# REVITALIZING COLLEGIALITY

## RESEARCH IN THE SOCIOLOGY OF ORGANIZATIONS

## Series Editor: Michael Lounsbury


## **RESEARCH IN THE SOCIOLOGY OF ORGANIZATIONS ADVISORY BOARD**

### **Series Editor**

Michael Lounsbury Professor of Strategic Management & Organization University of Alberta School of Business, Canada

#### **RSO Advisory Board**

Howard E. Aldrich, *University of North Carolina, USA* Shaz Ansari, *Cambridge University, UK* Silvia Dorado Banacloche, *University of Massachusetts Boston, USA* Christine Beckman, *University of Southern California, USA* Marya Besharov, *Oxford University, UK*  Eva Boxenbaum, *Copenhagen Business School, Denmark* Ed Carberry, *University of Massachusetts Boston, USA* Lisa Cohen, *McGill University, Canada* Jeannette Colyvas, *Northwestern University, USA* Erica Coslor, *University of Melbourne, Australia*  Gerald F. Davis, *University of Michigan, USA* Rich Dejordy, *California State University, USA* Rodolphe Durand, *HEC Paris, France* Fabrizio Ferraro, *IESE Business School, Spain* Peer Fiss, *University of Southern California, USA* Mary Ann Glynn, *Boston College, USA* Nina Granqvist, *Aalto University School of Business, Finland* Royston Greenwood, *University of Alberta, Canada* Stine Grodal, *Northeastern University, USA*  Markus A. Hoellerer, *University of New South Wales, Australia* Ruthanne Huising, *emlyon business school, France* Candace Jones ,*University of Edinburgh, UK* Sarah Kaplan, *University of Toronto, Canada* Brayden G. King, *Northwestern University, USA* Matthew S. Kraatz, *University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA* Tom Lawrence, *Oxford University, UK* Xiaowei Rose Luo, *Insead, France* Johanna Mair, *Hertie School, Germany* Christopher Marquis, *Cambridge University, UK* Renate Meyer, *Vienna University, Austria*  William Ocasio, *University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA* Nelson Phillips, *University of California at Santa Barbara, USA* Prateek Raj, *Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, India*  Marc Schneiberg, *Reed College, USA*

Marc-David Seidel, *University of British Columbia, Canada* Paul Spee, *University of Queensland, Australia* Paul Tracey, *Cambridge University, UK* Kerstin Sahlin, *Uppsala University, Sweden* Sarah Soule, *Stanford University, USA* Eero Vaara, *University of Oxford, UK* Marc Ventresca, *University of Oxford, UK* Maxim Voronov, *York University, Canada* Filippo Carlo Wezel, *USI Lugano, Switzerland* Melissa Wooten, *Rutgers University, USA*  April Wright, *University of Queensland, Australia* Meng Zhao, *Nanyang Business School & Renmin University, China* Enying Zheng, *Peking University, China* Tammar B. Zilber, *Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel*

RESEARCH IN THE SOCIOLOGY OF ORGANIZATIONS VOLUME 87

# **REVITALIZING COLLEGIALITY: RESTORING FACULTY AUTHORITY IN UNIVERSITIES**

## EDITED BY

## **KERSTIN SAHLIN**

*Uppsala University, Sweden*

and

## **ULLA ERIKSSON-ZETTERQUIST**

*University of Gothenburg, Sweden*

United Kingdom – North America – Japan India – Malaysia – China

Emerald Publishing Limited Emerald Publishing, Floor 5, Northspring, 21-23 Wellington Street, Leeds LS1 4DL.

First edition 2024

Editorial matter and selection © 2024 Kerstin Sahlin and Ulla Eriksson-Zetterquist. Individual chapters © 2024 the respective author/s.

Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited. These works are published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of these works (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode.

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ISSN: 0733-558X (Series)

## **CONTENTS**



*Hampus Östh Gustafsson, Pedro Pineda, Paolo Quattrone, Francisco O. Ramirez, Kerstin Sahlin, Francois van Schalkwyk and Peter Walgenbach 181*

## **LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES**

## **How to Remain Collegial When Pressure for Change Is High?**



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## **ABOUT THE EDITORS**

**Kerstin Sahlin**, since 2000, is Professor of Public Management in the Department of Business Studies at Uppsala University. Prior to her position at Uppsala, she was Professor in Public Management at Stockholm University and the Director of the Stockholm Centre for Organizational Research (SCORE). She received her PhD from Umeå University and has also held positions at the Stockholm School of Economics. She has been a Visiting Researcher at Stanford University and a number of other institutions. She has held a number of academic leadership positions. She has been Vice president of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (2019–2022), Secretary General of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Swedish Research Council (2013–2018), and Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Uppsala University (2006–2011). Her major research interests include decision-making on complex projects, the expansion and translation of management ideas, organizational reforms of public sector, transnational regulation, and more recently university governance and collegiality. Her research is largely based on new institutional theory. She has published several edited volumes, books, and articles. She is currently Chair of the research program WASP-HS (The Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program – Humanities and Society).

**Ulla Eriksson-Zetterquist**, since 2010, has been Professor in Organization Theory and Management at the Gothenburg Research Institute (GRI), and at the Department for Business Administration, School of Business, Economics, and Law, University of Gothenburg. She has been Visiting Scholar at SCANCOR Stanford (Spring 2010), SCANCOR Harvard (Fall 2016), and Visiting Professor at Uppsala University in 2013. Between 2012 and 2023 she served as the Director of GRI. During 2014 and 2015, she was the Chair of the Swedish Academy of Business and Management. She has been active as Associated Editor for the journal *Gender, Work and Organization* between the years of 2004 and 2020. Since 2017, she is heading the research program *Managing Digital Transformations*. Her research interests concern organizing, governance in professional organizations, diversity and inclusion, and digitalization. These themes have been explored in a variety of organizations, both in private and public sectors, for instance, in multinational corporations, the automotive industry, the public school, and the Swedish Defense Authority. She has published in the field of organization theory and management studies, including journal articles, research monographs, and textbooks. She edited her latest book with Magnus Hansson and Fredrik Nilsson (2020): *Theories and Perspectives in Swedish Business Administration Studies.*

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## **ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS**

**Nico Cloete** is Professor at the Centre for Research on Evaluation, Science and Technology (CREST), Stellenbosch University. He is the Former Director of the Centre for Higher Education Trust (CHET) and a Guest Professor at the University of Oslo.

**Nancy Côté** is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Université Laval, FRQS Research Scholar and member of VITAM, a sustainable health research center in Québec, Canada. Her work is at the crossroads of sociology of work, professions, and organizations.

**Logan Crace** is a PhD student in the Strategy, Entrepreneurship, and Management Department at the University of Alberta. His current research uses organization theory to explore what enables and obstructs change efforts, with a particular emphasis on grand challenges and sustainability.

**Rick Delbridge** is Professor of Organizational Analysis at Cardiff Business School and Co-convenor of the Centre for Innovation Policy Research, Cardiff University. He has received best paper awards from *Academy of Management Review* and *Organization Studies* and been elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, the British Academy of Management, and the Learned Society of Wales.

**Jean-Louis Denis** is Professor in Health Policy and Management at the School of Public Health, Université de Montréal – CRCHUM-CRDP. He holds the Canada Research Chair on design and adaptation of health systems. His research program is located at the intersection of applied health services research, organizational studies, and policy research.

**Gili S. Drori** is Professor of Sociology and Anthropology and currently Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. She earned her academic education at Tel Aviv University (BA in 1986 and MA in 1989) and Stanford University (PhD in 1997 in Sociology).

**Ulla Eriksson-Zetterquist** is Professor in Organization Theory and Management at the Gothenburg Research Institute (GRI), and at the Department for Business Administration, School of Business, Economics, and Law, University of Gothenburg. She has been Visiting Scholar at SCANCOR Stanford, SCANCOR Harvard, and Visiting Professor at Uppsala University. Her research interests concern organizing, governance in professional organizations, diversity and inclusion, and digitalization. These themes have been explored in a variety of organizations, both in private and public sectors, for instance in multinational corporations, the automotive industry, the public school, and the Swedish Defense Authority.

**Joel Gehman** is a Professor of Strategic Management and Public Policy and Lindner-Gambal Professor of Business Ethics at George Washington University. His research examines strategic, technological, and institutional responses to grand challenges related to sustainability and values concerns. He earned a PhD in Management and Organization from Pennsylvania State University.

**Lisa-Maria Gerhardt** is a Research Associate and doctoral candidate at the Chair of Organization, Leadership and Human Resource Management at Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany. Her research interests include institutional theories, organizations, and higher education.

**Jan Goldenstein** is a Research Associate at Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany. His research interests include institutional theory, category research, social evaluation, market entry decisions, comparative international studies, and methodological research. He has published in journals such as *Journal of Business Venturing, Journal of Management Studies*, and *Sociological Methodology*.

**Hampus Östh Gustafsson** (PhD) is a Researcher at the Department of History of Science and Ideas, Uppsala University. His research is focused on the history of the humanities and universities, and the formation of modern politics of knowledge. His recent publications include articles in journals such as *History of Humanities* and *History of Education Review*.

**Audrey Harroche** is a sociologist who works on the implementation of policies for excellence in the academic sector, focusing on questions regarding the production of knowledge and inequalities. She is a lecturer at Oxford Brookes University and is also affiliated with the CSO at Sciences Po.

**Maggie Hébert** is a Master's student in the Department of Sociology at Université Laval. Her research focuses on academic freedom and governance in Canadian universities.

**Jakov Jandrić** is the Nick Oliver Lecturer in Organisational Behaviour at the University of Edinburgh Business School. His research interests include age and aging in the workplace, and the exploration of the changing landscape of higher education and its implications for institutions, academics, and students.

**Anna Kosmützky** is a Sociologist and Professor for the "Methodology of Higher Education and Science Research" at the Leibniz Center of Science and Society (LCSS), Leibniz University Hannover. Her research interests are in the areas of higher education research, science studies, and organization studies with a focus on methodological issues, globalization of higher education, and organizational and institutional change of universities.

**Georg Krücken** is Professor of the Sociology of Higher Education and Director of the International Center for Higher Education Research (INCHER), both at the University of Kassel, Germany. He is one of the spokespersons of the research network "New Institutionalism" and a member of Academia Europaea. His research interests include higher education research, science studies, organization studies, and neo-institutional theory.

**Seungah S. Lee** is a Senior Lecturer of Social Research and Public Policy at New York University Abu Dhabi. Her research is primarily concerned with how nation-states and organizations adapt and contextualize global models and scripts around development, innovation, and entrepreneurship toward social, cultural, and educational change. She holds a PhD in Organization Studies and International Comparative Education from Stanford University.

**Michael Lounsbury** is a Professor and A.F (Chip) Collins Chair in the Strategy, Entrepreneurship and Management Department at the University of Alberta School of Business, where he is also the Academic Director of the eHUB Entrepreneurship Centre. He is the Series Editor of *Research in the Sociology of Organizations* and has previously served as Chair of the Organization and Management Theory Division of the Academy of Management. His PhD is in Sociology and Organization Behavior from Northwestern University.

**Ravit Mizrahi-Shtelman** is a Lecturer at the Faculty of Education at the Kibbutzim College. She earned her doctoral degree in Sociology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and went on to complete post-doctoral studies at Stanford University. Her research interests are wide ranging and include the study of educational organizations, higher education, globalization and glocalization, identity, and leadership.

**Christine Musselin** is a Researcher at the Centre for the Sociology of Organizations (CSO), a Sciences Po and CNRS research unit. She leads comparative studies on university governance, higher education policies, and academic labor markets*.* She has led the CSO from 2007 to 2013 and has been the Vice-President for Research of Sciences Po from 2013 to 2018.

**Pedro Pineda** (Dr. Phil., Humboldt University of Berlin) is Associate Professor (Senior Lecturer) at the Department of Education, University of Bath. He specializes in the fields of comparative education, higher education, the sociology of education, and organizational studies.

**Paolo Quattrone** is Professor of Accounting, Governance and Society at the Alliance Manchester Business School where he also leads the Centre for the Analysis of Investment Risk. Before joining AMBS, he has held chairs at the University of Edinburgh Business School and IE Business School, Madrid, and was Reader in Accounting at Saïd Business School, and official student (fellow) of Christ Church. He is the co-Editor-in-Chief of *Organization Studies*.

**Francisco O. Ramirez** is the Vida Jacks Professor of Education and (by courtesy) Sociology at Stanford University. His current research interests focus on the worldwide rationalization of university structures and processes, in terms of inclusion issues as regards gender and education, and on challenges to globalization. His recent publications may be found in *Sociology of Education*, *Comparative Education Review*, *Social Forces*, and *International Sociology*. He has been a fellow at the Center for the Advanced Studies of the Behavioral Sciences (2006–2007), the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Studies (2017), and the Free University of Berlin, Cluster of Excellence Contestations of the Liberal Script (2022). He has been inducted into the honor societies of the American Sociological Association and the Comparative and International Education Society. His research has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, and the Stanford Institute for International Studies.

**Kerstin Sahlin** is Professor of Public Management in the Department of Business Studies at Uppsala University. Her major research interests include decisionmaking on complex projects, the expansion and translation of management ideas, organizational reforms of public sector, transnational regulation, and more recently university governance and collegiality. She has been Vice president of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Secretary General of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Swedish Research Council, and Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Uppsala University.

**François van Schalkwyk** is a Post-doctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Research on Evaluation, Science and Technology (CREST), Stellenbosch University.

**Peter Walgenbach** is Professor of Organization, Leadership and HRM at Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany. He currently serves as a Senior Editor of Organization Studies. He has published widely in various fields and journals in management and organization studies.

## **FOREWORD**

*Research in the Sociology of Organizations* (*RSO*) publishes cutting-edge empirical research and theoretical papers that seek to enhance our understanding of organizations and organizing as pervasive and fundamental aspects of society and economy. We seek provocative papers that push the frontiers of current conversations, that help to revive old ones, or that incubate and develop new perspectives. Given its successes in this regard, *RSO* has become an impactful and indispensable fount of knowledge for scholars interested in organizational phenomena and theories. *RSO* is indexed and ranks highly in Scopus/SCImago as well as in the Academic Journal Guide published by the Chartered Association of Business schools.

As one of the most vibrant areas in the social sciences, the sociology of organizations engages a plurality of empirical and theoretical approaches to enhance our understanding of the varied imperatives and challenges that these organizations and their organizers face. Of course, there is a diversity of formal and informal organizations – from for-profit entities to non-profits, state and public agencies, social enterprises, communal forms of organizing, non-governmental associations, trade associations, publicly traded, family owned and managed, private firms – the list goes on! Organizations, moreover, can vary dramatically in size from small entrepreneurial ventures to large multi-national conglomerates to international governing bodies such as the United Nations.

