Change and continuity in the academic profession : Finnish universities as living labs

Change and continuity in the academic profession: Finnish universities as living labs Taru Siekkinen 1 &Elias Pekkola 2 &Teresa Carvalho 3 #The Author(s) 2019 Abstract The academic profession is challenged by the changing environment. Global trends, such as managerialism and new public management, have been influencing all public organizations, including universities. The academic profession is dynamic by its nature; it reflects any changes in its environment. However, the academic profession is also characterized by continuity. In this study, we describe the current changes and continuities of the academic profession in Finland, as perceived by top and middle managers employed in Finnish Universities. We found out that logics and values by organizational professionalism are emphasized; however, occupational professionalism is also deeply rooted in the practices of Finnish universities. Additionally, we found out that changes are often associated with managerial values, such as control and evaluation, and in contrast, the continuities of academic work are commonly related to professorial authority and academic identity. These two aspects of the profession and organization are not opposite, they occur simultaneously; however, there are tensions between them. In this article, we would like to emphasize that change of the academic profession is a hybrid, there exists both, changes and continuities in the logics and values related to the profession and the organization. Keywords Academic profession .Managerialism .New public management .Change . Universities Higher Education https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-019-00422-3 Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-01900422-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. *Taru Siekkinen [email protected] 1 Finnish Institute for Educational Research, University of Jyväskylä, PO Box 35, FI-40014 Jyväskylä, Finland 2 Faculty of Management and Business, Tampere University, FI-33014 Tampere University, Finland 3 Center for Research in Higher Education Policies (CIPES), University of Aveiro, Campus Universitário de Santiago, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal Introduction All professions are challenged by the changing environment (Carvalho 2014). The academic profession is of no exception; it is dynamic by nature and therefore reflects any changes in its environment (Musselin 2007). However, professional groups and professionalism are also characterized by continuity. To foster a deeper understanding of the academic profession and its dynamic nature, we need to explore how it is changing, adapting, and/or resisting (Evetts 2010;Pekkola2009). The work of academic professionals has become increasingly managed, evaluated, and measured using techniques derived from profit organizations, aiming to maximize their performance. Many authors worry about the deteriorating impact of these new structures and practices and the organizational values they impose, which can also threaten the identity of academics and decrease the quality of academic work (e.g., Kallio and Kallio 2014;MartinSardesai and Guthrie 2018; Ylijoki and Ursin 2015). However, changes are not always “bad”, and continuities are not always “good”; for instance, a growing number of university employees are asking for transparency, clear reward structures, and equity while opposing managerial and bureaucratic practices, but hail collegial practices that can be exclusive and oligarchic by nature (cf. Pekkola 2014). Academics working in universities are situated in an interface of professional and organizational values, practices, and logics. In this article, we study the perceptions of top and middle university managers on how organizational and occupational professionalism (Evetts 2009) coexist in Finnish universities. These aspects are approached by applying Evetts’(2009) framework of the changes and continuities in professional values. We emphasize that these logics are not entirely independent nor conflicting, but intertwined and parallel, thus creating a hybrid. However, to identify the different aspects of the hybridity, it is useful to examine the development of this dichotomy. The article is organized as follows. First, we will describe the global trends that have an influence on the work and working environment of academics, such as new public management (NPM) and managerialism. Second, we will address the general features of the changing profession, introducing the ideal types of organizational and occupational professionalism (Evetts 2009) as well as the hybrid model (e.g., Noordegraaf 2015), and also the changes and continuities in professional values (Evetts 2009). Third, we will discuss the changing academic profession and fourth, the Finnish context. Fifth, we will describe the qualitative data used in this study, and sixth, we will analyse our data using Evetts’(2009) theoretical framework on changes and continuities in professionalism. At the end, we will discuss the results and identify the changes and continuities, as well as the hybrid nature of academic profession. Global policy trends influencing the academic profession Direct and indirect economic pressures on higher education compel universities to build more entrepreneurial and corporate structures into their activities (Carvalho and Santiago 2010). Additionally, universities have adapted more “market-like”behavior (Slaughter and Leslie 1997). Two overlapping global trends in public policy and administration have had a significant influence on the academic profession: NPM and managerialism. Although these trends are interconnected, NPM emphasizes more efficient public organizations whereas managerialism describes an ideology of management (Deem and Brehony 2005). Higher Education NPM emerged from the UK in the 1980s, in response to the peoples’demands for a cheaper and more efficient public sector during times of economic recession (Evetts 2009; Ferlie et al. 2008). NPM has influenced the implementation of numerous reforms in European higher education, which aimed to increase productivity and efficiency. To accomplish these goals, institutes of higher education began implementing performance evaluations and monitoring their research and teaching activities. In addition, as institutional governance held a central position in this change, academic leaders were expected to take on a managerial role. The power of collegial bodies in universities therefore shrunk while the power of managers and other non-academic leaders expanded (Bleiklie et al. 2011; Deem 1998,2004). Marginson (2008, p. 270) described NPM techniques in universities, which can include the following: –Funding-based economic incentives, –User-driven production, –Product formats, –The pricing and sale of outputs, –Entrepreneurial production, –Output monitoring and measurements, –Competitive ranking of personnel and of institutions, –Performance management, –Performance pay, –Contracts with and incentives to partner with industry and commercialize research motivations and products, –Systems of accountability audit including contracts with government that implement external controls. All listed techniques can be seen as more or less formal ways of controlling and counting academic work and outputs. This has a direct or indirect impact on the coordination and values of academic work. Managerialism (or new managerialism [cf. Deem 2004; Deem and Brehony 2005]) is an ideology born from the earlier and narrower concept of “management”. Under this ideology, managers believe that they have advanced knowledge and the know-how to run an organization efficiently. Recently, managerialism has spread from applications in business to those in public institutions, as well as to society at large (Deem and Brehony 2005; Klikauer 2015). Managerialism emphasizes competition, the marketization of public sector services, and monitoring efficiency through performance evaluations and outcome measurements (Deem 1998). Its influence is greatest when “professionality is replaced by accountability; collegiality by competition and interpersonal performative comparison”(Ball 1997, p. 261). In today’s universities, management is seen as a central tool for answering the needs of the changing external environment (Kogan and Teichler 2007; Shah 2013, p. 28; Shah and Sid Nair 2014). This tool has taken up a significant role in universities, thus increasing the power of managers and especially deans (Deem and Brehony 2005). University managers constitute a group of their own, and the division between them and academics who do not hold a managerial role is rather large (Deem 2004; Pekkola et al. 2018). However, there also exists an opposite trend in which the roles of academics are increasingly hybridized as the activities of higher education change (Kogan and Teichler 2007;Musselin2007; Whitchurch 2008). Higher Education The changing concept of professionalism in academic work NPM and managerialism are important factors in the development of the academic profession. Evetts (2009) has been studying the influence of NPM on professional groups and professionalism. She argues that professionalism is changing and distinguished two (ideal, heuristic) types of professionalism (see Table 1): 1. Organizational professionalism is manifested by a discourse of control used by the organizations’managers. It involves rational-legal forms of authority, standardized work procedures and practices, and hierarchical structures of decision-making and authority, as well as accountability and performance review. These all are related to managerialism, which is supported and emphasized by these practices and principles. 2. Occupational professionalism is manifested by discourse constructed in professional groups, involving collegial authority. This authority is based on practitioner autonomy, assessment, and discretionary judgement. The relations between the practitioners and employers (as well as the clients) are based on trust. Control is operationalized by the practitioners themselves, which are guided by the codes of their professional ethics (Evetts 2009,p.251). These two concepts describe the ideal, heuristic types of organizational and occupational professionalism. While the newer concept of organizational professionalism is exposed to and integrated with the values and principles of NPM and managerialism, occupational professionalism is based on professional values and ethics (Evetts 2009). In practice, however, these concepts are blurred; they occur simultaneously and as a hybrid (Noordegraaf 2015). Tight (2014) has stated that in higher education, these two aspects are not dichotomous, and they both are important for the future of higher education. Hybridism has been studied especially in the area of the public administration and organizational research (see e.g., Johanson and Vakkuri 2018). There are also recent attempts to understand the hybridity in the context of professional work (Noordegraaf 2015)and management positions in professional work (Mcgivern et al. 2015; Hendrikx and van Gestel 2017). In higher education research, it has recently gained an increasing amount of attention (Brückmann and Carvalho 2018;Lepori2016). However, already Clark stated that in higher Table 1 Two ideal types of professionalism in knowledge-based work (adapted from Evetts 2009) Organizational professionalism Occupational professionalism Discourse of control used increasingly by managers in work organizations Discourse constructed within professional groups Rational-legal forms of authority Collegial authority Standardized procedures Discretion and occupational control of the work Hierarchical structures of authority and decision-making Practitioner trust by both clients and employers Managerialism Controls operationalized by practitioners Accountability and externalized forms of regulation, target setting, and performance review Professional ethics monitored by institutions and associations Linked to Weberian models of organization Located in Durkheim’s model of occupations as moral communities Higher Education education, hybrid principles exist (Clark 