Diminishing hope and utopian thinking: faculty leadership under neoliberal regime

ABSTRACT

This paper aims to contribute to the literature on dean’s leadership and explores the impact of corporate managerial practices and neoliberal ideology on the mindset and actions of 15 deans and heads of school in eight universities in Australia. We offer perspectives of leaders as emotional individuals who on a daily basis attempt to live up to and manage the contractions of their belief and role expectations. These leaders share their everyday experiences, struggles and vulnerabilities in restructuring their organisational unit to address the strategic goals of the university. We draw upon research on the emotional labour of leadership in higher education, the ethics of disrupting culture, and critical hope to provide insight into how these leaders move their faculty or school toward an imagined future and the impact on this work on their wellbeing.

KEYWORDS:

• Higher education
• emotional labour
• critical hope
• neoliberalism
• leadership
• change

Disclosure statement

One of the authors of this paper has a personal relationship with one of the journal editors. The editor withdrew from the peer review and editorial process of this paper as a result.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lynn Bosetti

Lynn Bosetti is Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of British Columbia. Her research and teaching has focused on faith, identity and the common school, planning alternative futures for education, issues related to school choice, charter schools. More recently, university leadership in the new economy. She has held SSHRC grants for projects related to Leadership in the New Economy and School Choice.

Troy Heffernan

Dr Troy Heffernan is a Lecturer in Leadership at La Trobe University. His current work explores vicechancellors' approaches to management; the emotional labour involved in higher education leadership; the consequences of precarious employment; the implication of personal networks in academic promotion and hiring relating to gender, race, and minority groups; and understanding the repercussions of higher education's shift to business models and marketing practices.