‘Inspired and assisted’, or ‘berated and destroyed’? Research leadership, management and performativity in troubled times

Abstract

Research leadership in Australian universities takes place against a backdrop of policy reforms concerned with measurement and comparison of institutional research performance. In particular, the Excellence in Research in Australian initiative undertaken by the Australian Research Council sets out to evaluate research quality in Australian universities, using a combination of expert review process, and assessment of performance against ‘quality indicators’. Benchmarking exercises of this sort continue to shape institutional policy and practice, with inevitable effects on the ways in which research leadership, mentoring and practice are played out within university faculties and departments. In an exploratory study that interviewed 32 Australian academics in universities in four Australian states, we asked participants, occupying formal or informal research leadership roles, to comment on their perceptions of research leadership as envisioned and enacted in their particular workplaces. We found a pervasive concern amongst participants that coalesced around binaries characterized in metaphoric terms of ‘carrots and whips’. Research leadership was seen by many as managerial in nature, and as such, largely tethered to instrumentalist notions of productivity and performativity, while research cultures were seen as languishing under the demoralizing weight of reward and punishment systems. Here, we consider what is at stake for the future of the academic workforce under such conditions, arguing that new models of visionary research leadership are urgently needed in the ‘troubled times’ of techno-bureaucratic university reforms.

Keywords:

• higher education
• neoliberalism
• leadership
• management
• research performance
• research culture

Notes

Notes

1. Interview excerpts discussed in this study are drawn from a study conducted in 2009–2010, in which we interviewed 32 academics from 16 universities in the Australian states of New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia. The study, Examining Mentoring and Research Leadership in Tertiary Professional Practice Fields, was funded by the Gippsland Small Grant Research Support Scheme, Monash University. The research team also acknowledges with thanks the generous contribution of those who agreed to participate in interviews.

2. A number of female participants in the study mentioned their involvement in mentoring and leadership programmes that specifically targeted women. These programmes differed from the more formal programmes offered through their universities by focusing on collegial support rather than outcomes. In one interview, Lena describes a mentoring scheme she implemented as ‘non-elitist’ and ‘collaborative’ which for her, constituted a ‘feminist model’ of research leadership [Lena, Head of Department, Business/Management]. These understandings of leadership support the conclusions of a recent study which found that ‘leader identities develop in an increasingly gendered way the longer the leader positions are held’ (Haake 2009, 301).