Losing autonomy? Restructuring higher education institutions governance and relations between teaching and non-teaching staff

ABSTRACT

Higher education institutions in Portugal, as in many developed countries, have undergone deep transformations affecting their organisational structures and professionals. These reforms framed by new public management are said to induce changes in the traditional jurisdictional field of the academic profession with the administrative power being transferred to non-teaching staff. The aim of this paper is to contribute to this discussion by analysing the extent to which the academics jurisdictional field has changed and power relations were redefined. Resorting to empirical data obtained through an extensive online survey we analyse professionals’ perceptions on changes in institutional governance and on their professional autonomy and the way this may translate a reconfiguration of power between these professional groups. The empirical findings suggest that professionals perceive changes as affecting negatively their participation in institutions’ decision-making processes but this is not automatically translated in a perceived loss of professional autonomy.

KEYWORDS:

• Autonomy
• academic staff
• professionalism
• staff
• university governance

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Teresa Carvalho http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3368-3990

Pedro Videira http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8595-9418

Notes

1 The Rector is an academic in a uninominal body; the Management Council is composed by the rector, one vice-rector (also an academic), the administrator and one representative from students and the General Council is constituted by external members (30% at least), academics (more that 50% of the total members) and students (at least 15%). HEIs can also decide to include representatives from non-teaching staff.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) in Portugal (EXCL/IVC-PEC/0789/2012 and UID/CED/00757/2013).