Managerialism in UK business schools: capturing the interactions between academic job characteristics, behaviour and the ‘metrics’ culture

ABSTRACT

Recent decades have seen the evolution of UK business schools into international mass education providers. This transformation has developed against a background of institutional changes that jeopardise work conditions in academia. As few studies have examined the relationships between organisational, social and psychological aspects of academic work life, this paper employs the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model to explore empirically the interplay between business school workplace conditions, burnout and retention rates, based on a national sample. We show that higher demands and lower resources are significant in increasing burnout and turnover, whereas the ‘metrics’ culture has done much to increase workloads and reduce academic freedom and workplace support. These negative impacts can be offset by creating a collegiate and engaged work environment that promotes greater skills utilisation, autonomy and recognition. Such findings are reported for the first time in the literature with important implications for higher education and the academic community.

KEYWORDS:

• British higher education
• business schools
• managerialism
• job demands-resources model
• burnout

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 Invitations to participate in the survey were sent to academic staff members at the following higher education institutions: University of Birmingham, University of Bristol, University of Cambridge, Cardiff University, Durham University, University of Edinburgh, University of Exeter, University of Glasgow, Imperial College London, King’s College London, University of Leeds, University of Liverpool, London School of Economics and Political Science, University of Manchester, Newcastle University, University of Nottingham, University of Oxford, Queen Mary University of London, Queen’s University Belfast, University of Sheffield, University of Southampton, University College London, University of Warwick, University of York.

2 The Russell Group is an association of 24 research-intensive universities in the UK. Despite representing just 15% of the country’s HEI, they receive an impressively high proportion (more than 70% in 2017) of international and national research grants (source: https://russellgroup.ac.uk/media/5524/rg_text_june2017_updated.pdf accessed 20 February 2019).

3 For academic staff in the UK (2017), the HESA report ages as: < 25 (3%), 26–35 (26%), 36–45 (27%), 46–55 (25%), 56–65 (15%), >66 (4%). Males accounted for 59% of full-time academic staff.

4 A value of zero was recorded where respondents ranked qualitative outcomes as being the most important and second most important outcomes. A value of one was recorded where they ranked quantitative performance measures as either most important and/or second most important.