Becoming academics: embracing and resisting changing writing practice
Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management
ISSN: 1746-5648
Article publication date: 18 September 2019
Issue publication date: 4 August 2020
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyze how global and local changes in higher education impact upon writing practices through which doctoral students become academics. The study explores how norms and values of academic writing practice are learned, negotiated and resisted and elucidates how competences related to writing come to determine the academic selves.
Design/methodology/approach
The study uses memory work, which is a group method that puts attention to written individual memories and their collective analysis and theorizing. The authors offer a comparison of experiences in becoming academics by two generational cohorts (1990s and 2010s) in the same management studies department in a business school.
Findings
The study indicates that the contextual and temporal enactment of academic writing practice in the department created a situation where implicit and ambiguous criteria for writing competence gradually changed into explicit and narrow ones. The change was relatively slow for two reasons. First, new performance management indicators were introduced over a period of two decades. Second, when the new indicators were gradually introduced, they were locally resisted. The study highlights how the focus, forms and main actors of resistance changed over time.
Originality/value
The paper offers a detailed account of how exogenous changes in higher education impact upon, over time and cultural space, academic writing practices through which doctoral students become academics.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge no financial interest or benefit that has arisen from the direct applications of the research. This paper has received no financial support.
Citation
Katila, S., Laamanen, M., Laihonen, M., Lund, R., Meriläinen, S., Rinkinen, J. and Tienari, J. (2020), "Becoming academics: embracing and resisting changing writing practice", Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management, Vol. 15 No. 3, pp. 315-330. https://doi.org/10.1108/QROM-12-2018-1713
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited