Redefinition of the relationships between academics and their university
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Redefinition of the relationships between academics and their university Christine Musselin
Published online: 18 October 2012 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2012
Abstract This paper primarily deals with the relationships between academics and their university in European countries. The aim of this paper is therefore not to produce new results but provide a synthesis of the main trends that can be identified from the literature and then suggest what can be borrowed from sociological theories to highlight the ongoing evolutions. The first section of the paper reviews the main results to be drawn from previous research on this issue and focuses on the management of academic careers and the management of academic activities at the university level. The second section suggests alternative interpretative frameworks to be borrowed from sociological theory in order to complete the already existing research and develop new perspectives to explain and interpret these changes in the relationships between academics and their institutions. Four perspectives are successively explored particularly useful here: a sociology of work; a labor market perspective; an analysis in terms of careers and trajectories and finally considerations about the traditional tension between organizations and professions. Keywords Academic profession Organizations Professions Sociology of work Work relationships Academic careers Academic work
In his book on the third professionalism, Eliot Freidson (2001) clearly opposed three ideal– typical ways of performing activities: the market, the bureaucracy and the profession. As all ideal-types none of them exists in a pure form. On the one hand, academics share the five defining elements constitutive of a profession according to Freidson (2001: 180): a body of knowledge and skill […] based on abstract concepts and theories […]; an occupationally controlled division of labor; […] an occupationally controlled labor market […]; an occupationally controlled training program […]; an ideology serving some transcendent value and asserting devotion to doing good work than to economic reward. But on the other hand, there are not completely immune from forms of control linked either to rational-legal bureaucracy and free market. C. Musselin (&) Centre de Sociologie des Organisations, Sciences Po and CNRS, 19 rue Ame´lie, 75007 Paris, France e-mail: [email protected]
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High Educ (2013) 65:25–37
Academics for instance always developed their activities in organizational structures, called universities. This mix between professional power and autonomy on the one hand and bureaucratic features on the other, led Henry Mintzberg (1979) to describe universities (but also hospitals or courts) as professional bureaucracies. The strengthened institutional autonomy provided to universities by recent reforms as well as the introduction of various managerial practices in these institutions led many authors to conclude to the victory, or at least the domination of managers over professionals
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