Empirical topics addressed by *RSO* include the formation, survival, and growth or organizations; collaboration and competition between organizations; the accumulation and management of resources and legitimacy; and how organizations or organizing efforts cope with a multitude of internal and external challenges and pressures. Particular interest is growing in the complexities of contemporary organizations as they cope with changing social expectations and as they seek to address societal problems related to corporate social responsibility, inequality, corruption and wrongdoing, and the challenge of new technologies. As a result, levels of analysis reach from the individual to the organization, industry, community and field, and even the nation-state or world society. Much research is multi-level and embraces both qualitative and quantitative forms of data.

Diverse theory is employed or constructed to enhance our understanding of these topics. While anchored in the discipline of sociology and the field of management, *RSO* also welcomes theoretical engagement that draws on other disciplinary conversations – such as those in political science or economics, as well as work from diverse philosophical traditions. *RSO* scholarship has helped push forward a plethora of theoretical conversations on institutions and institutional change, networks, practice, culture, power, inequality, social movements, categories, routines, organization design and change, configurational dynamics, and many other topics.

Each volume of *RSO* tends to be thematically focused on a particular empirical phenomenon (e.g., creative industries, multinational corporations, and entrepreneurship) or theoretical conversation (e.g., institutional logics, actors and agency, and microfoundations). The series publishes papers by junior as well as leading international scholars, and embraces diversity in all dimensions. If you are a scholar interested in organizations or organizing, I hope you find *RSO* to be an invaluable resource as you develop your work.

> Professor Michael Lounsbury Series Editor, *Research in the Sociology of Organizations* Canada Research Chair in Entrepreneurship & Innovation University of Alberta

# INTRODUCTION: REVITALIZING COLLEGIALITY: RESTORING FACULTY AUTHORITY IN UNIVERSITIES

Ulla Eriksson-Zetterquista and Kerstin Sahlinb

*a University of Gothenburg, Sweden b Uppsala University, Sweden*

## **ABSTRACT**

Collegiality is often discussed and analyzed as a challenged form of governance, a form of working that used to function well in universities prior to the emergence of contemporary and modern forms of governance. This seems to suggest that collegiality used to dominate, while other forms of governance are now taking over. The papers in volume 86 of this special issue support the notion of challenged collegiality, but also show that for the most part, nostalgic notions of "the good old days" are neither true nor helpful if we are to revitalize academic collegiality. After examining whether a golden age of collegiality ever existed, we discuss why collegiality matters. Exploring what are often described as limitations or "dark sides" of collegiality, we address four such "dark sides" related to slow decisionmaking, conflicts, parochialism, and diversity. This is followed by a discussion of how these limitations may be handled and what measures must be taken to maintain and develop collegiality. With a brief summary of the

**Revitalizing Collegiality: Restoring Faculty Authority in Universities**

**Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Volume 87, 1–26**

**Copyright © 2024 by Ulla Eriksson-Zetterquist and Kerstin Sahlin. Published under exclusive** 

**licence by Emerald Publishing Limited. These works are published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of these works (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/ licences/by/4.0/legalcode**

**ISSN: 0733-558X/doi:10.1108/S0733-558X20230000087001**

remaining papers under two headings, "Maintaining collegiality" and "Revitalizing collegiality," we preview the rest of this volume.

**Keywords:** Dark sides of collegiality; diversity; parochialism; revitalizing collegiality; slow decision-making; maintaining collegiality

## **CAN CHALLENGED COLLEGIALITY BE RESTORED?**

Collegiality as a mode of governance in universities has been challenged and partly replaced by more enterprise-like and bureaucratic forms of governance. Papers in this special issue point to some of these forces and report on a turn toward viewing universities as enterprises (Denis et al., 2023, Vol. 87; Hwang, 2023, Vol. 86) and to structuring universities as organized actors (Lee & Ramirez, 2023, Vol. 86). University transformations have followed similar trends as organizations in other societal sectors, with leadership structures inspired by and sometimes directly patterned after private businesses (Crace et al., 2023, Vol. 87), global organizational expansion with diffused prototypes for what proper organizations should look like (Lee & Ramirez, 2023, Vol. 86), emerging hybrid forms of governance (Denis et al., 2023, Vol. 87), and new tasks and expectations applied to universities, university leaders (Mizrahi-Shtelman & Drori, 2023, Vol. 87) and recruited faculty (Gerhardt et al., 2023, Vol. 86). Collegiality is also challenged by a changing political landscape (Crace et al., 2023, Vol. 87; van Schalkwyk & Cloete, 2023, Vol. 86; Wen & Marginson, 2023, Vol. 86), new forms of competition (Kosmützky & Krücken, 2023, Vol. 86) with a high focus on excellence funding programs (Harroche & Musselin, 2023, Vol. 86) and a high proportion of temporal research staff with loose connections to collegial processes and communities (Pineda, 2023, Vol. 86).

Additional challenges to collegiality stem from the condition that it remains quite unspecified as a mode of governance (Sahlin & Eriksson-Zetterquist, 2023, Vol. 86). Data from several of the studies reported in this special issue show that interpretations of the content and function of collegiality often remain taken for granted, unclear (Sahlin & Eriksson-Zetterquist, 2023, Vol. 86), and diverse among practitioners in higher education and research (Denis et al., 2023, Vol. 87; van Schalkwyk & Cloete, 2023, Vol. 86).

We have argued that a maintenance and revitalization of collegiality require specifying and clarifying what collegiality is and how it can be practiced. As a starting point, research can reveal consequences of transformed modes of governance for collegiality. Interestingly, research reported in these volumes also shows that a taken for granted and dormant collegiality may be mobilized by reforms that challenge it (Denis et al., 2023, Vol. 87; Sahlin & Eriksson-Zetterquist, 2023, Vol. 87) or by reality breakdowns (Crace et al., 2023, Vol. 87).

In this introductory paper to Vol. 87 we elaborate on two additional ways to facilitate restoration and revitalization of collegiality. First, we need to open up taken-for-grantedness and discuss why collegiality matters. What are the motives for maintaining or even strengthening collegiality? Collegiality is essential for upholding independent research and teaching – for protecting academic freedom. Second, we address limitations and weaknesses of collegiality. Exploring "dark sides" of collegiality, we review commonly discussed limitations and explore how they may be handled. Specifically, we address four "dark sides" related to slow forms of decision-making, conflicts, parochialism and diversity. Finally, we preview the remaining papers in this volume by summarizing them under two headings: "Maintaining collegiality" and "Revitalizing collegiality."

## **WHY COLLEGIALITY MATTERS**

When collegiality is discussed in academic meetings and at seminars and conferences, it is not uncommon to hear reactions such as, "So what? Why should we care? Isn't collegiality all about friendly relationships among the more or less privileged, yet lamenting faculty?" A very short reply to such comments would be that the task of faculty members is to develop knowledge as a public good, to preserve academic freedom, and to lay the foundation for students' and others' scientific knowledge formation and their ability to receive, critically scrutinize, and use such knowledge. Such tasks are conditioned by the way in which research and education are governed. For faculty to have control over these operations there needs to be a system of self-governance in place, a system that then demands the commitment and engagement of faculty members.

Academic freedom is in decline. As we were working on this introduction, *University World News* (Greenfield, 2023) reported that over the past decade, academic freedom has declined in more than 22 countries representing more than half of the world's population. The news item is based on the *Academic Freedom Index: Update 2023 (AFI)*, published by the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.1 The *AFI* is a study of 179 countries based on a survey completed by 2,197 experts in higher education. The Academic Freedom Index primarily focuses on political pressures. Throughout Vols. 86 and 87 of this special issue, it becomes clear that academic freedom may also, for an individual scholar or different groups of scholars, be restricted by the governance and management practices of universities and systems of higher education and research.

Waters (1989, p. 958) emphasized that collegiality is a means for self-control and independence.

Collegiate organizations are self-controlling and self-policing; that is, they are not subject to direction from any external source once they have been constituted. Formal autonomy has two aspects. The first is freedom of action in relation to the pursuit of professional goals. Groups of colleagues are free to do research, to instruct others, and to communicate findings or other forms of knowledge insofar as these things are relevant to professional standing. Collegiate organizations are ideally facilitative rather than authoritarian systems, in which performance standards are established interpersonally and informally rather than by formal rules. However, these standards apply only within the collegial membership. Even here, there are, nevertheless, minimum standards of performance and certain prescriptions that are implied by the ethical norms discussed above. A second aspect of formal autonomy, then, is that the violation of ethical norms, except where these constitute legal transgressions, are matters for self-regulation within the collegium rather than an arena for bureaucratic, commercial, or state legal interference.

In the introduction to Vol. 86 (Sahlin & Eriksson-Zetterquist, 2023, Vol. 86), we distinguished between vertical and horizontal collegiality. Both aspects are alluded to in Waters' definition. Along the vertical dimension, the decisionmaking of universities is organized around faculty authority. Vertical collegiality concerns decision-making structures within a formal organization and rules. This can include the composition of university boards, senates and committees, and the selection of "primus/prima inter pares" as academic leaders (Lazega, 2020, p. 10). Horizontal collegiality encompasses the communities of peers in departments, at universities, among reviewers, at conferences or in scholarly networks. The two aspects are interdependent. Peers provide reviews, scrutiny and advice, and are mobilized to elect those who serve in formal positions in universities, research councils and other bodies related to a university. The vertical collegial structure is also based on legitimacy from the horizontal collegium.

Comparing the corporatization and bureaucratization of universities with the organizing principles of collegiality summarized by Waters (1989), we find that almost all aspects of collegiality are challenged. The six principles are as follows: theoretical knowledge, professional career, formal egalitarianism, scrutiny of product, collective decision-making and formal autonomy (see also Sahlin & Eriksson-Zetterquist, 2023, Vol. 86). However, while (vertical) collegiality has been weakened as a mode of university governance, it appears to have remained somewhat more robust outside universities (Denis et al., 2023, Vol. 87; Sahlin & Eriksson-Zetterquist, 2016), in academic journals, academic associations and research councils that build largely on horizontal collegiality. Denis et al. (2023, Vol. 87) described this development as the dislocation of collegiality. This also maintains the calling for science, or science as vocation (Lee & Walsh, 2022; Weber, 1958), given the considerable time and resources scholars invest in academic citizenship, even if this too is challenged both by the increased bureaucratization of scientific work (Lee & Walsh, 2022), and – as we argue in the introduction to Vol. 86 (Sahlin & Eriksson-Zetterquist, 2023, Vol. 86) – by individualization more generally in society (see also Kosmützky & Krücken, 2023, Vol. 86). Nevertheless, it can be noted that in some countries, evaluators on research councils are qualified as "experts" rather than as "peers," and such peers are not always chosen through elections (see for instance Harroche & Musselin, 2023, Vol. 86). Moreover, horizontal collegiality is subject to bureaucratization and enterprization.

In the introduction to Vol. 86 we defined collegiality as "an institution of selfgovernance" (Sahlin & Eriksson-Zetterquist, 2023, Vol. 87); as such, it shares institutional dimensions of democratic governance drawing upon the logic of appropriateness with regard to not only practices and rules, but also individual identities and intentions (March & Olsen, 1995). While the institution of collegiality affords the raw materials of social interactions and guidelines for their use, people upholding these social interactions provide its energy and meaning as an inhabited institution (Hallett & Ventresca, 2006). Yet, social interactions can also have negative outcomes. We continue by exploring the nostalgic notion of collegiality as well as its dark sides. Nostalgic claims are discussed in a brief review of an assumed "golden age of collegiality."

#### *Was There Ever a Golden Age of Collegiality?*

For some, collegiality can be seen as a mythic (Barnes, 2020) and romantic ideal way to govern universities and knowledge production, a practice allegedly based on consensus decisions made by academic staff. In recent decades, this search for a golden age has been described as "a growing disenchantment about the fundamental satisfactions of a career in higher education" (Bennett, 1998, p. 5), a focus on delivering learning outcomes on behalf of "inspiring love of learning" (Rowland, 2008, p. 353), or alienation as a result of increasing individualism on behalf of collective self-governance (Fleming, 2020, 2021). These descriptions seem to suggest that there once was a period when universities and academic staff enjoyed a golden age of collegiality, an assumption that quite rapidly dissolves upon reading historical accounts of university development and governance (see Östh Gustafsson, 2023, Vol. 86). Over time, mixed interpretations lead to ambiguities regarding the missions of universities, modes of governance and collegiality.

In an analysis of the unprecedented success of the university as a world institution, Frank and Meyer (2020, p. 6) drew parallels with religious movements and perceptions of a golden age that are central to such convictions:

Scholars who have researched the development of universities certainly question assumptions about a golden age of collegiality (see, for instance, Clark, 2006; Merton, 1942; Östh Gustafsson, 2023, Vol. 86). Universities were controlled by the Church in medieval times, from Enlightenment onwards universities were largely leveraged by specific state interests to build nation states and national cultures, and then, more recently universities have had the role to uphold the Humboldt tradition of advocating academic freedom (Clark, 2006; Tapper & Palfreyman, 2014), at least as an ideal. Still, under the influence of the Church and state interests, by organizing knowledge development in structures similar to guilds, some qualified scholars were provided space for collegial governance, and thus, for more or less independent knowledge development (Björck, 2013; Clark, 2006; Frängsmyr, 2017; Tapper & Palfreyman, 2014).

Transformations of universities have continued over time. During the first half of the 1900s, the expansion of subdisciplines within universities led to an epistemological fragmentation (Huldt et al., 2013; Macfarlane, 2005), a development that would result in what Macfarlane (2005) called "silo" effects. Conditions for governance fundamentally changed with the massification of higher education from the early 1960s onward, as the number of students and scholars in academic departments grew in line with arguments for improved career mobility (Macfarlane, 2005).

Whereas Frank and Meyer (2020) noted a striking homogenization of universities in a move away from institutional differentiation, others have noted diversification as nations have sought to develop regions by establishing universities there, in contrast to the more traditional model where universities were

A siege mentality is common. Here the Golden Age is not in the future but in an imagined past of intellectual and cultural purity, removed from the vulgar pressures of the present …. This is a misleading conception of the past university – and of the society in which it operated.

established primarily in areas of historical importance (Shattock et al., 2022). In the realignment of these trends, many higher education institutions have become universities, and degrees, programs and areas of study have become increasingly similar. Polytechnics in the UK were transformed into universities in the 1990s (Willmott, 1995). In Sweden, university colleges have become re-regulated and resourced over the last 25 years to become increasingly similarly regulated as universities, and several university colleges have also been transformed into universities. Together, the massification of higher education and shift away from vocational education led to more people being involved in university operations, including students, scholars, professional administrators, and eventually, managers. As Macfarlane (2005) pointed out, this was the introduction of the "disaggregated university" where the former sense of community among scholars who viewed themselves as part of "intellectual corporations" has been replaced with the notion of the university as comprising disengaged individuals who are merely members of a legal entity.

This raises issues about staffing of universities, how this is controlled and by whom. In a study of the introduction of recycling programs across US universities and colleges, Michael Lounsbury (2001) discovered much variation. While some universities and colleges hired full-time professional recycling managers and established special units staffed by environmental activists, other schools built smaller units staffed by current employees where management practices were typically part-time tasks. One main explanation for these variations, Lounsbury (2001) found, followed on activities of field level organizations. Active social movement organizations around those schools that came to build more resourceful professional and activist bodies had lobbied for such bodies to be built. This lobbying was largely channeled by students. A brief look at how universities around the world have handled the pandemic reveals a similar diversity. Whereas in some institutions, faculty members have had authority over the handling of the pandemic, in others pandemic responses have been treated as managerial tasks, and faculty are being controlled by administrative measures (see Jandrić et al., 2023, Vol. 87).

This brief overview of university transformations over time illustrates how the exemplar or model-oriented ideal of "collegiality" rarely can be ascribed to a specific time or place in the history of universities. Rather, the institution of collegiality has always been interwoven with societal conditions, nation building, political ambitions, and visions regarding the objectives of university knowledge and education. In addition, the student cohort has changed over time, from clergy to privileged elites, and since the 1960s, to the masses. More recently, university education has been viewed as a tool to both increase education levels in the population and educate future members of the labor market (Zawadzki et al., 2020). Multiversity development can also be seen in increases in the number of students, scholars and administrators, and in turn, a steady increase in published papers (Pineda, 2023, Vol. 86). Newly arising challenges associated with governing these new dynamics are among the many consequences of the development of multiversities (see Krücken et al., 2007). To understand how the institution of collegiality is undermined or revitalized in universities, it is critically important to consider broader and long-term societal and cultural movements, constellations of actor groups within universities, associated organized interests and the channels between them.

## **DARK SIDES AND LIMITATIONS OF THE INSTITUTION OF COLLEGIALITY**

When exploring collegiality as an institution and how it gains legitimacy, it is vital to discuss its boundaries, limitations and what we refer to here as its "dark sides." Commonly posed questions concern, for example, whether collegiality is upholding a system of privilege and whether it is characterized by closure rather than openness. Those questions inevitably lead to a need to discuss shortcomings and limitations of collegial governance – that is, dark sides of collegiality (Sahlin & Eriksson-Zetterquist, 2016). When exploring disadvantages and dark sides, it is important to keep in mind that all forms of governance have constraints, both for those managing them and for the governed. One of the most well-known examples is Weber's description of the limits of bureaucracy as an iron cage that both protects employees and constrains them (du Gay, 2008; Styhre, 2007). In an extension of the iron cage, enterprise governance as an ideal type ascribes freedom and autonomy to the business owner who controls employees by owning the results of their work (Bendix, 1945).

Bringing in disadvantages of institutions may also appear to be somewhat external to the more general topics explored within institutional studies. For instance, in some discussions, "institution" represents "good elements," as in the "open institution, inclusive, and sacramental and 'normalizing'," in contrast to authentic charisma that serves as the expression of a sect (Marzano, 2013, p. 312). In a similar vein, a more recent discussion has questioned the potential to include critical perspectives in institutional theory to understand issues of power dimensions and inequality related to social category or hierarchy (Munir, 2019). In a comment, Drori (2019) explained how the institutional theory perspective is inherently critical; for instance, when it came back into vogue in the 1970s, institutional theorists offered alternative explanations to the research results advocated by rationalist-oriented scholars.

Furthermore, longitudinal studies of institutions often advance narratives that include good elements, dark sides, struggles to establish legitimacy, resilience, and transformation. The Church is an example of an old institution that has remained powerful and has maintained legitimacy over the centuries, protecting its values and morals despite accounts of transgressions and repression, but also known for transformation and redefinition despite strong opposition (Meier Sørensen et al., 2012; Quattrone, 2022; Styhre, 2014). As Parker (2009) explained, the institution of the Church is depicted as the long-term balancing of "good" elements with the dark sides; for example, pre-medieval angels could represent both good and evil, and 17th century women were characterized as being tempted by the dark sides while men were characterized as embodying "good" elements such as strength and morality. Just a very brief account of the history of the Church thus tells of institutional resilience enduring ongoing transformation, adjustments, and opposition, including both legitimate and illegitimate institutional work. Or, in the words of Drori (2019, p. 5), for an analysis of critical perspectives of institutions, the focus must be on the "variety of contextual features" and how they are "imbued with meanings, set into practices and routines, and embodied in structures and material objects."

In general, the dark sides of collegiality within universities can be sorted into four categories. Collegiality may (a) lead to slow decision-making, (b) be a breeding ground for conflicts, (c) foster parochialism, and (d) have a tendency to prioritize some (privileged) groups on behalf of others. In the contemporary debate, the last category has attracted great interest, a development that is also connected to the more general discussion about diversity and inclusion. We report findings from some recent studies in this field after we discuss collegiality's effect on the speed of decision-making and collegiality as a breeding ground for conflicts and parochialism. At present, discussions about collegiality's role in breeding conflicts have attracted significant public attention in light of cancel culture, as well as publicized accounts of academic fraud and unethical research.

#### *Speed in Decision-making*

A common critique of collegiality that has prevailed over time concerns slowness. This critique can be found in Weber's writings and is generally seen as an inherent feature of collegiality. While the collegial system enables a process whereby issues can be handled by several people at the same time to facilitate a more thorough examination, processing is inevitably slower (Östh Gustafsson, 2023, Vol. 86; Sahlin & Eriksson-Zetterquist, 2016).

The 1963 Robbins report – which kickstarted the transformation of English universities from self-managed and collegial organizations to centralized organizations driven by enterprise ideals (including bureaucracy and the notion that higher education is an enterprise) – also inspired new commentary about the collegial model. As universities expanded, the collegial model was claimed to be too slow to handle rapid growth and external changes in financial models (first expanding, then shrinking) (Burnes et al., 2014). The focus on achieving a deliberated consensus by exploring and articulating as many different perspectives as possible and having lengthy academic discussions contributes to the perception that collegial governance prolongs decision-making. By comparison, decisionmaking in the private sector appears to be a much faster process.

This view of collegiality as a slow form of governance relative to bureaucratic or enterprise forms of governance is also upheld in media reporting. For example, media narratives frequently amplify events such as thousands of employees being laid off without any prior notice, or a CEO suddenly being replaced. These media narratives exclude the methodological work and jurisdictional rules behind such decisions and how they have been deliberated by executives (often over a period of several months), and in some countries, even in formal discussions with trade unions. A reason for this is that such preparations are often seen as trade secrets, not to be publicly exposed until formal decisions have been made. A forewarning is thus not possible. Decision-making within the collegium on the other hand, unfolds in a different way; most information is accessible to outsiders both during and after a decision-making process. As a consequence, enterprise decisionmaking is (falsely) presented as rapid and as driven by deliberation at a single board meeting, while collegial decision-making is depicted as slow in comparison. Notably, thorough, and prolonged deliberations are commonplace within each form of governance discussed here, even if such deliberations are not visible to the public.

Another aspect contributing to the slowness of collegial decisions is the focus on anchoring decisions and building trust, also frequently touted as advantages. Lazega (2020) described how the process of collegiality often is contrasted with the bureaucratic procedure applied in global companies (and neoliberal public authorities). The latter is part of "a capitalist society that wants citizens to believe in its antitrust regime" (Lazega, 2020, p. 158) by referring to bureaucratic principles and regulations. Still, such references to bureaucratic principles necessitate closer examination. According to Lazega, collegial decision-making tends to be necessary at the top hierarchical levels of bureaucracies. As the task is to set the rules and routines for the rest of the organization, the same does not apply to them; hence, top executives embrace the ideals of collegiality. Their work is based on relationships, and meetings are usually conducted behind closed doors. Describing the differences in meetings based on collegiality and bureaucracy, Lazega (2020, pp. 15–16) wrote:

In a bureaucratic context, meetings are for impersonal reporting upwards and giving orders and instructions downwards. In a collegial meeting, members take turns and participate in decisionmaking (at least in appearance), then personalize their interactions, get angry, joke and conflict openly.

Furthermore, Lazega emphasized that collegiality is not the informal dimension of bureaucracy. Rather, collegiality and bureaucracy are to be seen as two different – and often complementary – modes of organizational governance with different aims and purposes (bureaucracy for rational planning and effective administration, collegiality for knowledge development and innovation) (Lazega, 2020).

Put differently, collegiality has also been described as a conservative and protective mode of decision-making (Tapper & Palfreyman, 2010). When all members of the collegium, from newcomers to senior professors, are deeply involved in operations, the decision-making process is prolonged, but issues are thoroughly examined and decisions are legitimized by everyone (Bennett, 1998; Tapper & Palfreyman, 2010). The commitment required by all involved also can be seen a vulnerability of the model. A very committed collegium can be threatening to newcomers who could articulate alternative perspectives in the decision-making process. That is, group dynamics in academic settings can also become contexts where unfamiliar or provoking arguments are not brought forward (see also Lamont, 2009; Langfeldt, 2001). Collegiality may, in other words, also imply closure. At the extreme, cliques may begin to develop. Furthermore, as the ideal of the collegial governance model includes everyone in the collegium, the process can be undermined if some members decide not to concern themselves with issues that are relevant to decisions (Sahlin & Eriksson-Zetterquist, 2016).

Decision-making that follows principles for collegial governance thus comes with certain risks. Still, the question remains of what to ascribe to the collegial form of governance and what to ascribe to group processes and power dynamics more generally. It has also been noted that the conservative and protective part of collegial decision-making is not about holding on to the old and familiar, but rather the process of reaching consensus. Some Latin words may be helpful here. As explained in Wiktionary,2 the word "consensus" originates from *consentio*, meaning "feel together; agree"; expanded to "consensus," the meaning is "agreement, accordance, unanimity." It comes from "consent," constructed by combining *con* meaning "together," and *sentire* meaning "feel." According to the Collins Dictionary *-tus* (-*sus* in English) is a verb suffix meaning "action."3 Collectively, the meaning of the word consensus combines together, feel, and act. In the Collins Dictionary, the difference between compromise and consensus is elaborated:

A compromise is a deal between different parties where each party gives up part of their demand. Consensus is the result of a group decision-making process in which group members develop and agree to support a decision in the best interest of the whole.

Thus, a consensus-based decision can be seen as the best group ("together") outcome that would be reached at a specific point in the process. When evaluating the speed of decision-making, the time horizon needs to be considered, and universities generally operate according to long time horizons.

#### *Collegiality as a Breeding Ground for Conflicts*

Universities have longstanding reputations as arenas for conflicts, many of which spark heated debates and intense argumentation (Sorensen & Traweek, 2021). Every now and then, the public becomes aware of disputes among academic staff. Such conflicts, which have been topics of interest in scientific journalism, the public media and popular culture, often are tied to paradigm-shifting science and knowledge breakthroughs (Kuhn, 1962/1992), thought collectives (Fleck, 1935/1979), principles of falsification (Popper, 1959), and boundary work (Gieryn, 1999). Debates and conflicts, in other words, are inherent aspects of research and scientific developments. However, such conflicts are also associated with collegiality as a form of governance. As elaborated by Lazega (2020, pp. 12–13):

contrary to frequent misconceptions of collegiality, collegial relationships are rarely congenial and synonymous with "nice." Rather, they are often characterized by status competition, from friendly to cut-throat, and deep rivalries. When work is not routine, there are many dimensions and criteria to evaluate its quality, and very rarely do committees agree easily – if at all – on the criteria that should have priority. Peers can accuse each other of mediocrity, bad faith, particularistic favoritism and cronyism when the committees make decisions that do not correspond to their own preferences or criteria.

#### *Introduction* 11

As described by Merton (1957, pp. 636–637), conflicts and disputes over priorities of scientific discoveries are not rare, but

frequent, harsh, and ugly. They have practically become an integral part of the social relations between scientists. Indeed, the pattern is so common that the Germans have characteristically compounded a word for it, *Prioritätsstreit.*

A fundamental part of such controversies concerns the dominant norms of science and what constitutes "good research," and more recently, whether good research can be evaluated by metrics or whether originality should be assessed in other ways. In fact, competing, even conflicting arguments and views, form the very fundament for collegial processes. This fundament enables an open and solid way to scrutinize arguments and consistency of the claims made. Formal organizational arrangements structure the processes in ways to bring forward such competing arguments, for example by employing procedures with opponents, external examiners, and peer review (see also under Definition of collegiality and scrutiny in the introduction of Vol. 86).

Merton discussed conflicts over who receives credit for scientific discoveries. Among the more common explanations for such conflicts are, for instance, that science is conducted by egocentric, "quarrelsome or contentious personalities" (Merton, 1957, p. 638) searching for fame: "In any event, it should not be difficult to find *some* aggressive men of science" (Merton, 1957, p. 638). However, Merton offered an alternative explanation, namely "that these conflicts are largely a consequence of institutional norms of science" (Merton, 1957, p. 639). Norms of science stipulate that the role of the scientist is to advance knowledge with original findings. Such work receives recognition from scientific peers who constitute the collegium and define what is seen as original. He continued: "When the institution operates effectively, the augmenting of personal fame go hand in hand; the institutional goal and the personal reward are tied together" (Merton, 1957, p. 659). The processes for ascribing rewards for originality come with a great risk for conflicts. In addition, scholars' search for originality may imperil organizational recognition, as it can lead to deviant behavior and misconduct in science, particularly in stressful situations (Merton, 1957).

Lazega (2001) provided another explanation. Continuing his discussion of how not all peers are equals, he identified a group of peers who help settle conflicts. These peers are likely to be viewed as more powerful, wiser and more competent by the collegium. He noted that conflicts surface along two dimensions: niche seeking (i.e., when peers in search of "bounded solidarity" formally and informally connect with other organizational members) and status competition. Nicheseeking peers draw upon "social relations and the resources that they concentrate" as sources of power (Lazega, 2001, p. 5). This is the reason why collegiality is not a matter of being nice to each other in a tearoom setting. On the contrary, "status competition among peers can be all the more ferocious, as it is heavily personalized. Collegial committees can be as brutal as autocrats when they vote like lynch mobs" (Lazega, 2001, p. 5). Status, on the other hand, can be acquired by being "the most competent, the most popular, the most committed – all of these have some sort of status, and participate in the coordination of collective action" (Lazega, 2001, p. 6). The incapacity for self-regulation within collegiality introduces the potential for various conflicts to emerge in the competition for resources and status.

