setting, where habitus guides the cognitive abilities to match performance to certain institutions (Reay et al., 2001). Habitus also relates to wider social and cultural classifications, that is a doxa, of what constitutes the taken for granted and our ability to identify within the profession (Bourdieu, 1977/2007). The doxa can thus reflect general questions of norms that guide professional considerations, such as freedom of research, the value of knowledge in itself and collegial decision-making. It concerns the conditions in the field, the academic subjects and the status relations between teaching and research, as well as to what extent actors and processes in the field affect the prerequisites for exercising professional judgment. As Bourdieu (1988, pp. 113–114) notes, “there is no absolute domination of a principle of domination, but the rival coexistence of several relatively independent principles of hierarchization” (italics in original). In Bourdieu’s reasoning, domination relates to cooperation or negotiation. For instance, leadership, rewards and evaluations must be seen in relation to professional logics that are mediated through institutional practices. Even if a habitus tends to be relatively persistent towards institutional change, a transformation of habitus can be engendered if actors dispositions’ fail to incorporate new terms of the field and adopt an institutional logic that provides space for possible actions (Elder-Vass, 2007).

Thus, a key point is how identities are formed in relation to management and organisational control and how professionals undergo identity regulation in light of what is possible and reasonable in an organisational context (Alvesson & Willmott, 2002). The NPM doctrine that has been established in HEIs is based on academic leadership being a role that is separate from the skills and knowledge of the academic professions (Enders et al., 2009). Management has become an area of professional activity in itself, and the competences of managers have started to be seen as the core activities of work organisations (Ahlbäck Öberg et al., 2016). This is a significant change from HEIs’ traditional decision-making, where the university’s professionals have a collective responsibility for how research and education are conducted. In other words, the ideology of the leadership replaces the ideal of the joint decision-making (Hasselberg, 2012). As far as university managers are concerned, they are often described as a group that has been distanced from traditional academic domains within the academy, as it comes to being a critical professional agent, or to value knowledge for the sake of itself (Davies & Petersen, 2005). Deem and Lucas (2007) show in their study on academic leaders at British universities that the management role is ambivalent and includes negotiation processes of traditional scientific ideals and managerialistic logics. Personal biographies and the academic environment in which they work characterised how these negotiations were formed. Other important factors for how and to what extent they could create a professional narrative of being teachers, researchers and managers were genders and how long they had been working (cf. Angervall et al., 2018). Experiences of traditional leadership in HEIs was also essential to how they formed an identity. The opportunity to identify as a manager in academia was also determined by whether the management function was seen as a career path, a temporary role, or, as it sometimes emerged, a task they had reluctantly accepted (Deem & Lucas, 2007).

The study by Pallas (2017) of academic leaders in Swedish HEIs confirms to some extent the ambivalence that appears in Deem and Lucas’s (2007) study. Overall, among the participants, the importance of protecting traditional norms and scientific values, which in the study are referred to as Humboldtian ideals, is emphasised (Pallas, 2017, p. 288). But also emphasised is that these were just general ideals that were necessary to adapt to the organisational reality within which they were now operating (see also Geschwind et al., 2018). Accordingly, this creates a contradictory adaptation when key concepts such as versatility or democratic ideals are to be combined with a utility-oriented rationality of keeping up with the times. Essentially, the academic leadership emphasises sacred ideals, but the issue arises of what remains of these in the wake of the adaptations that are taking place.

Other issues that have arisen are why the professionals do not oppose the restrictions on their independence that accompany the new forms of management (cf. Clarke et al., 2012; Davies & Petersen, 2005; Teelken, 2012). For example, Alvesson and Spicer (2016) emphasise that academic professionals deal with the tensions and paradoxes of adaptation and resistance by considering their work as a game, which they play but do not fully live with conviction. The point that can be made here is that these strategies allow the academy’s professionals to relate to the circumstances of lost autonomy and to how they pragmatically adapt to new game rules. However, as Clegg (2008) emphasises, academic professionals tend to maintain an “academic self” in neoliberal HEIs and where identities are strongly framed by relations to other professionals and loyalty. Similar conclusions are reached by Archer (2008), who emphasises that even though the preconditions for academia are changing, professional identities are not colonised by neoliberal regimes. The question, though, is how a higher education sector that has become increasingly responsive to market principles forms a professional habitus based on rival principles of management ideals and professional autonomy.

