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Reality breakdowns generate reflexivity and awareness of the constructed nature of social reality. These pivotal moments can motivate institutional inhabitants to either modify their social worlds or reaffirm the status quo. Thus, reality breakdowns are the initial points at which actors can conceive of new possibilities for institutional arrangements and initiate change processes to realize them. Studying reality breakdowns enables scholars to understand not just how institutional change occurs, but also why it does or does not do so. In this paper, we investigate how institutional inhabitants responded to a reality breakdown that occurred during our ethnography of collegial governance in a large North American university that was undergoing a strategic change initiative. Our findings suggest that there is a consequential process following reality breakdowns whereby institutional inhabitants construct the severity of these events. In our context, institutional inhabitants first attempted to restore order to their social world by reaffirming the status quo; when their efforts failed, they began to formulate alternative possibilities. Simultaneously, they engaged in a distributed sensemaking process whereby they diminished and reoriented necessary changes, ultimately inhibiting the formulation of these new possibilities. Our findings confirm reality breakdowns and institutional awareness as potential drivers of institutional change and complicate our understanding of antecedent microprocesses that may forestall the initiation of change efforts.

Collegiality is the modus operandi of universities. Collegiality is central to academic freedom and scientific quality. In this way, collegiality also contributes to the good functioning of universities’ contribution to society and democracy. In this concluding paper of the special issue on collegiality, we summarize the main findings and takeaways from our collective studies. We summarize the main challenges and contestations to collegiality and to universities, but also document lines of resistance, activation, and maintenance. We depict varieties of collegiality and conclude by emphasizing that future research needs to be based on an appreciation of this variation. We argue that it is essential to incorporate such a variation-sensitive perspective into discussions on academic freedom and scientific quality and highlight themes surfaced by the different studies that remain under-explored in extant literature: institutional trust, field-level studies of collegiality, and collegiality and communication. Finally, we offer some remarks on methodological and theoretical implications of this research and conclude by summarizing our research agenda in a list of themes.

This chapter delves into the evolving identity of professionals within the field of research management and administration (RMA), examining the shifts in their roles and expectations in the changing landscape in higher education. After the introductory section, Section 2 offers a conceptual framework that emphasises identity as a dynamic process rather than a static concept. This framework sheds light on the changing roles and expectations that define the RMA profession. In Section 3, we explore the contextual backdrop of shifting expectations surrounding RMA roles while stressing the importance of recognizing the multiplicity of identities to comprehend the nuances of the RMA profession. Section 4 analyzes empirical data and explore the diverse pathways that lead individuals into the RMA profession. We uncover that a notable proportion of RMAs possess scientific training and research experience and highlight the complexities surrounding the identity of RMAs with doctoral training (DRMAs). Lastly, Section 5 discusses key observations that yield valuable insights for future research on the evolving professional identity of RMAs. We emphasise that, through self-exploration and introspection, practitioners in the field can contribute to a deeper understanding of their roles and actively shape their professional identity.

Curiosity is one of the main drivers in reaching out and connecting to colleagues and starting the networking – that is the foundation for establishing an association for Research Managers and Administrators (RMAs). The questions, ‘Why, what, how and when’, with a commitment to drive things forward, together with like-minded people, can transform curiosity into joint actions and movement of a network. While a number of success factors can be identified, alas there is no thorough literature describing how such factors interact or why. Even though all parameters are met, some associations still struggle with moving forward.

Recognising the identity as a research manager and administrator on the individual level enables reaching out to colleagues in the field, in and outside the institution, and nationally as well as abroad. Understanding the institutional environment and the structure of research support is the starting point for reaching out to colleagues.

This chapter will give an overview of the creation process of RMA associations, spanning from the rise of professional networks, as an informal organisation, to the establishment of legal entities, and hence a more formal association. It hopes to provide a meaningful discussion on the process of establishing professional associations despite the scarce literature on the topic (Stolle, 1998).

Relations in university settings are becoming more heterogeneous in terms of race, ethnicity, religion, nationality, class, and gender. In South Africa, transformation imperatives have radically changed the complexion of the country’s university campuses but have also entrenched political imperatives in its universities. As a consequence, the university is a highly politicised space. This is not new. What is new is a communication environment characterised by real-time, global networked digital communication and the uptake of digital media platforms (including social media platforms). We explore the effects of politicisation and new modes of communication using the case of a controversial article published in a South Africa journal and the ensuing polemic. Drawing on both institutional theory and Castells’ description of the network society, we conceptualise collegiality along two dimensions: horizontal collegial relations which exist for the purpose of knowledge creation and transfer which, in turn, depends on self-governance according to a taken-for-granted code of conduct; and vertical collegiality which describes collegial relations between academic staff and university management, and which is necessary for the governance of the university as a complex organisation. We conclude that the highly personal nature of communication that is propelled by digital communication has a direct impact on collegial relations within the university. The motivations of both university academic staff and management, as well as the public, extend beyond stimulating collective debate in the service of knowledge production to serving individual and/or ideological agendas as the communication of science becomes politicised. While issues pertaining to collegiality in South Africa may at first glance appear to be unique to the country, we believe that in a globally transforming academy, the South African case may offer novel insights and useful lessons for other highly politicised university systems.