Conflicts are, in other words, an inherent part of collegiality – and by extension, scientific developments. The extent to which such conflicts facilitate or stigmatize the advancement of knowledge and innovation depends on how they are handled. Collegiality demands strong and legitimate leaders who can navigate such conflicts and turn them into constructive drivers for development (see Goodall, 2006, 2008).

#### *Parochialism in Collegiality*

A core feature to the institution of collegiality within universities is the selfgovernance of equals, striving to ensure innovative knowledge formation (Sahlin & Eriksson-Zetterquist, 2023, Vol. 86; Waters, 1989). Still, when scrutinizing inadequacies of collegiality, this claim requires further attention. Scholars within this field argue that organizing universities according to collegial principles is precisely what enables autonomous knowledge formation for the public good. For instance, Lazega (2020) reasoned how the collegial governance ideal enables innovation, in contrast to the rule- and routine-driven bureaucratic governance ideal. Yet scholars within the field of bureaucracy have claimed the opposite. Large, bureaucratically organized firms establish specialized divisions to offer the flexibility and autonomy required for innovative work and progress (Styhre, 2007). While this exception is noted, knowledge formation inherently involves activities that enable or constrain innovative thinking, which can be considered in relation to collegiality.

Kuhn (1962/1992) and Fleck (1935/1979) showed that in scientific work, groups of scientists come to share values and embrace assumptions that hinder or enable further progress. The consequences of such parochialism are that colleagues are selected or promoted based on the extent to which they share the established style of thought (Fleck, 1935/1979) or scientific paradigm (Kuhn, 1962/1992). Explaining the sociology of scientific knowledge, Kuhn (1962/1992) described how a new idea or an innovation is not easily accepted by scholars with shared assumptions about how the world functions. Rather, new findings and theories are evaluated against existing ones until intense scrutiny fails to disprove them, leading to a crisis that ultimately forces the group to accept new assumptions, which in turn provides a new shared foundation for research.

Even though the ideal may sound completely rational, specialized experts who make decisions in consensus (Waters, 1989) still control the conditions for scientific development. As Kuhn (1962/1992) explained in his postscript, when scholars within a discipline share a theory (or set of theories), they also develop group loyalty. Such loyalty and joint valuations manifest not only through accepted theories, but also problems and accepted methods for solving and explaining them. Similarly, Fleck (1935/1979) explained how science evolves in thought collectives (*Denkkollektiven*). While some traditions of knowledge formation would assert that objective facts should be applied using neutral and impartial methods, Fleck showed how the very notion of what is considered a fact is decided by social forces that over time lead to stylized solutions being seen as "truth." Such truth is neither relative nor subjective, but the result of a thought collective which organizes the acceptance of new ideas and facts across different stages: (a) a contradiction to an established idea initially seems unthinkable; (b) findings that do not align with established understandings are dismissed and remain unseen; (c) findings that are noticed are kept secret; (d) great efforts are made to explain exceptions and new results in ways that comport with established understandings; until finally, (e) "despite the legitimate claims of contradictory views, one tends to see, describe, or even illustrate those circumstances which corroborate current views and thereby give them substance" (Fleck, 1935/1979, p. 27).

This safeguarding of harmony within the thought collective functions as a safety net to get scholars to direct all their efforts toward exploring a particular problem in the prescribed way, thereby facilitating a thorough, precise and meticulous process to investigate all possibilities and options related to the problem at hand. At the same time, it inevitably protects the thought collective from challenging ideas and findings, thereby hindering innovativeness and the acceptance of ideas "not-invented-here" (Fleck, 1935/1979). As Shapin (1986) put it, scholars must rise to the task of defending their "professional vested interests" acquired through socialization within their scientific community. A negative consequence of this approach to the development of scientific facts is that ideas and perspectives that have not been invented within the collective attract little attention. To the extent that scholars are seen as loyal members of a discipline or as part of the thought collective, knowledge formation risks becoming parochial.

A remaining question concerns whether the development of thought collectives, knowledge progress in paradigms, and parochial knowledge formation are specific characteristics of the institution of collegiality. As captured by the title of Fleck's work, Kuhn and Fleck reflected upon the "genesis and development of a scientific fact"; it can be noted that the characteristics of a thought collective and parochial knowledge are related to collective mechanisms that would play out similarly in bureaucratic, enterprise and collegial systems. Yet, while bureaucratic or enterprise-oriented organizations can structurally separate research groups and assign them the task of developing ideas based on different methods, theories and their inherent values, such a separation requires someone outside the thought collective to make that decision.

Disregarding differences among various ideal types of governance, thought collectives and paradigms establishes a boundary for what is considered the right way to conduct science. A shortcoming to bear in mind is that science also risks becoming parochial, pushing away unfamiliar findings and ideas. Yet, as Fleck (1935/1979, p. 42) pointed out, there will always be transformation when "thoughts pass from one individual to another, each time a little transformed, for each individual can attach to them somewhat different associations." Thus, when a thought returns to its originator, it may not even be recognized. This local adjustment of ideas surfaces hope. Considering this transformation from the perspective of the travel of ideas as elaborated by Czarniawska and Sevón (1996)

and Sahlin-Andersson (1996), there is a constant innovativeness taking place in departments and among scholars. In the process of translating ideas into their own, and in promoting them to others, new aspects and dimensions are incorporated, thereby constantly changing and adjusting them to local settings and the questions at hand (Czarniawska & Joerges, 1996).

Although this is not the place to discuss scientific developments more generally, we note that correctives to these limitations – that is, questions about shared assumptions – are important to scientific communities and scientific developments. These include, for example, strong demands to make the research process transparent, so that it may be scrutinized or even replicated, and to open up research discussions to different audiences and research groups. From a governance perspective, this highlights how the management of research settings may allow for or limit the influence of critique and diverse perspectives. Along the vertical dimension of collegiality, parochialism is fostered if committees, leaders and decision-making processes are established by scholars with similar backgrounds, knowledge and perspectives, and if organizational boundaries set limits for bringing in additional expertise. Along the horizontal dimension, parochialism may be fostered if researchers only interact with their closest colleagues or those working in the same research tradition in activities such as reviewing, selecting experts for projects, recruiting, etc. This brings us to the importance of diversity for a wellfunctioning collegiality.

#### *Diversity, Inclusion, and Collegiality*

In recent decades, diversity and inclusion have become topics of growing interest for many organizations, partly replacing previous interest in gender issues. It has been argued that diversity is of particular interest in university settings, as higher education attracts students with different experiences and backgrounds, draws attention to contemporary political tensions, and pursues internationalization as an ideal (Desivilya et al., 2017). Another dimension of inclusion concerns how collegiality and management practices more generally involve the organizing and distribution of power and legitimacy (Lipton, 2019), surfacing claims that collegiality is still not inclusive to women. Such arguments draw upon the fact that women historically were excluded from universities, but also a prevalent understanding of collegiality as gendered – that is, a boys' club (Lipton, 2019). Likewise, Lazega (2020, p. 207) noted that "top-down collegiality often increases gender and minority discrimination." That is, inherent frictions between status competition among peers and the ambition to promote diversity and inclusion within universities require specific attention.

Extensive research shows that universities, even if claimed to be run by ideals of an "egalitarian and collegial philosophy" (Eslen-Ziya & Yildrim, 2021, p. 302) are still gendered. Women face particular difficulties when struggling to publish in high-impact journals, end up "opting out" from research to focus mainly on teaching, become targets for gendered stereotypes in career and evaluation processes (Manky & Saravia, 2021), and are excluded from central networks (Eslen-Ziya & Yildrim, 2021). In brief, academic excellence, or the "ideal academic" has been ascribed a masculine gender (Van den Brink & Benschop, 2012), thereby disadvantaging women, men who seek to strive for work-life balance (Lund et al., 2019), and scholars from the global South (Manky & Saravia, 2021). The dominance of a gendered ideal for academic excellence affects both women and men.

While university settings have their particularities relative to other organizations, an analysis acknowledging collegiality as a form of governance foregrounds some other dimensions to claims of being non-inclusive or gendered. Intertwined in the analysis of university settings as discriminatory to certain groups are diverse understandings of how to pursue a career, and in such understandings, formal and informal instructions are provided about the governance model in place. Collectively, these may play into the hands of the privileged – that is, those who seemingly have figured out how to use the system for their own benefit. Given the differences among organizational ideal types for self-regulation, combined with a form of governance that relies on peers who tend to reproduce themselves, it can be anticipated that there is a higher risk within collegial settings for discrimination against certain groups (Lazega, 2020). Here, we analyze three examples related to sexual harassment in the workplace, equal opportunity programs, and academic housekeeping.

Diversity and inclusion issues attracted increased attention in the wake of the #MeToo movement that gained traction in October 2017 when assaults within the film industry that had been silenced for many years became known to the world. These revelations foregrounded problems with sexual harassment and sexual violence in the workplace. As part of the #MeToo movement, other types of gender-related workplace mistreatment began to be discussed. In a study of career experiences at UK business schools affiliated with research-intensive universities, Fernando and Prasad (2019) interviewed female academics about their work experiences and career paths. They explicitly asked about experiences of "insulting, hostile and degrading attitudes that made them feel bullied and/ and or excluded because of their gender category" (Fernando & Prasad, 2019, p. 1572). One informant who had negative experiences wanted to warn others about the potential for harassment and get the harasser to stop. Her colleagues, however, advised her that it would be in the best interest of her career not to report "unwanted sexual attention," as she did not want to be known as a troublemaker and develop a negative reputation. She took their advice and remained silent. Experiences of sexual harassment have also been reported in field-based courses, where temporal and spatial boundaries are broken down to support new career trajectories in science. Challenging conditions provide participants with "embodied cultural capital," but if alcohol is brought into the setting, the risk of women being sexually assaulted increases (Posselt & Nuñez, 2022, p. 185).

In the study by Fernando and Prasad (2019), it was argued "that academia is a small and tight-knit community, where social capital is critical for career advancement" From such a perspective, it may be deduced that the university, and especially the collegial form of governance, leads to situations such as these. As have been reported in conjunction with the #MeToo movement, and in other studies, such transgressions are not unique in organizations with collegial governance structures, including universities. Additionally, pursuing a career inevitably involves learning the ropes (Louis, 1980) and attracting scrutiny from those who want to ensure the system is understood (Avery, 1968). Yet, this does not mean that newcomers should be victims of unwanted sexual attention, or be concerned that reporting it will jeopardize their careers.

In our second example, the university is an arena for innovativeness with an extended history of internationalization and diversity in the sense that scholars travel between different countries and work at different universities (Czarniawska & Sevón, 2008). As a method to improve internationalization and hence innovativeness, equal opportunity programs have become popular. However, such programs have been found to meet both open and more covert forms of resistance (Van Den Brink & Benschop, 2012). In a study of physics departments in the Netherlands, it was found that career progression was easier for men because they had access to informal career enablers such as mentoring programs and academic networks. To increase the number of women physics professors, corresponding formal programs were established to support their careers. Soon, however, men began to complain that their women colleagues were given access to career enablers that were unavailable to them. That is, men had not consciously recognized their established advantages (Van Den Brink & Benschop, 2012). When analyzing collegial practices, this points to the importance of considering formal as well as informal aspects, but also explore the interplay of horizontal and vertical collegiality (see Sahlin & Eriksson-Zetterquist, 2023, Vol. 86).

Equal opportunity programs are expected to lead not only to greater diversity, but also to greater inclusiveness (Dobbin & Kalev, 2022). Even though antibias training has been found to not change people's biases, to activate stereotypes rather than eliminate them, and to lead people to become complacent about their own prejudices, it is almost ubiquitous in programs to improve diversity (Dobbin & Kalev, 2018). In fact, such programs can have the opposite effect (Dobbin, 2009). Furthermore, simply having a diversity program, an equal opportunity program, or diversity officers does not lead to inclusion (Dobbin, 2009). Instead, bottomup initiatives, holding managers accountable, and mandatory training programs for managers may be more successful (Dobbin, 2009; Dobbin & Kalev, 2022). The unveiling of informal networks and ways to support the careers of certain groups may be more visible within university settings, as these are systems where researchers may have easier access. That is, discrimination is not a consequence of collegiality as a form of governance but is found in organizations with bureaucratic and enterprise forms of governance as well. Kanter (1977) was the first among many to show how gender is constructed in bureaucracies, and how privileges are connected to existing structures.

Our third example of diversity and inclusion in relation to collegiality comes from another recent discussion within academia concerning which faculty groups are being assigned service-related tasks on behalf of more career-oriented ones. This discussion is not new; for instance, previous studies have found that internal service tasks tend to be assigned to junior faculty, while senior faculty take on tasks connected to wider scholarship with the potential to attract recognition. Junior faculty report not being able to refuse roles, a development which has led to collegiality being experienced as "contrived" or "hollowed" (Macfarlane, 2007, p. 267). To an even greater extent, this has been the situation for women who historically have been assigned a large proportion of "academic housekeeping" tasks (Macfarlane, 2007; Macfarlane & Brug, 2019).

Exploring the situation of privileges and internal service within the STEM field Miller and Roksa (2020) found that white men are assigned tasks involving the most research work. While career-oriented tasks within the faculty include protected time for research, building collaborations and networks, and grant writing, service-oriented tasks include committee work, advising students, and taking care of administrative matters, and within the STEM field, training students to work in laboratory settings. In their interview study with biology PhD students working at 20 departments in the USA classified as having the "highest research activity," Miller and Roksa (2020) found that white women, African-American women and men, and PhD students self-identified as Latinx were disadvantaged in the sense that they are expected to do more service-oriented tasks and are not given access to professional networks to the same extent as white men. Similar results have been reported in China, where results of a national survey of master's students in STEM fields show that male students are provided more access to and extended more invitations to take part in research projects (Yang & Shen, 2020).

These studies relate to previous discussions where collegiality has been described as a "conspiracy of old men" (Björck, 2013; Litpon, 2019) in which established male academics who are connected in friendly and professional networks award each other research grants (Gemzöe, 2010; see also Lamont, 2009). As concluded by Miller and Roksa (2020), in launching diversity initiatives driven by good intentions, the unequal distribution of working tasks has led to a situation in which different groups of PhD students receive dissimilar training and unequal preparation for future careers within academia. To counteract this, support measures for less privileged students have been recommended to prevent the "leaky pipeline" (Yang & Shen, 2020). It must be noted, however, that such measures may backfire (Dobbin & Kalev, 2018). In terms of academic housekeeping, newcomers must learn how to operate in the work setting (e.g., a research laboratory). Furthermore, in terms of governance, clarifications regarding who should do what appear to be crucial to avoid individual overload.