Method

In the study, a total of 25 respondents (15 men and 10 women) who held the positions of lecturers, senior lecturers, associate professors, associate deans, PhD student and strategic HRM staff were interviewed.¹ Three of the respondents were also union representatives. All respondents, except the PhD student, had a full-time, permanent contract. The age of the respondents varied between 43 and 64 years, and the teaching and management staff had the experience of working between six and 37 years in academia.²

The participating teaching staff were selected on the basis of teaching on HRM programmes at three HEIs and the management respondents at the same departments or by the departments responsible for specific subject orientation in the programmes. HRM programmes are interesting for this type of study because they are located within a field of tension between the demands of academia and the expectations of students and labour representatives (Larsson, 2011). By focusing on cases of HRM education in departments at a traditionally organised university and two HEIs with pronounced professional and entrepreneurial orientations, their internal management and administration, the role of academic work and the differences in their relative autonomy can be exposed. The selected HEIs illustrate the diverse landscape of Swedish higher education that has emerged since the autonomy reform, where traditional and resourceful universities are better equipped when it comes to managing the balance between external influences and internal demands on control over education and research (Ahlbäck Öberg et al., 2016).

An additional interview was carried out with an HRM representative in a strategic position at each of the three investigated HEIs. HRM practices have been identified as a central aspect of realising shifts from professional to managerial values among employees in general and with growing influences also in academia (Stiles, 2004).

Two of the investigated HEIs are professionally oriented with a focus on investing in public imaging campaigns of student employability and on courses with clear work–life integration. These institutions have internal differences in organisation and size. An essential dimension of the two professional HEIs is, however, that they have undergone an HRM transformation, which has led to a shift from traditional personnel departments to centralised HRM functions and to HRM “consultants” internally. The overall objective of HRM transformation is to strengthen managerial support and contribute to professionalising management roles. Work–life integration with the curriculum is another trademark of the professional HEIs and is sustained via close relationships with local enterprises and communities. In organisational terms, there are limited formal collegial decision-making boards, in contrast to the traditional HEI, which operates in this way at both the department and faculty levels.

The methodological framing for the investigation was based on how deliberations are expressed and given significance by the participants (Vaughan, 2002). There has, in this case, also been an inclination towards posing questions and a preunderstanding which derive from the familiarity of being an academic myself. The risk is not noticing common norms and belief systems; however, closeness to the investigated phenomena can also provide insights about unconscious social processes of the terms of the field and its complexity (Bourdieu, 1996). This entails a reflexive practice of incorporating the empirical concern of an investigation, with the researcher’s predispositions, with a theoretical reconciliation to understand how meaning arises in various social frameworks.

The procedure was specifically designed to create analytic distinctions between how the participant expresses concerns and frames the institutional context within which they are acted and how these contexts become regulative frameworks demarcating the actor’s social activity. In practice, this was conveyed in the interviews by encouraging dialogue centred on the themes of previous occupation and education, professional boundaries and support and how meaningfulness is found in their working life. The results were analysed within the framework of habitus, by linking the interviews to the symbolic value of their profession and the limits or possibilities that are experienced. These are analytic entries to how the respondents can be seen as disassociated or integrated within the HEI-imposed management measures.

Academic Management Under Conversion Pressures

Although there are similarities in how a NPM logic has gained influence in the departments, there are considerable local variations in how leadership and professional relationships are formed. There are also tangible ambivalences that appear in the different stories of management and teaching staff. In particular, the HRM transformation in two of the investigated HEIs are organisational changes that cause tension in terms of professional identification.

Respondents in management positions expressed that the HRM department at the institution does not have insight into the conditions and the needs of the professionals and the prerequisites of academic work. What is expressed as central to the role of an academic leader is to counter or balance central proposals and decisions that is sees as problematic for the well-being of the staff. Seemingly, it is about taking discussions in management councils or highlighting possible problems or difficulties when implementing strategic decisions at the department level. In general, there is a dilemma among management between being loyal and understanding towards professionals on the one hand and having to run the department and make decisions that they know will not fall on fertile ground on the other (cf. Deem & Lucas, 2007). This, in turn, is motivated by the fact that managers must take into account overall responsibility for keeping to budget, making education attractive to students and finding forms of cooperation with other actors.

