Dear Colleagues 

Apologies for any cross posting.


Call for abstracts and papers
 
8th International Conference in Critical Management Studies, ‘Extending the limits of neo-liberal capitalism’, University of Manchester, July 10-12, 2013
https://www.meeting.co.uk/confercare/cms2013/introduction.html

Stream 29: ‘Biting the hand that feeds’: Reflections on Power, Politics, Identity and Managerialism at Work in Academia
Deadline for Abstracts 31st January 2013 (see below for details)

Convenors

Elisabeth Berg [log in to unmask]
Caroline Clarke  [log in to unmask] 
David Knights [log in to unmask] 
Marieke van den Brink [log in to unmask]


The aim of this stream is to advance contemporary thinking about the consequences of new public management in academia by bringing together international scholars with an interest in critical perspectives on power, politics, inequality and identity in academic settings.
Historically it was thought that academic work was off limits in relation to developments in contemporary neo-liberal capitalism. However, this assumption has been wholly contradicted by developments in new public management (NPM) or ‘managerialism’ wherein private sector practices of accountability, audit, control and surveillance have proliferated in the public sector (Willmott, 1995; Thomas & Davies, 2002; Harley, 2003; Adler & Harzing, 2009), including academe. Academic institutions routinely incorporate audits, performance measurement, league tables and targets, and high levels of monitoring and surveillance.  A number of conferences and seminars have recently discussed and explored NPM in relation to universities and in particular, business schools.  In 2012 two conferences - Doing and Undoing Academic Labour, University of Lincoln 7th June 2012 and What's wrong with the University? Cork University, 5-6 June 2012 - focused directly on the problems of NPM in universities building on a tradition of critical work extending back almost 20 years (Parker and Jary, 1995; Prichard & Willmott, 1997; Slaughter and Leslie, 1997; Worthington & Hodgson, 2005; Ford et al., 2010; Acker, 2012; Acker et al, 2012). During that time academics have become increasingly subjected to managerial control and work intensification in administration, research and teaching and these pressures have served also to distract attention from a broader range of social inequalities around age, class, ethnicity, gender, impairment, and sexuality (Knights and Richards, 2003; Barry et al., 2006; Harding et al., 2008; Acker et al., 2012; Hirshfield and Joseph, 2012; Van den Brink & Benschop, 2012)  
Studies of academic work from this perspective have called upon a variety of methods, including analyses of secondary data, interviews with staff to identify their increasingly intensified conditions of work, ethnographic observations and auto-ethnographic reflections on personal experience (Humphreys, 2005; Sparkes, 2007; Learmonth and Humphreys, 2011; Clarke et al., 2012). Results of these studies reflect both the rise of managerialism and aspects of identity politics and the politics of organization. Overall, research is conducted against the context of the changes that academics have experienced since the emergence and development of the neo-liberal economic and political consensus that extends back to Reagan and Thatcher in the US and the UK respectively and has become a global phenomenon.  

This track invites theoretically and/or empirically informed papers from different disciplines that reflect on issues of Power, Politics, Identity and Managerialism in Academia. Relevant though not exhaustive topics that may facilitate potential contributions include:
•	Autoethnographic narratives of academic work
•	The politics of career or career politics in universities
•	Power and identity at work in academe
•	The stratification of the academic profession: job insecurity and the impact on collegiality
•	Work intensification in the university
•	Gender, ‘race’ and/or other diversity discriminations in academia
•	Publish or perish in higher education
•	The discourse of ‘excellence’
•	Managing the pressures of New Public Management in the academic workplace
•	Working with chaotic management
•	The growing academic administration and its consequences
•	Balancing teaching and research
•	The commodification of education 
•	Consumerist ideologies and the student fees debate

Abstracts should be a maximum 500/1000 words, A4 paper, single spaced, 12 point font. Deadline 31st January 2013
 
Notification of paper acceptance: 22nd February 2013.
 
Full papers will be expected by 1st May 2013.
 
