Voices of the academy: academics’ responses to the corporatizing of academia

Abstract

Abstract This study explores the ways in which continuing and casual academics make sense of their roles in a post-Dawkins Australian university. The traditional affiliations of discipline and campus are being competitively eroded in favour of more entrepreneurial liaisons. These shifting liaisons result in organizational silences, which some academics strive to fill. Their selective interpretations of the changing tertiary environment enable them to create a disparate range of academic identities. The narratives of academics who were interviewed in this study suggest that the espoused stories and strengths of the unique profession of academia have less relevance in the unfamiliar corporate academy, which is resistant to the metaphor, myth and traditional typification. In attempting to restructure the university to operate profitably in the current environment, decision-makers have opted for strategies which attempt to homogenize a body of academics. The disparate skills, identities and voices of academics are overlooked in an attempt to create adaptive generalists with definitive discipline specializations.