[…] it is always, if you say, evaluations, and such things should always show quite quick results, one should be able to quickly swing. We are affected by the vocational education, by consulting business, [by] many things that you have to relate to in different ways. It is not […], we cannot take it for granted in the same way that we have done before. You have to keep track of the application numbers, you have to make sure that the educations are targeted so that you get a large enough search number. So, even though we think that one education is extremely important and socially relevant, it is not certain that we can provide it because it is not trendy right then, it is not “in” […]. Thus, the old system, if you worked in [it], if you think backwards in time, money was distributed in a different way, more severally, in another way […]. Today, it is more related to, market-wise, that one should more and more strive to succeed inwhat one draws in. (Paula, head of department, professional HEI)

It is evident that the external pressure is affecting professional dedication towards management ideals in practice, in the wake of strategic decisions that have to be made. However, it is also apparent amongst management that the identity is strongly centred on being an academic and the ambivalences of being a department leader to which this tends to lead. The managers expressed different emphasis on how they deal with the necessities of measurability and external influences, but there was an apparent resistance towards NPM ideals (see Deem & Lucas, 2007; Pallas, 2017).

The tension that managers mainly underlined was the lack of dialogue with the strategic planning at the institutions. In particular, the relationship with HRM representatives and controllers was highlighted as unwelcome for how an academy should be managed in practice. Significant in this development in the investigated HEIs is the extended strategic role of HRM. In practice, it is HRM departments that, to a great extent, are responsible for implementing a change from professionally oriented organisation towards management-driven values.

It emerges that reasoning about strategic development of management has moved to the fore at central levels of decision-making and where HRM guides the development of the new era and ongoing change processes. What are seen as limiting influences from an academic leadership perspective are, from a strategic HRM perspective, openings for participation. In the interviews with HRM representatives at the institutions, the perceived dilemmas were mainly with regard to a lack of professional leadership. Forms of “the traditional” or “collegial” are seen as a direct obstacle to achieving the desired management. An apparent ambition in all these interviews was that HRM can contribute and support managers, although the professional ambivalences of managers are seen to aggravate such development.

I would like to have a more professional leadership in all parts of the organisation, because I think that the organisation would be [much better] off, because a good leadership provides good employeeship. That leads to good functions, which give good education, good research. I think this is extremely important. I think we are moving towards that, because I would say that is necessary, because otherwise you get stuck in these strange discussions about academia versus management, money and so on, and also that they who are managers in our academy have the opportunity to go back [to teaching position] later. The academic leadership should be seen as a positive thing; one might even look at it as something meritorious, because it is important in this world. But [the fact] that we have put these questions on the agenda – I think that is very positive. As for HRM, I want to see a HRM that gets to take place and contributes to the organisation, [which] not only controls but is [also] involved and relieves the managers a bit – that's my vision. (Pam, HR-manager, professional HEI)

The main line of conflict seems to be that the “person-bound”, or the “academic”, is not separated from the management role. This occurs in all the studied institutions, but the challenges for HRM are expressed as greatest at the traditionally organised university. From an HRM perspective, it was articulated as a struggle, with one respondent saying that she was met with mistrust and skepticism. The way she expressed that she could gain access to department management was via the aid of emphasising work environment laws and other legal concerns that department heads had to take into consideration. At the professionally oriented HEIs, HRM departments had a central position on the decision-making boards and experienced significant influence. However, offering a strategic leadership at the university comes into conflict with the collegial organisation of HEIs, as well as with how local management professionally identifies themselves.

From a management perspective, being an actualiser means balancing the professional role that is attached to the academic profession both upwards in the hierarchy and in relation to the collegial. Being an understanding leader and inviting the collegial is clearly important for the self-understanding of being a good manager. At the same time, it is a conditional invitation for the participation of the collegial that emerges, and the role that the collegiate receives in this is hesitant. Managers emphasise that the problem is that the professional teachers tend not to know where the boundaries lie.

[…] is very much, on the one hand, decide, on the other hand, it should be collegial, while at the same time, you have to execute things and let people participate and decide, even though I myself have to decide (laughter). Yes, but you know, it is a damn soup of all things. So, I know that, in fact, some of the managers […] have actually stopped [working] now because they are not going to go back, to their group, because they have taken some decisions that you may not be popular in all camps, so it is. (Kim, head of division, professional HEI)

Apparent in the reasoning from management is that professional core issues do not take into account the overall responsibility of HEIs. It is a view of the reasonable dictated by market ideals and the need to keep up with the demands of new times. This relates to a market responsiveness that drives management goals of doing the necessary and that legitimises their practice. It is, however, a practice that is legitimised through collegial participation.

