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Conceptualizations of university governance have varied over time, with some scholars focused on the structure of stakeholder groups such as faculty, staff, and students in relation to how institutions make decisions, others focus on the competing spheres of political influence guiding institutional development, and most recently that higher education has adopted business management structures or academic capitalism. Each of these conceptualizations offered new insights into how universities make decisions and evolve. The interactions between the non-profit aspects of higher education institutions and their effects on the internal governance structures have been underdeveloped. In this chapter, the authors propose an urban governance approach to understanding how actors and their institutions make decisions.

In this chapter, the authors dissect these models and propose a shift in perspective described as academic municipalities. Prior models on university decision-making and its impact on institutional constituents all make certain sacrifices when attempting to conceptualize the complex organizational functions of the university. Birnbaum and Tierney in their arguments do not provide enough value to the structure imposed on higher education institutions by virtue of their non-profit status. The corporate concept does not account for the political ramifications to university functions that reach beyond corporate models. Academic capitalism explains the shift of the university to account for changes in the global marketplace but it does not explain the latent functions of the university, such as contributing to the public good, housing, libraries, public services, and other non-market-based activities. What is needed is an explanation that accounts for both market and political forces at play in the university.

This study has a twofold goal. First, we examined perceptions of organizational politics as viewed by the academic staff in a public university. Second, we tested the potential mediating effect of perceptions of politics on the relationship between social capital and work outcomes. We surveyed 142 junior and senior faculty members of a large public Israeli university and tested several competing models. Major results, based on Structural Equations Model (SEM) analysis, indicate that the mediating model has several advantages over the direct effect model. In addition, a revised, mixed model provided additional advantages. The models are compared and discussed. Finally, implications of the findings and recommendations for future studies on internal politics and social capital in academia and beyond are suggested.

Handler's genealogy of postmodernism recounted in his address recognizes its origin in aesthetic disciplines and its somewhat viral transcription into social jurisprudence: “the postmodern concept of subversion developed first in language and literary theory, art, and architecture and then spread into politics and law” (1992a, p. 698). Although Handler's rejection of deconstruction stems from what he sees to be its political quiescence, its association with aesthetic critiques of modernism haunts his claims as one source of its essential conservatism. Aesthetic values, he implies, remain distant or distinct from pressing issues of political and social inequality.

This article presents our experiences of conducting research interviews with Australian academics, in order to reflect on the politics of researcher and participant positionality. In particular, we are interested in the ways that academic networks, hierarchies and cultures, together with mobility in the higher education sector, contribute to a complex discursive terrain in which researchers and participants alike must maintain vigilance about where they ‘put their feet’ in research interviews. We consider the implications for higher education research, arguing that the positionality of researchers and participants pervades and exceeds these specialised research situations.

Research has already uncovered a great deal of evidence about the individual and organizational qualities that enhance effective teaching and the kinds of qualifications (attributes) that are associated with effective teaching and learning. From a research perspective, increased precision and specificity in the definition and refinement of specific concepts (e.g., pedagogical content knowledge) will increase academic knowledge about the relationship between teacher characteristics, working conditions, and the quality of instruction that takes place. This knowledge may have little effect on policy formation. From a policy perspective, a holistic or organic conception of teacher quality will be critical for effective policy formation and implementation. At some point, academic knowledge about different aspects of effective or “quality” teaching need to be connected to a general concept of a quality teacher in order to be effectively inserted into policy debates and the general media. Systematic use of academic knowledge is often hindered by either the narrow focus of the research, or by its limited application to actual teacher practice. In spite of these limitations in academic research, there are areas where academics, policymakers, and practitioners have achieved consensus or are converging on shared constructs of promise. In other areas, both academic and political debates seem locked into conflict over constructs related to teacher quality. Identifying these three broad categories of consensus, convergence, and conflict provides a broad framework to assess the kinds of research and the kinds of reform that need to be carried out in order to promote and sustain teachers’ development and implementation of their professional skills in the classroom.

Urban high schools in the USA are in a difficult position – they need to provide essential and fundamental education in core content areas, while also ensuring that students attain and meet requirements of computer and information literacy. These skills are not just required by the state education agencies, but increasingly by employers and institutions of higher education. This article is a case study of a special year‐long bibliographic instruction (BI) program developed by three separate organizations: an academic library, a university department of education, and selected high school teachers. This unique three‐way partnership was called the Electronic Learning Partnership. This article discusses the BI, the pedagogy used, the goals of information literacy in an urban high school environment, and the evaluation of the program.