1983). Noordegraaf described how two aspects, managerial and professional, come together (2015, 6): “Professional work becomes a matter of combining professional and managerial principles, which do not so much create ‘controlled professionalism’but more ambivalent, balanced, and subtle forms of ‘managed professionalism’—professional action is positioned within managed and organized surroundings that both respect and restrain professional spaces.” In universities, hybridity has many implications. The roles of academics are increasingly mixed. Not only they become part of conducting the organizational control but also they become part of the control; the power of “manager-academics”in these new institutional frames has been increased (Deem 2004; see also Tight 2014). One example of implications of hybridism in universities can be found in the issues arising on the concrete level of activities; for example, the performance evaluations. In hybrid universities, the performance is redefined when it should meet not only the requirements of the scientific community but simultaneously other stakeholders as well, and questions such as “how is the performativity of universities produced?”arises (Johanson and Vakkuri 2018,135–138). However, in addition to aspects of change in the academic profession, there are continuities, which are those parts of professionalism that remain in the possession of the professional group itself and resist the change (Evetts 2009, 245). In Evetts’frameworkofchangesand continuities in professionalism (2009, 257) (see Table 2below), “Changes”include characteristics describing the nature of organizational professionalism influenced by NPM, such as control, evaluation, and competition. “Continuities”, in turn, include characteristics which describe the nature of traditional occupational professionalism, such as identity, knowledge, and collegial relations. Table 2 Changes and continuities in professionalism and in the academic profession (adapted and developed by the present authors based on Evetts 2009, p. 257). Analytical categories by current authors Changes Continuities Analytical categories of change in the academic profession Analytical categories of continuity in the academic profession Governance of multiple stakeholders Authority of professionals Policies on academic work and management Power and authority of academic professionalsManagement based on hierarchy Legitimacy based on esoteric knowledge Introduction of external forms of regulation Maintaining prestige, status, power, dominance Possible range of solutions/procedures defined by the organization Procedures and solutions discussed and agreed within specialist teams Financial control Respect, trust Control and evaluation Trust, competence, identity, and work culture Audit and measurement Competence, knowledge Targets and performance indicators Identity and work culture Organizational control of work priorities Gender differences in careers and strategies Work standardization Discretion to deal with complex cases Standardization and competition Diversity and collegial relations Competition, individualism Collegial relations and jurisdictional strategies Higher Education Table 2is developed by the authors by combining Evetts’categories (some of them are developed by authors as well) into three analytical categories, which more clearly describe the changes and continuities in the academic profession. As seen in Table 2, the three analytical categories of change in the academic profession are “policies on academic work and management”,“control and evaluation”,and“standardisation and competition”. From the aspect of continuity, these three analytical categories are “power and authority of academic professionals”,“trust, competence, identity, and working culture”, and “diversity and collegial relations”. The changing academic profession The academic profession differs from many other professions in that it carries and shapes the knowledge exploited by other professions (Höhle and Teichler 2013). This role of academics as knowledge producers who determine the knowledge needed to generate professional skills and practices has led to its classification as a “meta-profession”(Perking 1969; Carvalho 2017). The academic profession is heterogeneous, including different kind of subgroups (Teichler 2010;Carvalho2017), which can also be defined by the discipline (Becher 1989;Välimaa 1998), institutional type (emphasis on research and/or teaching), and career stage (juniors versus seniors). One key aspect that characterizes the work of academic professionals is the autonomy regarding their work. This autonomy, which is especially enjoyed by professors, makes the profession hard to steer from the outside (Carvalho & Diogo 2018; Evetts 2009). Academic identity is one unifying aspect of this group, which is structured in the social processes of strong and stable communities (Henkel 2005). Identity is not stable but constantly reshaping and a reflexive project (Giddens 1991). Academic identities are increasingly differentiated and being polarized in Finnish universities. Some academics feel that they have won and some that they have lost in a new, more competitive environment (Ylijoki and Ursin 2015). In the new institutional environment, academic work and roles are getting more blurred and diversified (Musselin 2007; Whitchurch 2008), and therefore, the identities and roles of academics are becoming more mixed as well. Academics’performance is increasingly evaluated by the organization (Kallio et al. 2015). One central area in which evaluations are implemented is recruitment and advancement. Traditionally, academic careers have been integrated into a hierarchical structure which maintains social closure (Weber 1978) while allowing for the recruitment of junior academics, thus ensuring the quality of their professional work (Goode 1957). However, currently, the academics and therefore recruitments are more bound to universities, when the staff are seen more as their strategic assets; human resources and recruitment are targeted more in to universities’strategic areas (Rasmussen 