Making managers within post-compulsory education: policy, performativity and practice

Abstract

The roles and expectations of managers in the Australian vocational education and training (VET) sector are changing under dynamically complex conditions. The adoption of a more ‘open’ national training market as a government policy initiative has led to significant changes within VET providers and significant challenges for VET managers. This article explores how particular policy initiatives are playing out in VET providers, and their implications for managerial and organisational identities. Drawing on case data from an empirical research project, the argument is made that VET managers are located in a complicated nexus between public policy, business strategy and educational practice: senior managers connect policy to strategy, frontline managers connect strategy to staff. As the central node in this nexus, strategy offers ways of securing identities that are especially valued in VET. Identification with strategy concepts is more evident for senior managers than frontline managers. Accordingly, frontline managers are faced with significant challenges as regards ‘self work’. More broadly, spaces exist that provide the terrain for elaborating new organisational identities (and new managerial selves). ‘Co-operatives’, networks and partnerships constitute some of these spaces and each is analysed and discussed