This study of a university merger seeks to shed new light on reputation‐building, which has remained unexplored in the mergers and acquisitions (M&As) literature. It aims to study how key actors seek to build the reputation of the new university and how issues related to reputation become (re)constructed in different forums and vis‐à‐vis different stakeholders.

The paper offers a longitudinal critical discourse analysis of a merger of three universities in Finland. The qualitative empirical material comprises university communications materials and media texts.

The study illustrates dynamics of reputation‐building in a university merger. It shows how the need to become an innovative “world‐class” university acts as an imaginary incentive, and predictions of an inevitable future are used to legitimize radical actions. The study also highlights the contradictions and controversies involved.

The study complements extant M&As literature by offering a unique focus on reputation‐building. More broadly, it offers an empirically‐based critical analysis of university reform in the global economy. It suggests that the ways in which reputation‐building activities impact on the (dis‐)identification of academic staff in higher education reforms needs to be studied further.

This study addresses a central research question: Is individuals’ propensity to hide knowledge a “political phenomenon” among researchers in the Indian higher education institutions? Drawing upon social exchange and uncertainty management theories, the authors examine how a three-way interaction effect of perceptions of organizational politics, political will and political skill contributes to knowledge hiding. In addition, this study aims to develop a nuanced understanding of the knowledge hiding phenomenon in the Indian higher education context.

This study adopts a mixed-method study design with an explanatory sequential approach. The authors gathered data through a cross-sectional survey of 286 researchers (Study 1) followed by two focus group discussions (Study 2) involving 13 academic researchers from five Indian universities. The sample includes full-time faculty members, postgraduate and full-time doctoral students engaged in research.

The results of Study 1 indicate that researchers’ perceptions of organizational politics positively relate to their knowledge hiding. The findings of this study also suggest that the positive relationship between perceptions of organizational politics and knowledge hiding turns negative for individuals with high political will and high political skill. The focus group discussions (Study 2) explore significant predictors of knowledge hiding. This study unveils various characteristics of knowledge, knowledge hider, knowledge seeker and interpersonal dynamics as the key drivers of knowledge hiding in Indian academia.

The significant contributions of this study are to provide new insights into the relationship between organizational politics and knowledge hiding and to unravel the various factors that incite knowledge hiding among researchers in the Indian higher education context. This study is one among the few in the knowledge hiding literature to adopt a mixed-method research design with an explanatory sequential approach.

The purpose of this paper, which is drawn on Indonesian academic women’s experiences, is to examine the extent to which the aesthetics of existence or true life of women academics in relation to the truth telling, played out within the interaction between philosophy and politics, is affected by the application of NPM in research and publication productivities, and the way in which women academics are voicing their opinions toward this issue.

In total, 30 women academics across two geographical region (east and west) universities took part in this research, sharing their perceptions and the way they criticize this policy to the audiences (Indonesian government), framed within the concept of parrhesia (truth telling), parrhesiastes (truth teller) of Foucault and the pariah of Arendt.

Using semi-structured interviews, this research finds that women academics in Indonesian universities have shown discursive voices and stances to the extent to which they agree and oppose this policy, showing the patterns similar to those of parhesiastes and pariah. The implication of this study is addressed in this paper.

This research, via the lenses of Parrhesia and Pariah, finds several kinds of philosopher roles of women academics in Indonesian universities, such as apathetic philosophers or depraved orators and Schlemihl figure of Pariah, and Parrhesiastic philosophers of Socrates and a conscious figure of Pariah.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impacts of the politicisation of women academics body in higher education as a result of the implementation of audit culture of new public management.

The research was conducted in Indonesian universities, by conducting interviews to collect data from 20 women academics from two universities in eastern regions of Indonesia.

The impacts of audit culture on women academics’ body in this study can be understood from the constraints told by them, reflected on the creation of several types of bodies.

This paper, though, has some limitations in terms of the inclusion of only women academics, exclusion of male academics and of their limitations of addressing important constructs to elaborate the politicisation of the women body, such as culture, religion, patriarchy, and academic tribes and territories.

The results of this study are important for the policy maker of Indonesia to take into account “gender perspective” on research productivity and publication policy to effectively obtain the political objectives of the government. For higher education in Indonesia, the result of this study may give an indication of the importance to establish different and distinctive standards of work performance evaluation on research and publication for female and male academics.

The analysis of this issue is framed within the bipolar diagram of power that seeks to gain political-economic function of the body (bio-power), via a set of control mechanisms of sovereign power to regulate and manipulate the population (bio-politics), developed by Foucault (1984).