NPM and Professional Responsibility

Adaptation to NPM-inspired ideals and line management appears to be based on a professional responsibilisation from a teacher perspective. A senior teacher expressed that he is the outward face and that it is no alternative to failing to solve teaching tasks, no matter how tight the schedule is or how poor the preconditions are. Being “responsible” or “loyal” is a common element in the teachers’ stories, with regard to professional identity and judgment based on the core tasks of “reaching out” to students. As one of the teachers stated, “the course must go on”, which underlines their loyalty towards the students.

Significant factors affecting teachers’ work situations are evaluations, reports of completed work and, in the case of one of the professionally oriented HEIs, control over how competence time has been used. These can be seen as clear NPM elements in the overall quality ideals of the university and, in addition to controlling the teachers’ work, mean that working hours must be devoted to these evaluations (Ahlbäck Öberg et al., 2016).

The different quality management mechanisms are formative forces that influence the professional approach. As one of the respondents expressed, “a what’s in it for me” mentality is fostered. Apparently, it is about an economised culture that is strengthened in relation to measurability ideals and in combination with high workloads, which, for example, makes it difficult for teachers to attend meetings or joint seminars. Another respondent referred to a “workplace culture that counts hours”, where there is a commodification of professional logic in the deliberations of what to prioritise, and this is apparent in all the investigated HEIs (see Agnafors, 2017; Slaughter & Lesley, 1997).

Prominent criticism of the professionally oriented HEIs is focused on concrete aspects of the work environment, such as trying to meet agendas at short notice or management perceived as not being present in the daily work. A respondent expressed that it is necessary to “show that they actually get things done”. Thus, a question is whether expectations of a more proactive management also can be seen as a professional resignation (Collyer, 2015). There appear to be dimensions of a practical logic of a righteousness in management intertwining with the academic core tasks. In the interviews, there were also several expressions by teachers that management does not really take their perspective into account.

[I]n the small things, I have no problems, so to speak, reaching out. But when it comes to, we should say, a little more, as one could influence the organisation so that things might be a little easier, or better, or more efficiently or student-oriented, or something as such, no no no, “the frames are like this and we can't do anything about it” […] the only thing we can do is to like the situation’. I have had, like a number of times, these kind of situations, and it is not fun to hear, so that is why I do not ask questions to get that answer again – “this we cannot do anything about […]”. We are asked about visions and changed routines or how would you like it, and so on, and then we write down long lists [and] leave [it] to the management. And then nothing happens because, I don’t know, like, there is a prefecture meeting with the faculty management and so, but our propositions – we could have made paper planes of them and thrown them out the window … they disappear. (John, associate professor, professional HEI)

What is obvious is that the management structure, particularly in the professionally oriented HEIs, is characterised by a top-to-bottom relationship and that teachers do not experience sufficient participation based on their subject matter and professional judgment. Teachers must, in practice, handle a management structure and a market adaptation that forms the reasonable and actual (cf. Davies & Petersen, 2005).

The traditional HEI appears more resistant towards NPM management, even though principles of market logic intervene in the institution’s everyday life in terms of evaluations, attracting students or research funding (cf. Gibbs, 2010). The academic orientation prevails in general, but respondents with many years’ experience noted a shift towards market-oriented identifications of what it means to be a scholar. The expressions from the participants in the study emphasised an academic field characterised by requirements for high-impact publications and research grants and international comparisons of their own activities (cf. Angervall & Beach, 2017). As one respondent expressed, this development contributes to a “competition community”.

[…] this is so exposed to competition, […] affecting the entire working environment to what one might call [a] competition community, […] which means that there is no solidarity or loyalty that remains within the organisation. I see it when the younger researchers like to congratulate each other, they do it with the hand tied in the pocket – shit, you got money, and not me, then you’re ahead of me. How [can we] build a sustainable organisation when everyone competes with each other? (Ron, associate professor, traditional HEI)

What appears to be keeping the organisation together is loyalty to the students and the academic subject, and there is a common view that reaching out to students is becoming increasingly instrumental. This appears with different orientations in the HEIs, depending on cultural norms of academic prestige or aligning academic ideals with students’ employability. To some extent, in the teacher respondents’ stories, the professionally oriented HEIs are regarded as providing a specific latitude, developing a professional judgment that does not take into account traditional academic power structures in the academic field. The respondents experienced the benefits of not having to adapt to old hierarchies that depended on the dominance of senior professors.