Again, we can conclude that these shortcomings or limitations concern the interplay of horizontal and vertical collegiality. Moreover, they point to questions regarding how many scholars must participate for collegiality to work. Can these issues be resolved informally, or should there be regulations about participation, division of tasks, etc.? This speaks to the complementarity of governing models. On some occasions, the rules and routines provided by bureaucratic forms of governance may be used to correct shortcomings that follow from collegial reliance on social ties and relations.

A related development concerns the establishment of diversity offices, which serves as an example of universities becoming actors (Lee & Ramirez, 2023, Vol. 86). To some extent, this appears to lead to further bureaucratization and to strengthen the influence of enterprise forms of governance. While university mission statements emphasizing "gender and diversity management" have been found to be prevalent in more recently founded universities in Germany (Oertel & Söll, 2017, p. 8), in most American universities, measures to promote diversity and inclusion have resulted in the development of formal structures for diversity work (Lee & Ramirez, 2023, Vol. 86) such as diversity offices, diversity officers, new research centers, and educational programs. Moreover, most strategic plans and missions take diversity, equity and inclusion into account. Some universities even have chief diversity officers (CDO). Unlike Germany, in the USA, CDOs are mostly found at (older) elite universities with significant resources. Diversity measures target students and faculty, but also include more general commitments to ideas and ideals related to diversity within higher education more broadly as part of the "rights revolution" in the USA (Kwak et al., 2019, p. 212). Within universities, this implies that persons should not only be seen as customers or clients, but "also as citizens and humans with rights that need to be respected"; that is, diversity is an equity issue and persons have "the right not to be 'othered'" (Kwak et al., 2019, p. 212).

These efforts are being driven by broader societal interest in diversity (Kwak et al., 2019) When translated to the university setting, diversity concerns both equity and excellence.

There are appeals to fairness and justice: the previously excluded should be more thoroughly included. There are also appeals to excellence and progress: all will be more empowered from greater exposure to greater diversity. (Kwak et al., 2019, p. 214)

That is, diversity is seen as a resource, with the potential to leverage and valorize the experiences of the newly included and further strengthen organizational excellence. In Desivilya et al.'s terms (2017), diversity thus becomes a "business case" applied to improve performance and results.

Studying university governance surfaces questions such as governance by whom, for whom and for what. While programs to support less privileged groups come with certain limitations, questions also arise if efforts to formally promote diversity and inclusion by establishing bureaucratic structures just may be window dressing, with no intention to change the underlying conditions (see Gavrila et al., 2023). Governance procedures in organizations both reflect and contribute to gender (in)equality and (a lack of) diversity (see e.g., Acker, 2006; Dobbin, 2009; Kanter, 1977). Furthermore, it can be noted that irrespective of the form of governance, governance procedures include practices for excluding new groups and new thoughts – otherwise, neither diversity nor inclusion would be issues that need to be addressed. Studies of collegial practices may reveal the extent to which collegiality forms mechanisms of closure, and the extent to which combinations of collegial, democratic, bureaucratic and enterprise models may lead to further closure or to opening up for increased diversity and inclusion. Yet, the situation in collegiality where some peers become more equal than others create diversity and inclusion challenges that require attention. Those who are closer to decisionmaking bodies and have access to more information may also be ascribed higher status and legitimacy (Lazega, 2020). Inequality among peers can also result from excellence programs (Harroche & Musselin, 2023, Vol. 86; Kosmütsky & Krücken, 2023, Vol. 86) and thus challenge a fundamental collegial principle of formal egalitarianism (Waters, 1989). To ensure active and progressive work that fosters diversity and inclusion, structural inequality must be addressed.

Inclusion is a fundamental requirement for collegiality to work, as universities are becoming more heterogeneous. Van Schalkwyk and Cloete (2023, Vol. 86) showed that differences are beneficial for collegiality, as they can prevent the parochialism that often accompanies scrutiny. However, different groups must talk to each other to seek consensus in a collegial way. Heterogeneity that results in polarization and groups seeking to advance their own agendas threatens collegiality and global science (van Schalkwyk & Cloete, 2023, Vol. 86).

#### *Dark Sides or a Lack of Maintenance?*

A review of common critiques of collegiality led us to ask: Are dark sides inherent features of the governing ideal, or are they consequences of failing to maintain and properly practice collegiality? When discussing dark sides of collegiality, issues of privilege, legitimacy and power are foregrounded. Collegiality as a governance form is not democratic, but neither are bureaucratic, or enterpriseoriented forms of governance. Collegiality, when properly practiced, is a way to handle daily disagreements, tensions, debate, and scrutiny, and thus make wise decisions. This is accomplished through processes that demand both active participation and active leadership (Van Schalkwyk & Cloete, 2023, Vol. 86).

The discussion of why we should care about collegiality leads to questions regarding what parts and aspects of university collegiality are essential for this form of self-governance to function. As emphasized Vol. 86 in this special issue, we have seen a turn toward viewing universities as enterprises and structuring universities as organized actors. What remains has been described as hybrid governance (Denis et al., 2023, Vol. 87), mixed modes of governance (Parker & Jary, 1995), pockets of collegiality (Lazega 2020) or islands of collegiality (Sahlin & Eriksson-Zetterquist, 2016).

When collegiality remains only as pockets (Lazega, 2020) or islands (Sahlin & Eriksson-Zetterquist, 2016), both those who govern and the governed become less acquainted with how the system may work and its institutional foundations. A weakened collegiality and eroded faculty authority have consequences for the robustness of collegiality as a system of governance. The lack of acquaintance with the system – its main ideals and practices – can open up for the abovementioned dark sides. This also means that a weakened collegiality will have consequences for the quality of higher education and research. In the papers in this volume, the question is asked whether universities are on a path where faculty authority will continue to be eroded to the point where collegiality will inevitably fade away, or if this development can be reversed? As will be shown, increased awareness and knowledge about how collegiality is supposed to work and how it may play out in practice, can actually reverse the trend and instead strengthen faculty authority.

## **THE PAPERS IN THIS VOLUME**

In this introductory paper to Vol. 87 we have asked whether and how collegiality can be restored and revitalized. We have explored two ways forward. First, we need to open up taken-for-grantedness and elaborate why collegiality matters. Collegiality is essential for upholding independent research and teaching – that is, for academic freedom. Second, we need to address the limitations and weaknesses of collegiality. These weaknesses are not inherent to the institution of collegiality, but are limitations that deserve special attention. Like all modes of governance, collegiality needs to be actively managed and maintained. Below, we briefly preview the papers in this volume under two headings: "Maintaining collegiality" and "Revitalizing collegiality."

#### *Maintaining Collegiality*

In the first papers in this volume, Audrey Harroche and Christine Musselin explore the introduction of excellence initiatives for universities within the French system, a restructuring initiative to secure more funding for research, recruit the best researchers, and further improve the reputation of French research. To enable this, mergers among universities were implemented and more enterpriseoriented governance ideals were introduced. One of many consequences was that the former collegial recruitment process for professors was changed to follow guidelines based on enterprise-oriented ideals. Whereas newer universities implemented the new guidelines, reducing the influence of collegial practices in the process, more established universities with better reputations followed the new guidelines for a short period of time, received the funding, and then returned to their collegial systems.

While the COVID-19 pandemic provided opportunities for universities worldwide to demonstrate their capacity for rapid transformation when all activities, from teaching to meetings, shifted to digital platforms within mere days, conditions for colleagueship and community building changed accordingly. Jakov Jandrić, Rick Delbridge and Paolo Quattrone explore how these changes unfolded within a business school in the UK. The findings suggest a wide range of perspectives on collegiality, with features of horizontal collegiality perceived as playing a critical role in successful academic responses to the crisis. The findings also indicate how sustaining a collegiate environment within a university department requires a conscious choice and concerted effort from leadership and staff, particularly when decision-making primarily occurs at the center of the university, beyond the department itself.

#### *Revitalizing Collegiality?*

Another example of how collegiality is challenged but also revitalized is explored by Logan Crace, Joel Gehman and Michael Lounsbury. They investigate how faculty and students responded to a reality breakdown that occurred during their ethnography of collegial governance in a large North American university that was undergoing a strategic change initiative. Their findings suggest that a consequential process follows reality breakdowns whereby institutional inhabitants construct the severity of these events. In this particular 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. Findings confirm reality breakdowns and institutional awareness as potential drivers of institutional change. Moreover, Crace, Gehman and Lounsbury find that interpretive flexibility in collegiality contributes to making this institution unstable, and collegiality thus risks erosion when drawn upon in isolation.

Academic leadership courses may be important sites for maintaining and transforming collegiality. Course content may help open up the taken-for-grantedness of collegiality and relate it to other modes of governance. Thus, participation in such courses matters. Ravit Mizrahi-Shtelman and Gili S. Drori study these courses as settings where networks form, strengthen and transform. Course participation signals who is regarded as a colleague. Mizrahi-Shtelman and Drori compare two Israeli leadership training programs: one that trained professors and administrative staff separately, and another that trained professors and administrators together. The analysis reveals two "ideal types" of collegiality: Model A bifurcates between the professoriate and administrative staff, while Model B binds administrative and academic staff members through course composition, pedagogy, and content. The study suggests a pattern of transformation of collegiality in academia: whereas academic hierarchies are maintained between academic faculty and administrative staff and between universities and colleges, collegiality in academia is being transformed as extending beyond the boundaries of the professoriate and emphasizing a partnership approach to collegial ties.

Jean-Louis Denis, Nancy Côté and Maggie Hébert explore how manifestations of collegiality have changed within two Canadian universities. With increased emphasis on research funding and the potential to attract large grants and financing for chairs, governance has become more enterprise-oriented with a stronger emphasis on hierarchies and publication metrics. The authors show how these new forms of control within universities lead to the development of hybrid forms of governance. This in turn drives a *delocalization* of collegiality whereby faculty engage in horizontal collegiality outside the university and limit their participation in the university's vertical collegiality.

The past few decades of reforms of the Swedish university landscape have introduced more enterprise and bureaucratic modes of governance at the expense of collegiality. Kerstin Sahlin and Ulla Eriksson-Zetterquist report on a development following these reforms – namely, increased interest in collegiality and a reintroduction of collegial bodies and procedures. This development is sometimes termed "re-collegialization" by scholars, leaders within academia, and the Swedish government. Sahlin and Eriksson-Zetterquist review examples of peer reviewing, research assessments and the direct recruitment of professors and ask whether these new translations can be understood as a revitalization of collegiality or as a matter of "collegiality washing" similar to greenwashing.

#### *Outroduction*

The last paper in this volume is the result of our collective work. Within this project, we have explored ideas in workshops, both in real life, and when COVID-19 hit, online. Throughout the project, the contemporary threat to universities and their central tasks of education and knowledge formation have become more obvious. In parallel, our joint understanding of the functions of and contemporary conditions for the institution of collegiality have become more distinct. As a result of our collective work, we set out to collectively write an "outroduction." Together, we outline suggestions for a new research agenda within organization theory and higher education.

## **NOTES**

1. See https://www.v-dem.net/our-work/research-programs/academic-freedom/.

2. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/consensus#:∼:text=consensus%20%28countable%20 and%20uncountable%2C%20plural%20consensuses%29%20A%20process,exercises%20 some%20discretion%20in%20decision-making%20and%20follow-up%20action. Retrieved on December 7, 2022.

3. https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/consensus. Retrieved on December 7, 2022.

## **REFERENCES**


Bendix, R. (1945). Bureaucracy and the problem of power. *Public Administration Review*, *5*(3), 194–209.


Lamont, M. (2009). *How professors think*. Harvard University Press.


Tapper, T., & Palfreyman, D. (2010). *The collegial tradition in the age of mass higher education*. Springer.


# SECTION 1 MAINTAINING COLLEGIALITY

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## HOW TO REMAIN COLLEGIAL WHEN PRESSURE FOR CHANGE IS HIGH?

Audrey Harrochea,b and Christine Musselinb

*a Oxford Brookes University, CDPRP, UK b Sciences Po, CSO, CNRS, France*

## **ABSTRACT**

*The French higher education system has experienced reforms since the 2000s that gradually emphasized the executive power of universities and the centralization of decision-making. This culminated with the excellence initiatives (Idex) that concentrated 7.7 billion euros on only nine institutions to create "world-class" universities and made their leaders responsible for the local allocation of this substantial endowment. The universities' executives had four years to complete changes in governance in order to see their institution permanently awarded the title and the funding of Idex. The hiring process is one of the elements that this policy impacted the most within these universities, enabling leaders to create new kinds of positions and control the hiring process. However, by looking at the hiring practices within three different Idex, we will show that collegiality did not disappear but rather it evolved: in the three cases, the closest colleagues have been marginalized but decision-making remained collective and in the hands of academics chosen by the university executives. Variations in the intensity of this evolution could be observed according to two dimensions. First, the scientific reputation of the university: the higher it is, the less collegiality is transformed. Second, the level of external pressures: the less* 

**Revitalizing Collegiality: Restoring Faculty Authority in Universities Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Volume 87, 29–50**

**Copyright © 2024 by Audrey Harroche and Christine Musselin. Published under exclusive** 

**licence by Emerald Publishing Limited. These works are published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of these works (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/ licences/by/4.0/legalcode**

**ISSN: 0733-558X/doi:10.1108/S0733-558X20230000087002**

*collegial universities have relaxed their hiring practices after the evaluation that permanently granted them the label of Idex.*

**Keywords:** Top-down and bottom-up collegiality; France; universities; academic recruitment; policies of excellence; academic leaders

## **1. INTRODUCTION**

Hiring new academics is a crucial decision in universities. While the renewal or creation of a position and the affiliated profile might, in many institutions, result from a negotiation between the hiring department or laboratory and university leaders,1 the selection of the candidate generally remains a collegial decision in the hands of the closest colleagues. Therefore, peer review for promotion or hiring is often considered to be a fundamental characteristic of collegial governance (Gerhardt et al., 2023, Vol. 86; Sahlin & Eriksson-Zetterquist, 2016, p. 3).

The recent French excellence initiative offered the university leaders of the few institutions that have been selected as "excellent" and labeled "Idex" (Initiative d'excellence) the possibility to become much more involved in these processes and to challenge the role of their closest colleagues. In most of the Idex, specific positions (called "chairs2 ") have been created and funded by the budget received from having this label of excellence. Even if the creation and management of these "chairs" are just one of the many aspects that Idex universities have announced in their applications, it is worth studying for the following two reasons. First, because hiring processes are often considered to be a central indicator for collegiality as mentioned above. Second, because these new positions have now been generalized to all institutions and the ministry has promised to create 2000 of them within the next 10 years, along with the traditional positions. The Idex thus paved the way for the introduction of new career paths (Musselin, in press). These positions deter from the usual academic positions at French universities – that are civil servant positions – and generally take the form of tenure track positions. Moreover, we often observed that their profiles have been imposed by the university leaders, who also set up the hiring committees. These new positions rely on dedicated hiring processes, and finally, they give access to better working conditions and to a research package.