2015; Siekkinen et al. 2016a). The Finnish context Finnish universities follow the global trends when higher education has become more marketoriented in recent years. In Finland, a new salary system based on performance was introduced in 2005, and the funding formula for universities has changed many times since the late 1990s, placing greater emphasis on efficiency and amount of degrees and journal publications. Since the mid-2000s, the Finnish government has implemented many reforms, labelled as “the Higher Education Structural Development of the Finnish Higher Education System”with an aim to make the Finnish Higher Education system more reactive to global changes. Part of these reforms, in 2010, the new Universities Act came into effect, which made universities operate as employers. This meant that university employees began working with a working contract, instead of working in a public office, and universities began functioning as economic entities. These reforms made significant strides towards the adoption of a managerialistic culture in Finnish universities. After the reforms were implemented, Finnish universities began to enact their own human resource management (HRM) policies in a stronger and more visible manner (Kallio et al. 2015; Siekkinen et al. 2016a; Välimaa 2012; Ylijoki and Ursin 2015; Välimaa et al. 2014). In addition, as part of those reforms, many university mergers have been conducted in recent decades in Finland. The biggest and the most famous one was the merger of the Aalto University in 2010, and 3 years after that, the merger of the Tampere University. These mergers have changed the field of higher education in Finland, as well as had an influence on the identities on many levels: organizational, disciplinary, and individual (Ylijoki and Ursin 2015; Vellamo et al. forthcoming; Välimaa et al. 2014). The organizational structures in Finnish universities have been developed to be more standardized, e.g., in doctoral education (Kivistö et al. 2017) and academic careers, as well as recruitments (Pietilä 2015; Välimaa et al. 2016). The four-stage career model that is rather well implemented across universities follows the recommendations of the European model (e.g., The Ministry of Education and Culture [MEC] 2008;European Science Foundation 2009). In the four-stage career model, in the first career stage there are PhD students, in the second stage postdoctoral researchers, in the third stage the university teachers and lecturers, and finally in the fourth stage the professors and research directors. In concrete, this career structure is more a description of different career stages rather than a promise for a career progression in the individual level. Tenure tracks comprise of, depending on the university, three to five stages through which an individual proceeds via evaluation (stages are commonly: assistant/associate/full professor) (Pietilä 2015; Siekkinen et al. 2016a). Both of these career models have faced criticism, according to which the evaluations concentrate too much on research outputs and understate the teaching experience (Välimaa et al. 2016,seealsoNaidoo2016 the negative influences on the competition). Before the new career structures were introduced in Finnish universities, academic careers were more obscure, including many different job titles, and often only presented random opportunities for a career progression. Regardless of the formal introduction of departmental model in Finnish higher education, which took place already in 1960s, the chair system has been influential until today. The recruitments have been based on open vacancies and the strong influence of professional evaluation and professors (Kivistö et al. 2019). In Finnish academia, the level of internationalization has been rather low compared with many other countries. International students are regarded in national policies as potentially highly skilled labor and as a means to be globally competitive. However, international students often face challenges in a Finnish society, where the Finnish language skills are important (Välimaa and Weimer 2014).Thesamekindofchallenges are experienced by the international staff in Finnish universities. To compare, in 2015, 27% of all doctoral students in Finland were international, whereas with the professors the percentage was only 8 (Vipunen 2018). Higher Education Data and analysis This article includes an empirical analysis of semi-structured interviews, which were conducted in a research project, titled “The evaluation of the four-stage career model in Finnish universities”(Välimaa et al. 2016). During the project, academics and managers working in four Finnish, middle-sized, and multidisciplinary universities were interviewed in groups whose members were selected by their expertise regarding the new academic career structures. In each university, there were four interviews conducted. In this article, we will examine the responses of top and middle management, including rectors, vice rectors and provosts (n=3); deans (n= 7); chief administrators (n= 2); personnel managers (n= 5); and heads of administration (i.e., faculty managers) (n= 5). The interviews included questions regarding the implementation and objectives of the four-stage career model and the tenure-track models in Finnish universities (Välimaa et al. 2016). The interviews were conducted in Finnish and they were transcribed afterwards. The data analysis was performed by using two methods: thinking the interview data with a theory (Jackson and Mazzei 2013) and direct content analysis (Hsieh and Shannon 2005). In both, the researcher is familiar with a prior research and theory regarding the subject and the data is analysed by discussing with them. The data analysis started with reading carefully all the interviews, then selecting passages in which the interviewees described academic work or careers in universities, especially regarding change and continuity; professional and organizational activities. Subsequently, these passages were categorized with a help of code words and compared with analytical categories (see Table 