Your abstract should include:
 
            -Title
            -The focus, aims and objectives of the paper
            -The research evidence base underpinning the paper
            -How the paper will contribute to the theme

CMS Conference Website
 https://www.meeting.co.uk/confercare/cms2013/proposals.html  

Convenor Profiles

Elisabeth Berg [log in to unmask]
Professor in Sociology at Luleå University of technology, Sweden and Visiting professor at University of East London, England, for profile see http://www.ltu.se/staff/e/elbe-1.10523?l=en
Caroline Clarke  [log in to unmask]
Senior Lecturer in Management, Open University Business School.  For profile see http://www8.open.ac.uk/business-school/people/dr-caroline-clarke
David Knights [log in to unmask] 
Professor, Bristol Business School and Swansea University’s College of Business, Economics and Law. Visiting Professor, Stockholm University and Lancaster University. For profile see uk.linkedin.com/pub/david-knights/13/163/a7a   

Marieke van den Brink [log in to unmask]
Assistant Professor Strategic Human Resource Management, Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands. Affiliated with GEXcel research centre at Orebro University Sweden. For profile see:  http://www.ru.nl/bedrijfskunde/@679804/pagina/


References

Acker, S. (2012) Chairing and caring: gendered dimensions of leadership in academe, Gender and Education, 24(4), 411-428

Acker, S., M. Webber and E. Smyth (2012) Tenure troubles and equity matters in Canadian academe, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 33(5), 743-761

Adler, N and Harzing, A.W. (2009) When Knowledge Wins: Transcending the sense and nonsense of academic rankings, The Academy of Management Learning & Education, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 72-95.

Barry, J., Berg, E., & Chandler, J. (2006). Academic shape shifting: Gender, management, and identities in Sweden and England. Organization, 13(2), 275—298.

Clarke, C., D. Knights and C. Jarvis, ‘A Labour of Love? Academics in Business Schools’, Scandinavian Journal of Management, 28/1, March 2012, pp.5-15.

Ford, J., N. Harding, and M Learmonth, (2010) ‘Who is it that would Make Business Schools More Critical? British Journal of Management, 21:S71-S81. 

Harding, N., Ford, J., & Gough, B. (2010). Accounting for ourselves: Are academics exploited workers? Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 21, 159—168.

Harley, S. (2003). Research selectivity and female academics in UK universities: From gentleman’s club and barrack yard to smart macho? Gender and Education, 15(4), 377—439.

Hirshfield, L., & Joseph, T. (2012). ‘We need a woman, we need a black woman’: Gender, race and identity taxation in the academy. Gender and Education, 24(2), 213-227.

Humphreys, M (2005). Getting Personal: Reflexivity and Autoethnographic Vignettes. Qualitative Inquiry, 11, 840-860.

Knights, D. and Richards, W, ‘Sex Discrimination in UK Academia’, Gender, Work and Organization, 10/2, 2003, pp. 213-38.

Learmonth, M and M Humphreys (2011) Autoethnography and Academic Identity: Glimpsing Business School Doppelgangers. Organization, 19/1 pp. 97-117.

Parker, M., & Jary, D. (1995). The McUniversity: Organization, management and academic subjectivity. Organization, 2(2), 319— 338.

Prichard, C., & Willmott, H. (1997). Just how managed is the McUniversity? Organization Studies, 18(2), 287—316.

Slaughter, S., & Leslie, L. (1987). Academic capitalism: Politics, policies, and the entrepreneurial university.  Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press.

Sparkes, A. (2007). Embodiment, academics, and the audit culture: A story seeking consideration. Qualitative Research, 7, 521-550.

Thomas, R., & Davies, A. (2002) Gender and new public manage- ment: reconstituting academic subjectivities. Gender, Work and Organization, 9(4), 372—396.

Van den Brink, M. and Benschop, Y. (2012). Gender practices in the construction of academic excellence: Sheep with five legs, Organization, 19(4), 507-524.

Willmott, H. (1995). Managing the academics: Commodification and control of university education in the UK. Human Relations, 48(9), 993—1028.

Worthington, F., & Hodgson, J. (2005). Academic labour and the politics of quality in higher education: A critical evaluation of the conditions of possibility of resistance. Critical Quarterly, 47(1-2), 96-110.




Best wishes

David

Professor David Knights
Bristol Business School, UWE
Bristol BS16 1QY,  UK
Tel.  Home:  01743 341742 Mobile 07891 647837 Office tel. +44 (0)117 32 83471
Email [log in to unmask]

Professor 
Swansea University’s College of Business, Economics and Law,
Swansea, SA2 8PP.

Visiting Professor 
Stockholm University School of Business, Sweden, and Lancaster University Management School.

For profile see: uk.linkedin.com/pub/david-knights/13/163/a7a 

For list of publications see:

http://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?hl=en&user=zjNMBRMAAAAJ&view_op=list_works