This involvement of executive teams in such hiring decisions seems to challenge collegiality as the peers traditionally involved in these processes are frequently bypassed. This is the issue that will be addressed and investigated in this paper. Three main points will be discussed, building on the empirical work conducted on three institutions labeled Idex.

First, we will look at what remains of the traditional collegial hiring system with the implementation of the Idex. In the literature on universities as collegial organizations, two main positions prevail. Some authors consider collegial governance and hierarchical management to be contradictory and that it is an either/or situation, while others observe more hybrid forms when some aspects of collegiality may coexist with more hierarchical forms of management. Do the new positions replace collegiality by hierarchy or combine both?

Second, research on university governance and reputation has shown that higher education institutions with a strong research reputation are more collegial (less managerial). In order to test this assumption in our case, we decided to study three Idex with different statuses. One of them already had a strong international reputation and a large and constituted research sector. For the other two, the Idex was an opportunity to become world-class, but they were not there yet. We compared how they introduced the new positions and managed them.

Finally, the Idex are good empirical cases to address the reversibility of collegiality decrease. Most studies look at how collegiality can be weakened but very rarely question whether a reverse dynamic is possible. As will be explained below, the Idex was first selected for a four-year period, at the end of which they had to pass an evaluation and convince the jury that they achieved what they planned in their applications. Some Idex succeeded (two out of the three Idex under study), some had their probation period extended and had to pass another evaluation (one in our case), while others failed entirely. From this, we could observe whether the management of the chairs has evolved after the Idex successfully passed the evaluation.

Before developing these three points, we will briefly present the French university system and the call for Idex, outline our theoretical framework and our methodology, and present our findings. In the last section, we will discuss these findings.

## **2. THE FRENCH HIGHER EDUCATION SYSTEM: RECENT TRENDS, THE INITIATIVE OF EXCELLENCE AND ACADEMIC RECRUITMENTS**

Since 2005, the French system is experiencing a vast movement of reforms aimed at increasing its performance and its visibility. We will highlight two that are particularly relevant to our study. We will present them before describing how academics are hired for civil servant positions.

#### *2.1. More Institutional Autonomy But Still a Collegial Governance*

The autonomy of universities has increased with the 2007 act entitled Freedom and Responsibility for Universities. Academic leaders have been empowered (Chatelain-Ponroy et al., 2012; Mignot-Gérard, 2019; Musselin et al., 2012) and management tools have developed in French universities. Nevertheless, it is important to bear in mind that the governance of French universities still shares many of the characteristics that define collegial organizations. For instance, university presidents and deans are still elected and not appointed, and they take over leading positions for a limited period (two terms of a maximum of four years each for university presidents). They do not have a pure hierarchical position even if they have to make decisions, set priorities, and are seen primarily as leaders. It is also interesting to note that most French university presidents chose to have a large number of vice-presidents (frequently more than 10) who are mostly academics expected to deal with a specific sector (for instance, human resources, research, internationalization, budget, digitalization, etc.). The vicepresidents must (or should) work hand in hand with the administrative office in charge of the same specific sector and are expected to defend academic perspectives in the domain they are in charge of and to relay information from the bottom to the top. Their role is even more important because in France the relationships between the deans and the president are traditionally difficult, the former rarely playing the role of intermediaries between the top and the bottom of the university (Chatelain-Ponroy et al., 2012; Mignot-Gérard, 2006). Finally, the role of the deliberative bodies remains important in French universities and their composition, even if narrower since the 2007 act, still aims to be largely representative.

#### *2.2. The Search for Excellent Universities*

Second, since 2009 the French government has launched an excellence initiative (called Programme d'Investissement d'Avenir, PIA). Four waves of highly selective calls for proposals have been initiated between 2010 and 2022. The first wave focused on excellence in higher education and research. It entailed calls for research labs of excellence (Labex), research equipment of excellence (Equipex), and calls for excellent institutions (Idex). The later call has been organized to identify excellent universities (that are labeled "Idex") and provide them with an important complementary budget. Up to €7.7 billion were allocated through the four rounds of this Idex call.3

Excellent scientific performance was a necessary condition for an institution to be qualified as an Idex but the transformation of governance was the real decisive factor. The Idex call served the on-going restructuring of the French university landscape. No individual institutions, but only consortia of institutions (universities and/or *grandes écoles*) located on the same territory were allowed to jointly apply for this call, and they were expected to propose a strong governance of the consortium. Until 2019,4 this strong governance meant setting priorities and implementing them, adopting an integrated management of the consortium that most of the time resulted in a merger. However, it did not mean changing the statutes of the university, the mode of designation of the president and deans, or the role and composition of the deliberative bodies. The applying university leaders should convince the jury that the future institution will reach a "critical" size and will be a complete university with all the disciplines; while many French universities have a strong disciplinary orientation, either in humanities and social sciences or in experimental sciences and medicine. They also have to demonstrate how they will implement this strong governance and be able to identify priorities and make decisions. Currently, eight of the nine confirmed Idex are new institutions born from the merger of the member institutions from the former applying consortium. These double expectations have sometimes led to universities being labeled Idex which were not the most scientifically predominant within the French higher education system. Some were even selected over some of the most renowned Parisian establishments.

In order to secure the additional funding attached to this label the selected consortia had to prove, after four years, that a new integrated institution had been created and that it benefited from a strong governance. The scientific priorities announced in the Idex project must have been set and specific devices developed in order to selectively allocate the Idex budget to those considered to be the best researchers, or those proposing the best teaching programs. The labeling of some universities as Idex is thus expected to increase the differentiation of the French system by the concentration of supplementary resources on a few institutions as well as the internal differentiation within each Idex (Harroche, 2021).

Because the internal selective allocation of resources must reflect the Idex strategic priorities, the leaders of these universities are expected to make top-down decisions. We therefore expect collegiality to be challenged and the range of decisions made by consensus among peers to be reduced. Especially in the case of hiring processes when new types of positions have been created.

#### *2.3. Traditional Collegial Hiring Processes*

Before describing what we observed in the three Idex, it is necessary to detail the traditional processes that were used until recently to recruit academics at French universities. These processes concern civil servant positions as *maîtres de conférences* (first permanent stage in their career) or professors. They follow different steps.

First, there must be a decision to open or create a position and define its profile. Reopening an academic permanent position is a decision made at the departmental level most of the time, rarely discussed or changed when it is presented to the university council. Nevertheless, these positions have to be negotiated if the university leadership wants to reallocate a vacant position to a new department. It is also the case for creations that are negotiated at the dean or presidency levels (Musselin, 2005/2009, Chapter 1). These arbitrations are usually made based on the teaching needs of the faculties. The positions are advertised with information on the courses that need to be given and on the expectations of the research unit the new academic will join. The *maîtres de conférences* are selected if they fit with the teaching and research needs.

Then, an ad hoc hiring committee is set by the concerned department. This committee is made up of a 50/50 split between academics from the recruiting university and academics from other higher education institutions. This composition must be approved by the university council but it generally agrees. When the committee meets, it first selects some candidates on their applications and invites a few of them for an interview, before ranking them.

This ranking is submitted to a university council that in theory can refuse it but the conditions for doing so are so limited that it rarely happens. The first ranked candidate is invited to join the university and, if they accept, the process is over because there is no negotiation about the working conditions or the salary: the candidate is hired as a civil servant according to a national salary scale. We will show that the new positions created by the Idex largely depart from this traditional process.

## **3. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND**

We will draw on two important contributions from the literature on collegiality. The first deals with vertical collegiality and the codes of governance (Sahlin & Eriksson-Zetterquist, 2023, Vol. 86). In the literature observing the decline of collegiality in academia, it is common to oppose collegial and hierarchical relationships (empowerment of academic leaders, bureaucratic rules replacing professional norms, etc.) or to point at the introduction of competition and market-based regulation (selective allocation of resources, rankings, etc.). Both hierarchy and market go hand in hand with an increase in managerial instruments and behaviors threatening collegial norms. Most of the time, collegiality is thus presented as distinct from hierarchy, market, or managerial governance. Some authors (for instance, Deem et al., 2007; Tapper & Palfreymann, 2010) consider that collegiality is incompatible with other forms of governance, that is, the more hierarchical/managerial, or market-based the governance is, the less collegial it becomes. But others (Mignot-Gérard et al., 2022; Whitley, 2008) observe that hybrid forms of governance emerge and that combinations – rather than oppositions – in modes of governance should be considered. Within this second group of authors, Lazega and Wattebled (2011) suggest introducing another possibility between hierarchical/managerial and collegial governance, which they call top-down collegiality in contrast with bottom-up collegiality, that is, when peers meet together and take decisions among equals. Top-down collegiality occurs in situations when leaders are entitled to make decisions on their own but seek legitimacy. In their study of a diocese, the two authors observed that the bishop, who also is a priest and therefore a peer but holds a hierarchical position, involves some priests he has chosen as counselors in the decision-making process. The recourse to selected peers is thus expected to legitimize the decisions vis-á-vis the peers at the bottom of the diocese. Looking at the specific case of academic hiring, we will explore whether traditional collegiality (or bottom-up collegiality in Lazega & Wattebled terms) has been reduced, and whether it has been replaced by hierarchical/managerial, or topdown collegial governance.

The second contribution deals with the relationships between the degree of collegiality in the hiring processes and the position and ambition of the different Idex within the higher education field. As mentioned above, although the strengthening of governance has played a major role in the selection of the Idex, they all have a strong scientific reputation, albeit some stronger than others. Some Idex are composed of institutions that have a long tradition of excellent academic reputation and were already well-ranked on the international rankings. Others only had a national reputation and thanks to the Idex aimed to become world-class: they consider their selection as an opportunity that they cannot miss.5 According to different authors, collegiality should be more threatened in these less recognized institutions (Paradeise & Thoenig, 2013; see Gumport, 1993, for the USA; see Camerati Morrás, 2014, for the UK). One of the common explanations they provide for this is linked to the weight of research in more prestigious institutions and the power of negotiation of reputed academics, the ones providing the institution with their reputation but also attracting third-party resources. Imposing decisions against their will could be detrimental to the university because they could try to leave for another organization and this would be detrimental to the reputation of the institution. In less reputed institutions, the power of the faculty staff is lower, and they are more dependent on the university leaders. We would therefore expect the less reputed of the Idex to exhibit less collegiality in their hiring decisions than the more reputed ones.

Building on Camerati Morrás (2014) who also stressed that collegiality is more at threat in institutions seeking a higher reputation, we will investigate whether the level of collegiality varies when reputation evolves. In studying the impact of the research assessment exercise (RAE) on four UK university departments, Camerati Morrás (2014) observed that the governance of these departments had become managerial in all cases but also noted variations. The heads of departments adopted a managerial-hierarchical governance when they aimed to improve their results in the RAE but they were managerial-collegial for the best-evaluated departments. He moreover observed that once a managerial-hierarchical department improved its RAE situation, it tended to become managerial-collegial. We thus expect that once an Idex aspiring to a higher status has been definitively labeled as an Idex and supplementary resources have been permanently attributed to it, the pressure for both the recognition of excellence and producing internal differentiation can reduce. At this point, more collegial governance may be again introduced.

## **4. METHODOLOGY**

Interviews have been conducted in three Idex. We will call them Middle-Range 1, Middle-Range 2 and High-Status. Middle-Range 1 has been studied by Audrey Harroche for her PhD (Harroche, 2021). One of her chapters precisely deals with these new positions and her results suggested to look at the same issue in two other Idex in order to compare with what she observed at Middle-Range 1. Therefore, interviews have been conducted at Middle-Range 2 and High-Status in 2022. The research lead at Middle-Range 1 helped to identify who should be interviewed in the two other Idex to address the questions we had on the introduction of chairs. They have been conducted with the university presidents, the Idex administrative staff, the human resources heads of department, research laboratory directors, excellence chair laureates, and for High-Status the directors of the *grandes écoles* of this university. In the three cases, the interviews have been complemented with various written sources (application calls, letters of acceptance or rejection, different council's reports etc.). It is important to note that the three universities are the product of a merger. It was clearly an objective in the applications that Middle-Range 1 and Middle-Range 2 submitted in response to the Idex call. High-Status applied with a less ambitious institutional transformation but when they went through the evaluation after four years, the international jury extended the probationary period until they went for a merger.

Middle-Range 1 has a solid research reputation but was ranked quite low in the Shanghai rankings. Even if its selection as Idex was not completely surprising, other more reputed institutions were more expected to be included than Middle-Range 1 on the final list but they finally failed or have not been confirmed after four years. At Middle-Range 1, the ambition of the presidents of the three universities that merged to create the new institution was crystal clear. They had been working together for quite a long time before the Idex call, and they were collectively pushing for the merger and the transformation of their institutions into one international research university. The team at the head of the merged university and in charge of the Idex project was particularly engaged in the project and couldn't envisage that their institution would not be confirmed four years later. To stack all the odds in their favor, they carefully followed the implementation of the project they had announced in their application.

Middle-Range 2 shows rather similar characteristics. The institutions that formed this university were on the verge of merging when they applied for the Idex call and the leaders also very carefully followed all the implementation processes of their project during the probationary period. As it was for Middle-Range 1, the merger was completed very quickly after the university was selected as Idex. This merger only involved three universities and that has probably facilitated the implementation of an integrated governance.

The situation is rather different for High-Status, the merger concerns a reputed university and some *grandes écoles*. It took quite a long time to conduct this process and this explains why High-Status was not among the first selected Idex, despite its very robust scientific reputation, and resulted in a longer probationary period. Some of the institutions of this Idex had been present among the 100 first institutions of the Shanghai ranking from its creation. Its scientific capacity is extremely strong. This Idex has finally been confirmed by the international jury.

The interviews were led chronologically in order to collect data starting from the conception of the human resources strategy within the Idex application call framework, up to how the positions were managed at the time of the interviews. In doing so, the introduction of new positions and their evolution over time was traced. The questions enquired about how the hiring process was designed in each project, how the first positions were filled once the universities obtained the Idex label and endowment, how the other positions followed and were managed, what role they played in the Idex evaluation and how these positions were managed after that. The interviews with the laureates of the chairs were also led chronologically asking about their perspective on the recruitment process from how they heard about the position, to their current occupation. The data mining was done according to what type of actors were involved in the hiring process and making the decisions, the type of processes put in place, the criteria applied to select the candidates, the evolution of these variables over time, and the presence of resistance.

