‘Structured agency’, normalising power, and third space workers: higher education professional services staff as regulatory policy actors

Abstract

ABSTRACT As the English Higher Education (HE) system becomes characterised by centralised regulation, many professional services staff increasingly occupy significant positions sitting between traditional administrative roles, academia and management with responsibility for interpreting and implementing key policies. This study presents findings from a nested institutional case study, in a research-intensive institution, of the experiences of professional services staff implementing the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF). Examining how policy ‘landed’ in two academic schools, the findings present staff acting as both operational and strategic drivers: experiencing the regulatory policy cycle as opportunities, subjugation and threat. On the one hand, the high-stakes nature of the TEF led to the development of policy-specific, third space-type roles with enhanced employment contracts, prestige, and agency and the reformulation of working relationships. On the other, the TEF, as but one feature of the regulatory burden on institutions, provided only a limited kind of agency – a term referred to here as ‘structured agency’ to staff. Through analysis of the diversity of roles, experiences and skills within the professional services workforce, this paper highlights the critical importance of professional services staff in a complex regulatory policy process, and the ways in which policy enactment in this space both constrains some individuals while, given adequate resource, enables others to carve out new career spaces and career trajectories. As the Office for Students (OfS) continues to normalise its power in institutions, these insights have important implications for labour force management, in turn allowing for the meaningful enactment of central policy within universities.