The lack of traditional collegial bodies is accordingly not necessarily seen as a limitation for academic identification (cf. Clegg, 2008). What appears is an experience of what is for us and what is for them, which affects the reasonable. In some interviews, it was also noticeable that the objectives of measurability, throughput and employability are raised as an opportunity for a new identification in the field of higher education. As one teacher expressed, the provisional professional HEI did not truly belong to the academy, but that it is now changing, an example of which is the education programme where he teaches achieving good results in the national evaluations and is now comparable to the traditional universities. Also indicative is a new form of academisation that the respondent had experienced during his time at the HEI, where the practice-oriented and work–life cooperation is becoming increasingly valued as an academic capital.

Given the illustrated framework of entrepreneurial adaption, there appears the necessity to alter traditional subjects to the targeted student group. Apparently, there is no simple distinction between academic and subject-based foundations and work–life practice orientations. It seems to be about relating to a reality with new demands of professional adaption.

Governance of Professional Ethos

During the interviews, all the teaching staff stressed the importance of how they could “reach out” to the students, regardless of the organisational limitations. This involved contributing to widening the students’ understanding of how the world could be understood from their subject perspective. It was also a matter of professional self-esteem, which contributed to the sacredness of the professional role. The expressions attributed to the importance of reaching out were remarkably similar in the three different cases of HEIs.

With regard to the professionally oriented HEIs, there was a significant adaptation towards making non-traditional student groups employable. The respondents spoke of preparing students for working life and how this was crucial to the existence of their educational programmes. Also evident was a self-image among the respondents of being in the shadow with regard to their professional role in the larger universities, and there was also awareness of the need to build their programmes around attracting larger groups from a working-class background. What is prominent in these narratives is the reasonableness, or otherwise, of selling in education, from the practical and the work–life perspective. This is also in line with the professional HEIs’ central visions of integrating students with working life, as well as ambitions of broadened recruitment.

[I]t is more, almost like a brand in some way, we are [work–life] labelled, but what does that mean? […] there is little clarity, so everyone interprets it in their [own] way, [does] a little bit of their own thing. It might be okay, I don’t know, […] I think it still affects how we work because, I don’t know how it is now, but at least before, it was at [larger universities], the HRM programme where you have no internship or mentor contacts, and it is a very theoretical education, but they have lots of students anyway because it is [a large university]. But we then compete by having the ambitions to cooperate with society and the business community, and […] the students should get very many such contacts. (Eric, associate professor, professional HEI)

What emerges is that the practical orientation of the HEI becomes part of the professional judgment, but the challenge, as expressed by the interviewees, is above all to find a balance between focusing on students’ employability and the ability to incorporate academic subjects in the programmes. On these terms, being an actualiser is the organic incorporation of the core of academic subjects into a perceived entrepreneurial necessity.

However, in practice, the strategy of accommodating students’ work–life utilisation again has precedence over the professional logic, including the commodification processes at different levels: Partly, the reasonable of students being driven by instrumental motives, and partly, the necessity of redirecting educational and pedagogical measures towards students’ demands (Puaca et al., 2017). This does, to some extent, legitimise NPM doctrines of student evaluation and throughput ideals in the examined HEIs. It complies with more general trends in HEI of increasingly adapting to anticipated consumerist-oriented students through legitimising market-oriented strategies of branding and increased managerialism, at the expense of professional autonomy (Naidoo & Jamieson, 2005).

The image of the instrumental student is clearly apparent in all the studied HEIs. The main emphasis with respondents from the traditional university is the instrumental strategies of studying for the diploma, while less attention is given to the subjects in their educations (cf. Tomlinson, 2017). To adapt to the new demands is seen as essential in order to attract students in a competitive HEI landscape. It is basically about strategies to clarify the practical use of their education. In this context, the possibility of making changes in the study programme is obstructed by what was expressed as a sluggish and entrenched organisation. The academic subjects and disciplines have a strong foundation through faculty boards, and suggestions at the department level to implement educational changes that deviate from the traditional, such as introducing new subjects, are met with skepticism and resistance. At the same time, a need for change is seen as central at a local level in the department. What is being required, basically, is an “academia for the new times”. A senior teacher described how, for example, lectures on YouTube or the easy access to information put new demands on the profession. Adaption to the new times can also be seen in how the Bologna Implementation received professional acceptance because it added to the clarity of the students’ syllabi, and evaluations are just if they contribute to improving education. Substantial matters of “reaching out” allow control measures to be integrated into a professional logic, although both the teaching and management respondents were generally strongly critical of the NPM form of governance that limits the ability to exercise professional judgment.