Recent changes in university systems, debates on academic freedom, and changing roles of knowledge in society all point to questions regarding how higher education and research should be governed and the role of scientists and faculty in this. Rationalizations of systems of higher education and research have been accompanied by the questioning and erosion of faculty authority and challenges to academic collegiality. In light of these developments, we see a need for a more conceptually precise discussion about what academic collegiality is, how it is practiced, how collegial forms of governance may be supported or challenged by other forms of governance, and finally, why collegial governance of higher education and research is important.

We see collegiality as an institution of self-governance that includes formal rules and structures for decision-making, normative and cognitive underpinnings of identities and purposes, and specific practices. Studies of collegiality then, need to capture structures and rules as well as identities, norms, purposes and practices. Distinguishing between vertical and horizontal collegiality, we show how they balance and support each other.

Universities are subject to mixed modes of governance related to the many tasks and missions that higher education and research is expected to fulfill. Mixed modes of governance also stem from reforms based on widely held ideals of governance and organization. We examine university reforms and challenges to collegiality through the lenses of three ideal types of governance – collegiality, bureaucracy and enterprise – and combinations thereof.

The growth in cryptomarkets has reinvigorated the research on illicit drug distribution due to the availability of large-scale data. This data has enabled researchers to ask new and detailed questions about how participants in these markets trust each other enough for the market not to collapse. This question deserves more attention because it has become a taken-for-granted notion that repeated transactions and social categories create trust. Whether online or on the street, economic exchanges under illegality are more uncertain than transactions in the legal economy. This puts higher demands on trust, as there is less information and the stakes are higher. In this chapter, the author presents definitions, typologies, and disciplinary contributions to the study of trust and examine how it has been operationalised in a sample of 13 peer-reviewed articles. These articles focus on three dimensions of trust: process-based trust that derives from repeated transactions with known partners; character-based trust measured by the networked reputation scores; and institutional-based trust in the platform and its administrators. In practice, the trust bases are intertwined. Drawing on the broader social science literature on trust, a mesolevel operationalisation that centres on networked reputation scores as embedded in processes and institutions can draw the research together in a multidisciplinary framework.

Traditional studies in the sociology of science have highlighted the self-organized character of the academic community. This article focuses on recent interrelated changes that alter that distinctive governance structure and its related patterns of competition and cooperation. The changes that we identify here are contractualization and large-scale cooperative research. We use different data sources to exemplify these new patterns and discuss the illustrative role of research clusters in German academia. Research clusters as funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) are both a highly prestigious scarce good in the competition for reputation and resources and a means of fostering cooperation. Our analysis of this German example reveals that this new institutional configuration of universities as organizations, academic researchers, and the state has a profound effect on organizational practices. We discuss the implications of our empirical findings with regard to collegiality in academia. Ultimately, we anticipate a further weakening of collegial bonds, not only because universities and the state have become more active in shaping the nature of academic competition and cooperation but also because of the increasing strategic and individualistic orientation of academic researchers. In the final section, we summarize our findings and address the need for further research and an international comparative perspective.

Work-life flexibility policies (e.g., flextime, telework, part-time, right-to-disconnect, and leaves) are increasingly important to employers as productivity and well-being strategies. However, policies have not lived up to their potential. In this chapter, the authors argue for increased research attention to implementation and work-life intersectionality considerations influencing effectiveness. Drawing on a typology that conceptualizes flexibility policies as offering employees control across five dimensions of the work role boundary (temporal, spatial, size, permeability, and continuity), the authors develop a model identifying the multilevel moderators and mechanisms of boundary control shaping relationships between using flexibility and work and home performance. Next, the authors review this model with an intersectional lens. The authors direct scholars’ attention to growing workforce diversity and increased variation in flexibility policy experiences, particularly for individuals with higher work-life intersectionality, which is defined as having multiple intersecting identities (e.g., gender, caregiving, and race), that are stigmatized, and link to having less access to and/or benefits from societal resources to support managing the work-life interface in a social context. Such an intersectional focus would address the important need to shift work-life and flexibility research from variable to person-centered approaches. The authors identify six research considerations on work-life intersectionality in order to illuminate how traditionally assumed work-life relationships need to be revisited to address growing variation in: access, needs, and preferences for work-life flexibility; work and nonwork experiences; and benefits from using flexibility policies. The authors hope that this chapter will spur a conversation on how the work-life interface and flexibility policy processes and outcomes may increasingly differ for individuals with higher work-life intersectionality compared to those with lower work-life intersectionality in the context of organizational and social systems that may perpetuate growing work-life and job inequality.