Through the study of new hiring practices in these three Idex universities, we'll see how this policy may affect collegiality bearing in mind their temporal aspects given the precise Idex timeframes.

## **5. THREE DIFFERENT WAYS OF IMPLEMENTING NEW POSITIONS**

As mentioned above, all Idex took the opportunity that arose from their success to create positions (called "chairs") that are not ruled by the French civil servant status and do not follow the process described above. They took different names (chairs of excellence in some cases, "red carpet" chairs in others, etc.) and do not follow exactly the same rules in each Idex although they all aim to attract "excellent" academics. The creation of these chairs and the new hiring processes were announced in the applications for the Idex calls but had never been discussed in the universities' collective bodies, even in institutions where the local culture was described as particularly collegial (Mignot-Gérard, 2012). This is because the university leaders were under pressure timewise to send applications6 but also wanted to preserve the confidentiality of their ideas.

We will describe what we observed in each case, starting with the more extreme situations, those where the hiring decisions were the more centralized and controlled by university leaders.

#### *5.1. Middle-Range 1: The Chairs of the University President*

At Middle-Range 1, the three universities merged, and a foundation was created to receive and manage the Idex funding. Only the university leaders and external partners of the Middle-Range 1 project were included in the foundation governing bodies. The deans are excluded as well as the representatives of staff and students. All the Idex resources are allocated by the foundation through application calls: the Middle-Range 1 foundation activity is dedicated to the design, management, and evaluation of projects for funding.

This foundation has set up a new recruitment circuit. Two types of positions have been created: the chairs of excellence and the rising star chairs, leading to new hiring processes. The first ones aim to attract internationally recognized researchers by giving them resources to settle themselves and their team, within a local research center. These chairs are appointed for a period of two years and are renewable once. At the end of the contract, a permanent position is provided as long as the laureates reach the expected performances. The "rising stars" application calls are kept for more junior researchers with 5–10 years of experience after their PhD. These positions also come with resources dedicated to research activities for two years, renewable once. They are less well-endowed than the chairs of excellence and do not systematically lead to a proposal for tenure position, even if this possibility is mentioned in the application calls.

The Middle-Range 1 foundation board meeting design the application calls for chairs and advertise them in English in order to reach a foreign audience. Most of the time, these calls were completely open. However, because the executive teams had control over the positions' profiles, they sometimes defined the disciplinary profiles according to the priorities set in the Idex application in order to make sure that they would be able to deliver what they announced when the evaluation takes place after four years. Once they received the candidatures, a selection committee was set up. Half of the members were external, but they also included members of the university governance. Some local academics were designated; however, they did not include the faculty deans and/or the laboratory directors systematically. Colleagues that the laureates were supposed to join were also excluded. The following extract from the Middle-Range 1 project shows that emphasis is put on the committee being external to the local community:

junior and/or senior fellows will be hired on the basis of an open and competitive procedure: implementation of a "headhunting committee," job description and international advertising (calls for proposals), selection of candidates by selection committees composed of external academics and with an external chair, invitation of the preselected candidates to give an oral presentation within the university. The Steering Committee will ultimately decide on the allocation of such packages, on the basis of the recommendation of the selection committee, interesting salaries and work conditions can be negotiated in the framework of a temporary contract. After a result-orientated final contract period evaluation, these fellows may get permanent positions as lecturers, professors or researchers within the university or the other IdexF partners, after passing the public recruitment procedures in line with legal regulations. The position levels and salaries will be individually examined and adjusted with incentive and adjusted with incentive awards in order to retain the most promising talents. The university commits itself to offer every year at least 10 vacant permanent positions, reserved for this final recruitment.7

Fearing reactions from the unions and the academic community, attention has been paid to developing a selection process relying on application calls and systematically involving ad hoc committees of academics. But as shown in the following quote, the university leaders wanted to legitimize the quality of the process by inviting members coming from the European Union experts list to sit on hiring committees and avoiding internal interplay. This interviewee also explains that they put a lot of emphasis on the quality of the committees and their role in the jury in order to dissimulate the role of the university governance in the final decisions:

Application calls, therefore selection by the outside to say that it is not me who decides. That way, there is no possible criticism from the unions, nor from the researchers. Because the researchers can say: "yes, it's because it comes from his laboratory." That's not true, it's given to the outside world and they choose.

Question: Even when it's an application for a recruitment? For a chair? It is examined by an ad hoc jury…


In fact, the final say was in the hand of the foundation and its leaders who chose the person they wanted to hire among the ranked candidates. The marginalization of the deans led to tensions between the faculties and the university leaders, especially at the end of the chair contracts when the time came to offer permanent positions to the laureates. The decisions made by university leaders about these positions ignored the teaching needs and the human resource plans already in place. Nevertheless, the science faculty succeeded once to block some tenure decisions made by the Idex, using a legal argument,8 that allowed them to preempt the faculty positions that were about to be taken away from them, making the chair laureates no longer eligible for tenure.

You know, we're a big university. Every year we have a lot of positions. At some point, we [the presidential team] just have to decide, "This is the way it is." So, either you like it or you don't, but that's the way it is. And you know when it doesn't please, it doesn't last long. If we pay attention whether everybody likes it or not, we'll be better off.

#### Question: Who dislike it, at which level?


But it was rather exceptional and, as shown in this quote, the university leaders considered themselves to be legitimate in imposing their decisions and did so each time they could.

#### *5.2. Middle-Range 2: The Project-based Chairs*

Middle-Range 2 developed similar procedures to Middle-Range 1. When the universities merged, a directorate dedicated to the Idex project was created directly under the direction of the university leaders. It manages the Idex funds mostly through application calls. Two of these calls are also dedicated to hiring: the junior and senior chairs. They provide access to what is called "red carpet" facility offering a "welcome package" to the laureates which covers their salaries and those of their research team for three years. They can be renewed on a case-bycase basis. The Middle-Range 2 project describes these new positions as follows:

The reinforcement of excellence in research at the University requires both attracting junior talents and replacing senior scholars as they retire, by offering "welcome packages" in a context of strong international competition. The so-called "red carpet" facility will be composed of chairs and post-doc fellowships meant to enable the university to offer internationally competitive salaries and thereby address one of the biggest obstacles to the international competitiveness of French universities. In order to be able not only to attract, but also retain excellent researchers, specific and complementary tools are foreseen in the instrument "A policy of talent management within the university."9

It is the Middle-Range 2 directorate that takes care of the design, the publicization, and the management of these chairs. Like Middle-Range 1, the selection process puts a strong emphasis on having external members that should be "international" and chosen by the university leaders. The Middle-Range 2 project stipulates that

once the number of profile of chairs and post-docs is fixed, an international call will be issued and candidates will be selected based on reports by international experts and a defence of preselected researchers in an open seminar. A fast-track process will be exceptionally used to allow reactivity for retaining a promising talent or recruiting someone in a climate of particularly strong competition.10

The international attribute of these juries comes from their involvement in European academia, and the chair selection process is partly subcontracted with a European institution. All the applications are sent to this organization that produces a first evaluation. Then the Middle-Range 2 university leaders set up a committee with internal and external members in charge of the final selection considering the reviews coming from the European institution.

The creation of these new positions is clearly a strategic decision with the objective of securing the achievement of the projects announced in the application for Idex. One of the Middle-Range 2 vice-presidents explains that the control they gain through these chairs is especially useful to better align recruitment with the priorities set by the governance for the Idex. In that sense, it strengthens the universities' executive power and allows top-down decisions, imposed on the departments and research labs:

It is in this type of position that the institutional strategy and priorities are best expressed. We try to do it for regular recruitments, we ask the faculties to send us job descriptions with points that refer to the institution's strategy. But behind this, we have very little control over the selection committees …. We have no guarantee that recruitment will be able to support what has been set for the university site strategy. On these chair devices we have a better … I wouldn't say control … but a guarantee that in the end the recruitment will go in the direction of the establishment strategy and will have an effect on the establishment strategy. (Extract from an interview with one of the Middle-Range 2 vice-presidents)

The university leaders control the process by opening positions without specifying any discipline. They set up a committee of peers, internal and external to the university, but this committee received applications from candidates in all disciplines and had to compare and rank them. One of the Middle-Range 2 faculty deans explained that under these conditions, collectively deciding upon the "best" application was not possible. Because the candidates to compare were coming from different disciplines, their projects were not comparable. In order to review and rank them, the only thing to do was to select those reflecting the priorities set in the Idex project. This is what he calls a "political" ranking of the candidates:

Everyone comes with interesting and valuable projects. So, then you have to choose between the projects. And, you know, it's very difficult to compare a project in the field of health, a project in aeronautics and a project in archaeology. All three projects are interesting but it's hard to compare them, you don't compare things that are of different nature. And ranking the candidates is mandatory, but the ranking… it is political ranking. (Extract from an interview with one of the Middle-Range 2 faculty deans)

As at Middle-Range 1, the introduction of these chairs goes hand in hand with a more centralized decision-making process, and the deans of the faculties are set aside from these new hiring circuits:

You will say to me: "how do we recruit through the Idex?" For years, even though I've been dean of the faculty since 2009, I don't know who sits on the Idex board. So, the Idex for me is a totally opaque thing. The president of the university at the time was a friend of 40 years, we were students together, we were interns together, we were heads of clinics together, we were hospital professors together, so if you want, he's not someone… I've always done all his election campaigns, I've done his meetings, I've put up his posters, so it's not a… but I've always told him that it was a joke.

Question: Yes, okay he's not an opponent.

So, the Idex is a rather opaque thing and the way Idex funds are distributed is not transparent, I don't know what my colleagues whom you have already interviewed have told you. That's my opinion on the Idex, I've been in an important position for 12 years and I don't know how the Idex works. (Extract from an interview with a dean at Middle-Range 2)

This also led to resistance and conflicts. One of the faculties preferred to lose staff positions rather than absorbing hires that they were not involved with from the start. Despite resistance, some decisions were again forced into the academic community.

#### *5.3. High-Status: More Negotiated Hiring Decisions*

High-Status is quite different from the two others. First, the confirmation of the Idex has taken more time. We noted above the expectations of the jury in terms of governance. In this case, the institutions composing the consortium did not merge during the four first years and this has been a major issue for the first Idex evaluation in 2016.11 High-Status' project got a C, the worst score, in terms of human resource strategy. The jury reproached the university leaders for not using the Idex funds for salaries and regretted that the human resource policies of the different institutions in the consortium could not be completely homogenized as the merger was not completed.

Even though this merger was an explicit and ultimate goal of the High-Status project it has been a long and complicated process that was only recently completed. While Middle-Range 1 and Middle-Range 2 only involved the merger of universities, High-Status included *grandes écoles* as well as a university. The former agreed to merge if they could keep their legal identity which became possible in December 2018 after the French Ministry created a new category of institutions, the Public Experimental Establishment (EPE). Within High-Status, the *grandes écoles* are thus guaranteed control over their employment decisions. The university president cannot decide by themselves: an important point for the directors of the *grandes écoles*:

It has taken us a number of years to develop a legal framework where we are both in and out of it. So, I don't say that it is simple, but it is like that. So, you have to understand it or you won't understand anything about High-Status. So High-Status is an EPE that chains together autonomous employment perimeters, but to answer your question, this does not mean that we do not have a common HR strategy. To the Idex jury, and even to ourselves, we say that the overlapping of employer perimeters does not prevent coordination and even makes it necessary to have places where the needs are collegially expressed. (Extract from an interview with the president of a High-Status Grande Ecole)

This also impacted the governance of the Idex project. For High-Status, no specific structure has been created to manage Idex funds. They are handled by collective bodies, representing numerous different stakeholders, that coordinate the project and monitor its advancement. The decisions regarding the chairs are the result of discussions in a collegial council where the leaders of the different entities of High-Status meet.

I think it's collegial, frankly. No, but just imagine! I am a small director of an IUT (university institute of technology) and I am at the same table as X (a director of a grande école) and we talk to each other and we can converge. (…) The steering committee, or the Idex, is a space where everyone expresses themselves and we defend our positions and then if there are convergences we work together and it's not each of us have our own staff. (Extract from an interview with an IUT director at High-Status)


*Table 1.*ComparativeTable.

They decided that the chairs should not be completely new positions, but should be allocated to some of the civil servant academics the university has hired according to the traditional processes. They thus defined the profiles of the positions to be opened or created, in agreement with the deans and the research labs, set-up ad hoc committees at the department level and recruited *maîtres de conférences* or professors. But, they then opened the possibility for the hired candidates to apply for a "chair" that will provide them with supplementary resources, including the possibility of hiring doctoral and post-doctoral researchers. These candidates are thus tenured straight away but have better working conditions, extra funding and time away from teaching. The decision about which positions will be turned into chairs is nevertheless not left to the departments. As mentioned in the following extract from the High-Status end of probation period evaluation report, the final call is made by the High-Status leaders after consultation with peers such as directors of labs and representatives of the concerned *grandes écoles* when one of their new recruits is proposed as chair:

in the case of the Excellence research chair program, jobs provided by the ministry to the ComUE, or jobs directly related to the management of the Idex project, the Idex steering committee is directly in charge, with help of a special workgroup gathering all Research Directors or VP of the Members when their human resources are involved.12

The differences between the three cases are summed up in Table 1, in which we summarize the different processes and compare them with the traditional ones.

## **6. DISCUSSION**

Our findings show a common trend in the three cases, that is, a stronger involvement of the university leaders in hiring decision-making. But we also observe rather important differences between the three cases that merit explanation.

#### *6.1. From Bottom-Up to Top-Down Collegiality*

In the three cases, the new hiring processes leading to the allocation of a "chair" challenge the bottom-up traditional collegiality. The close colleagues are much less involved compared to the usual processes in both the definition of the profile and in the choice of the candidates, while university leaders have a strong say in these decisions. More emphasis is put on the research needs than on teaching, which is still rather unusual in most French universities.

Nevertheless, in the three cases, the choice of the candidates is not a pure hierarchical decision made by the president. None of the new procedures implemented in the three Idex completely differ from the usual ones: in each case a profile is defined, the expected requirements in research and teaching are widely published, and a committee of academics is set-up that examines the applications and ranks the candidates. The whole process is managed by the leaders of the university rather than by the closest future colleagues. Elaborated procedures have been designed in order to try and preempt resistance to this change. For instance, at Middle-Range 1 and Middle-Range 2, university leaders have the final word about the composition of the hiring committees, and they defend the legitimacy of these committee members by emphasizing their academic reputation and their internationality. University leaders also legitimize their role in these processes by arguing that they are themselves academics and thus peers even if they are also leaders (i.e., ex-peers if we follow Aust et al., 2021). In the three cases, they could rely on their scientific credibility: even if they are not the most renowned in their field, they benefited from a reliable scientific reputation. They control the decision-making processes, but they argue that it remains in the hands of academics: themselves and the solicited colleagues sitting in the committees, even if they are not the same as for traditional processes. They can also claim that the quality is guaranteed as it is opened up to international applicants and reviewers.