I have peeked at the [another university’s] model, […] because we have had quite a similar, or fairly similar programme, but now they have completely stepped up their programme, and all courses are conducted within HRM, human resource development, as subject area, or the main area they have, and [university name] has something similar though they call it human resources science. So, these are the two I have looked at and that, in my opinion, have done the best external monitoring, so. And I came as far as to the local management here, I had them with me, actually, on this, but we'll see, we'll see how it goes. But it's lobbying, personal contacts, and you get to make use of everything informal, as you can imagine. (Sara, associate professor, traditional HEI)

Also apparent is the experience of preservative effects in the traditional HEIs that accordingly result in proceedings and negotiations beside the formal organisation. This is not in general an experience of mistrust towards the faculty but more an expression of being an actualiser that needs to take into account both the demands of contemporary students and a way of creating an education that empowers students’ identification of a vague profession.

Conclusion

The investigated cases reflect an economic propensity that sets the objectives of HEIs, where management ideals and students’ employability essentially define the space of professional deliberations. The relative autonomy of professional academics is eroded, and what stands out is how being an actualiser on Bourdieu’s (1991) terms incorporates a submissiveness to objectives of measurability and a commodifying dimension of “what the students need in the labour market”. The process of being a responsible professional, with a focus on the good of students, legitimises NPM strategies to some extent. Central in this respect are the efforts to create close cooperation with the surrounding community and influence education towards students becoming more employable. What becomes distinct is an endorsed institutional logic within the academic field, where it is increasingly difficult to define a professional habitus which is not oriented towards managerial priorities. The professional space of action is defined partly outside of the field in required output measures and the applicability of higher education and partly within the department’s local emphasis on student throughput and the logic of assessments. The “rituals of commodification” (Furedi, 2011, p. 2) are becoming a natural core of the negotiations between management and teachers. These relations have symbolic value for the feasibility of attracting students to their education and also how students can be motivated by becoming employable. In essence, being an actualiser appears to depend on a loyalty based on consumption ideals.

However, the core of professional negotiation is avoiding professional dissension. The use of local cooperation and the labour market is integrated into a professional story of what is essential and desirable in “reaching out” to students in the profession that goes beyond objectives of employability. The reasonable, on these terms, is a negotiation, and that can be labelled as a formation of habitus that incorporates strategies of being an actualiser that both enable and form professional relationships in accordance with NPM doctrines and with an ethos and authenticity derived from an academic habitus.

From a management perspective, their role involves a balancing act where, importantly, the manager’s habitus is inherent in the academic profession, but where being an actualiser means taking responsibility according to the competitive conditions of the university. Deliberations were made regarding the necessary requirements for market adaptations. However, the invitation of the collegial is crucial for legitimacy and justifies the academic leadership. This contrasts clearly with the interviews with HRM representatives, who underlined the lack of professional leadership. Collegial participation was seen as a direct obstacle to achieving the desired management. These interviews evinced an ambition to contribute to and support managers, although academic principles as well as the ambivalence of managers were seen to aggravate such development. The NPM-inspired HRM ideals do, however, pose a focal delimitation of what is possible and reasonable at the institutions and, accordingly, guide how both teachers and managers make social and cognitive sense of their everyday activities (Reay et al., 2001).

In sum, teachers’ professional identity and judgement are based on the core motive of taking care of students and giving them a proper education. This indicates a means of conforming by dealing with paradoxes without reducing the professional “academic self” (cf. Clegg, 2008). Yet, at the same time, this is a collective dilemma with the risk that professionals will be absorbed by the game and its demands on setting priorities (Raaper, 2016). However, the professional ethos is clearly central to university employees’ commitment and is a core aspect of an academic institution. For example, being “the outward face” and taking professional responsibility for giving students a holistic education are central for professional identity regardless of the level of managerialism.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful for all the participants who generously participated in the study, and the insightful comments from the anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This article is part of a post-doc project that has received funding from the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare under grant agreement number 2015-00911.

Notes

1 The teachers and managers were professionals in the subject areas of sociology, pedagogy, psychology, social work and labour law.

2 All participants were informed about the purpose of the research, the research methods, the forms of analysis and the publication aims. The interview transcripts were identity-coded. No real names or affiliations were exposed.