Universities: Space, Governance and Transformation

Abstract

This paper takes up the themes in the articles and examines not only the environmental changes that are taking place in relation to universities, but also the dynamics of their organizational implications. It argues that there are parallels between managerially and academic professionalism in that both deny context. Arguing for a context‐sensitivity that is not dependant, issues of space and governance become important in order to understand forms of knowledge and the relationship between the contexts of production and the contents of what is produced. Universities have different capacities to play at the game of scales and they are judged according to abstract indicators that provide little or no opportunity for learning. Instead of examining these relations, expertise is assumed to be spatial, whilst universities transform themselves in the slipstream of imagined futures as if they were separate from the present and past. Understanding is lost in the process and so too are the opportunities to adequately examine the differences in types of knowledge’s that are produced for sustainable futures in contemporary societies.

Keywords:

• Space
• Governance
• Transformation
• Organisation
• Professionalism

Acknowledgement

Thanks to Beth Perry for her insightful comments on a draft of this article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tim May

Tim May is Professor and Director of the Centre for Sustainable Urban and Regional Futures (SURF) at the University of Salford, Manchester, UK. Tim is the author of works on social theory, research methodology and methods, philosophy of social science, and organisational change. He is currently undertaking research on regional knowledge transfer, science, and regional policy. He also works for universities, advising them on intellectual, organisational, and strategic developments, and is a member of the Transatlantic Forum on the Future of Universities.