2). The condensed results of this analysis are provided in Table 3 (see the Supplementary Material). From Evetts’typology, we formed six analytical categories to describe the changes and continuities in the academic profession of Finland, as shown below: a) Changes: policies on academic work and management; control and evaluation; standardization and competition. b) Continuities: power and authority of academic professionals; trust, competence, identity, and work culture; diversity and collegial relations. Next, we will describe how both the changes and continuities of the academic profession, as well as its analytical categories, manifested in the interviews. Changes Policies on academic work and management In Finnish universities, middle management and especially deans are perceived to have more power, as they make many of the decisions related to recruitments and finance. According to top management representative: In the old system, the faculty council dealt with management, whereas now such tasks related to faculty work are under the control of the dean. If the dean is active and aware of the situation, the dean can do a lot. (Academic top management) According to interviews, depending on the competences of the dean, the new managerial ethos offers much more power in controlling faculty affairs, especially concerning finance. In Higher Education addition, academic leadership is now seen as a comparable career choice to a purely academic career or working in administration, as one dean said: …And I think that, little by little, in Finland we are also going in the direction of considering the duties of the rector, dean and maybe even faculty heads as careers of their own. (Dean) In some universities, deans can also be professional managers coming from the private sector, rather than academics who have their professional roots in the university and are familiar with academic values and practices. These changes can influence the management culture in universities. According to interviews, due to the increased emphasis of efficiency in academic work, structured practices, and new career models in universities, there needs to be a greater emphasis on HRM, as suggested by one middle manager: The implementation of a four-stage career model requires strict management, maybe first in the faculties but also in each unit. (middle management - administrator) University managers are responsible for the processes inside universities, such as HRM and finance, as well as some external processes, such as branding. These tasks have been emphasized since universities face requirements to be more efficient and competitive. However, some strategic decisions made by top managers are not fully compatible with the operations of faculties in which teaching and research take place, as noted by one dean: So [strategic decisions] should be conducted according to the Universities Act, which says that the university has three missions: research, teaching and societal impact; these missions should be in [the tenure-track] criteria. Nothing else can be considered sustainable, but now we have to take them “from the kitchen door”. The reason why I have been emphasising research is related to the most important strategic goal of the university and the number-one priority of the rector: to strengthen our [status] as a research university. (Dean) Funding drives universities to emphasize research (funding formula for Finnish universities: MEC 2018). As a consequence, the priorities of top management can be seen as problematic at the faculty level, regarding the ability to secure sufficient resources for teaching, as one interviewee stated. Control and evaluation Universities emphasize strong HRM while striving for greater output, as can be seen in their adoption of new career models, which reward good performance, especially in research. This phenomenon was also evident in the interviews: We see [the early phase of a tenure-track career] as a qualification. We have a strong commitment to [the person whom]…we have chosen [for this] career path. And [this person’s] qualification is up to her/his own personal performance. (Academic top management) From the beginning of next year, we will shift this kind of personal salary negotiation [system] where…deans and a rector go through all the professors and…agree [to the terms] “face to face”. (Dean) Higher Education organizational values and practices include the centralization of power towards deans and rectors and the development of standardized structures and processes, professionalized HRM services and new roles (and careers) related to management, while its continuities include the power of professors and the university’s role as an organizational frame for academics (Fig. 1). In spite of their hybrid nature, tensions occur when academics are pursuing to integrate these both aspects in their work to be able to perform in a changing environment with varying expectations. To be able to achieve the competitive edge in a global competition, universities have to have both; good management and excellent scientific quality (see Tight 2014). When universities are becoming hybrids, meaning that they are operating in a different environments with diversified functions (Johanson and Vakkuri 2018), academic profession is reflecting this change (Musselin 2007), and become as hybrid as well by creating new, blurred roles and identities. To determine how these two logics could co-exist in universities, as well as how universities could provide more “meaningfully managed professional work”(Noordegraaf 2015), the preconditions and implications of hybrid academic professionalism and hybrid academic work should be studied more. Funding Information Open access funding provided by University of Jyväskylä (JYU). This work was financially supported by the following projects: project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-029427funded by FEDER, through COMPETE2020 - Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalização (POCI), and by national funds (OE), through FCT/MCTES. 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