This redefinition of collegiality is therefore very similar to what Lazega and Wattebled (2011) describe as top-down collegiality, that is, a management tool creating "collegial pockets" where members of the "committees assisting the official leader are chosen with an eye to gaining support for policies that can be decided autocratically as well as through discussion" (Lazega & Wattebled, 2011, e72). The decisions made are not purely hierarchical, they involve peers and as such are deemed to be collegial, but they do not involve the closest colleagues. Despite the fact that in the three Idex universities under study the university leaders chose those who will get these exceptional positions, they do not make the decisions alone. New arenas for collective discussion among selected peers are created in order to advise the university governance, hence the strengthening of the universities' executive power regarding academic recruitment goes along with the implementation of top-down collegiality. This need for legitimization can probably be related to the fact that in France university leaders are elected rather than appointed and have less scope than in other countries to develop a hierarchical management. Top-down collegiality allows them to make decisions under the cover of the peers they select.

#### *6.2. Explaining the Differences Among the Three Cases by Status*

While the executive teams are more involved in the hiring process overall and all rely on top-down collegiality, we observed differences between the three cases. More specifically, Middle-Range 1 and Middle-Range 2 have developed very similar processes that excluded the deans from the decision-making process and allowed the hiring of academics under a new status. A parallel hiring process has been implemented from scratch creating two different recruitment pathways and types of position. At High-Status, however, the transformation is less drastic. Deans were not put aside and academics are still recruited as civil servants. An extra step has been added to the usual recruitment procedure where extra resources and time away from teaching are offered to some of the new *Maîtres de Conférences*' or professors elected by their closest peers. In other words, High-Status offers privileged working conditions to some academics without creating a two-tier system like Middle-Range 1 and Middle-Range 2.

Thus, High-Status on the one hand and Middle-Range 1 and Middle-Range 2 on the other, differ in the role given to the deans and department heads and in the degree of difference between the new chairs and the traditional positions. On both dimensions, High-Status remains closer to the usual governance model than the two other institutions. This confirms the conclusions of many authors (Camerati Morrás, 2014; Gumport, 1993; Paradeise & Thoenig, 2013) who have observed that universities seeking a higher reputation are more prompt to adopt new strategies to cope with environmental pressures and tend to adopt more vertical governance. By contrast, highly reputed universities are more resistant to change and tend to remain collegial.

The observed variations are thus related to the different statuses of these universities. Middle-Range 1 and Middle-Range 2 are striving for a higher scientific reputation. They are not internationally renowned and were not very high in the Shanghai ranking in 2011 when the Idex policy was launched. For them, this application call was an opportunity that cannot be missed, especially as excellence will not be evaluated on scientific performance alone. The priority given to the governance criterion is an advantage for Middle-Range 2 and Middle-Range 1, which aspire to improve their position and can more easily comply with what is required by the Idex jury because they only involve universities. Once labeled Idex, they have implemented brand new hiring circuits excluding deans' faculty and built around top-down decisions that have mostly been imposed despite resistance.

High-Status, by contrast, gathers some of the most renowned French institutions and therefore many famous scientists and among them Nobel prize winners. This makes High-Status a bottom-heavy establishment in which many academics have negotiation power. The large and reputed research labs in physics and biology are central actors and they cannot be as easily bypassed. Their members are particularly involved in international networks and collaborations. The High-Status leaders do not have the legitimacy to choose and impose future colleagues on some of the most respected scientists in the world. With the latter being civil servants and having a rather low income, it was also not simple to introduce positions with a different statute. Finally, obtaining the label "Idex" was important for High-Status but not as vital as for Middle-Range 1 and Middle-Range 2: the Idex resources have to be related to the level of grants individual High-Status academics collect at the national and European level. The Idex endowment and label were not important enough incentives for High-Status leaders to risk a strong internal resistance. The chair system has thus been introduced but the modalities are less vertical, result from more negotiations and do not exclude the deans. In accordance with the authors mentioned above, the collegiality at High-Status has been preserved by this already excellent reputation and the weight of research activities. The structural specificity of High-Status involving a university and some *grandes écoles* further accentuated this moderated implementation of the chairs and made the evolution of hiring practices more gradual.

#### *6.3. Variations of Collegiality Over Time and External Pressures*

The effects of the universities' status on collegiality must also be considered over time, especially regarding the specific Idex timeframe. As our study was carried out some years after the three Idex have been granted, we were able to ask questions about the evolution of the chair system after the positive four-year evaluation at Middle-Range 1 and Middle-Range 2.

In both cases, we observed that once the evaluation was passed with success and the label of Idex definitively obtained, both partly relaxed the central control over hiring decisions. It is as if the confirmation allowed university leaders to reduce the pressure, temper the centralization of decisions, and favor more inclusive exchanges.

In particular, the role of the deans at Middle-Range 1 and Middle-Range 2 evolved since the evaluation. Initially marginalized, they resisted the implementation of the project and asked to be considered as actors of the new projects instead of just having to absorb their effects. They made some claims, sometimes in open disputes, but their place only evolved after the Idex has been confirmed. Immediately after the positive evaluation, the process leading to the creation of chairs better took into account the human resource plan of the faculties and their teaching needs. Most of the new positions are now orientated toward a subject or a discipline and the deans are looped into the decision-making processes from the start. This also applies to the tenuretrack positions the French ministry has recently opened in France for all universities volunteering for them. Middle-Range 2 has asked for some of these positions, and this time they do not ask for a first review of the candidatures by a European institution. The human resources department handles these recruitments, not only the directorate in charge of the Idex budget:

So the junior chairs have evolved since last year to pre-recruitment chairs, so we are …. So we don't say it because it's not very nice … Well … the community doesn't like it, but basically it's a kind of tenure track. They're supposed to lead to professorships here. (…) The first calls for applications for these chairs were launched last year.

Question: Okay, so the call for projects is not discipline oriented?


This loosening of the previously centralized processes is only true to a certain extent. At Middle-Range 1, the foundation still manages the chairs and, each year, one of the chairs is not discipline oriented. At Middle-Range 2, the governance gave up control over the junior chair, but the senior chairs are still completely managed by the directorate of Middle-Range 2 and follow the former procedures.

These relative but noticeable evolutions shed some light on the processual aspect of collegiality, an aspect which is not often mentioned in the literature. It confirms Camerati Morras' (2014) work on UK university departments that became managerial-collegial instead of managerial-hierarchical after they improved their RAE evaluation. With the Idex, several practices regarding hiring have been done and then undone. These changes are directly related to the Idex instrument's timeframe: the pressure to obtain results was quite high before the evaluation for the institutions who saw this policy as an unmissable opportunity to secure more resources, increase their reputation, and be on the road toward being a world-class organization. When the pressure came down, university leaders relaxed the vertical intervention on hiring decisions.

## **7. CONCLUSION**

As in many other countries, the recent reforms in France have affected some of the collegial characteristics of universities. Their administration has developed and professionalized while academic leaders have been empowered and are expected to act as managers. The call for Idex is one of the most recent illustrations of this dynamic. It strengthened the university's executive power and expected Idex leaders to selectively allocate supplementary resources in a concentrated and unequal way (Harroche, 2021). They could, for instance, use the Idex funding to hire new staff and this was an important evolution in the French system where university leaders were never directly involved in the selection of the candidates but rather validated the choices made by ad hoc hiring committees within the faculties.

By studying the hiring practices in three universities labeled Idex we saw that all their leaders have used the new opportunities given by this policy, although they did not all enact it in the same way. We especially observed variations depending on the universities' status. When institutions, such as Middle-Range 2 and Middle-Range 1, had a lot to win from being labeled as Idex, they tended to extensively resort to these new resources and created completely new hiring processes, mostly under their control. For them, the Idex is the opportunity to step up in the hierarchy and to climb up the ladder of reputation dominated by long-time prestigious Parisian establishments. Succeeding is a must, and university leaders have coped with the external pressure by changing practices quickly (cf. Paradeise & Thoenig, 2013) and implementing new devices without much consideration to the claims coming from their academic community. However, once the excellence label and endowment have been secured and the university's reputation has increased, the pressure could decrease. As a consequence, the new recruitment procedures are amended to better include the academic community, especially the deans of the faculties. In doing so, these two Idex tend to adopt characteristics that we observed at High-Status, the university already very visible on the international scene. Its leaders maintained most of the hiring procedures already in place and did not set aside the faculty's needs in order to implement a new recruitment process. High-Status's reputation is so outstanding that they have less to win through the Idex: radical modifications of their practices were not worth it and would create a lot of tension given the scientific legitimacy of many of their academics. Nevertheless, High-Status has introduced the possibility to provide more resources for research activities and time away from teaching to the new civil servant academics they recruited, when university leaders considered they were among the best new recruits.

As a whole, the Idex calls has succeeded in increasing the internal differentiation within the Idex, while scientific merit has been used by university leaders to legitimize these inequalities in recognition. By empowering university leaders, the call for Idex also encroached on the decision-making power of lay academics and thus threatened bottom-up collegiality. Nevertheless, we observed that it transformed the nature of collegiality rather than replaced it by hierarchical/managerial relationships. The chairs that have been introduced in the three Idex first of all aim to increase the academic reputation and the attractiveness of the universities. The new hiring processes do not strongly rely on the local academics and their preferences but they all involve academics and are driven by scientific objectives. Thus, the intervention of university leaders in the hiring processes can be described as a switch from "bottom up" to "top down" collegiality, as described by Lazega and Wattebled (2011). In order to implement these changes, all Idex university leaders had to sustain academics' professional norms and practices to a certain extent. To do so, they developed top-down collegiality: they nominated international academics, outlined the scientific reputation of these individuals in order to legitimize their appointments, and maintained the collective character of hiring decision-making processes. However, the more the universities had to prove their reputation and conform to external pressures, the more they departed from bottom-up collegiality and shifted toward top-down collegiality. Universities that were already highly reputed could, and had to, stick to more traditional hiring processes given the scientific importance of their academic staff. Hence, we demonstrated that, facing external pressures, it is easier for some universities to remain collegial than others.

## **NOTES**

1. Universities in France are led by presidents who are academics elected by the university members. By university leaders, we mean the university president and their team of vice-presidents, who also are academics for the most part.

2. Such a name may seem curious as the "chair system" that prevailed in France until most of the 20th century was always described as problematic and bureaucratic.

3. https://uk.ambafrance.org/Investments-for-the-Future-Programme

4. In December 2018, an ordinance introduced the possibility to design new status, different from those prescribed by the University Act. The three Idex under study have used this possibility in order to change the designation of the president or the deans by election or to reduce the size or the role of the new deliberative bodies (cf. ordinance no. 2018-1131, December 12, 2018).

5. In the typology of institutions developed by Catherine Paradeise and Jean-Claude Thoenig (2013) the first ones could be described as "top of the pile" while the others would be "wannabes," aspiring for the top of the pile category.


11. The Idex international jury decided to postpone the confirmation of the Idex and extended the probationary period. After the merger decision had be taken, the jury finally confirmed High-Status.

12. High-Status End of probation period Evaluation Report, 2015, p. 19.

## **REFERENCES**


# SUSTAINING A COLLEGIATE ENVIRONMENT: COLLEAGUESHIP, COMMUNITY AND CHOICE AT AN ANONYMOUS BUSINESS SCHOOL

Jakov Jandrić<sup>a</sup> , Rick Delbridgeb and Paolo Quattronec

*a University of Edinburgh Business School, UK b Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University, UK c Alliance Manchester Business School, The University of Manchester, UK*

## **ABSTRACT**

*The increasing push towards centralisation and bureaucratisation in higher education, further exacerbated by the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, calls for a better understanding of the nature of collegiality in contemporary universities. We address this issue by looking into the necessary conditions and barriers to sustaining a collegiate environment. The empirical focus is on academics, academic leaders and professional support staff at Anonymous Business School (ABS), a department in a large civic UK university. We interviewed 32 participants across the school, ranging from early-career academics to experienced professors and members of department leadership teams. The findings suggest multiple emerging perspectives on collegiality, with features of horizontal collegiality perceived as key to successful academic responses to the crisis. The findings also indicate how sustaining a collegiate environment within the department requires both choice and effort from leadership and from staff, particularly when decision-making is primarily* 

**Revitalizing Collegiality: Restoring Faculty Authority in Universities**

**Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Volume 87, 51–73**

**Copyright © 2024 by Jakov Jandrić, Rick Delbridge and Paolo Quattrone. Published under** 

**exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited. These works are published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of these works (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode ISSN: 0733-558X/doi:10.1108/S0733-558X20230000087003**

*located at the centre of the university. The choice and effort made across different collegiate pockets contribute to the department becoming an 'island of collegiality' within the increasingly centralised and bureaucratised university hierarchy. In this sense, the actions of the department leadership to establish supporting mechanisms, and the actions of the staff to, in turn, embrace and build interpersonal relationships and professional identities, are key to sustaining a collegiate environment.*

**Keywords:** Collegial pockets; collegiate environment; UK business school; islands of collegiality; choice and effort; community

## **INTRODUCTION**

I think sometimes we overplay collegiality as a kind of magic-bullet solution to all our problems, and I don't think that will do. Whether we like it or not universities are not democracies. At some point, what you might call hierarchy-based authority must come into decision making processes. On the other hand, I think if academic collegiality is weak, institutions suffer different kinds of problems as a result. Staff become alienated, they become disaffected. They basically don't engage, they don't actually kind of get involved, and they approach their roles in a very minimalist, utilitarian kind of way. (P11, leadership role, over 10 years at ABS)

The suddenness and scale of the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic created a unique opportunity to explore what happens to collegiality along its vertical and horizontal dimensions1 at the time of crisis, providing insights into the key conditions and barriers to sustaining a collegiate environment. Our empirical focus is a UK business school, labelled ABS – a department in a large civic university which, along with the vast majority of UK universities, has become increasingly hierarchical and centralised. This focus provides a somewhat specific higher education context, as business schools have been seen as both an outlier from traditional perspectives on universities and a potential model for universities of the future (Pettigrew & Starkey, 2016). Such arguments draw on a widely established perspective of business schools as institutions at the forefront of trends in corporatisation and managerial approaches to academic work, leadership and professional progression (Fleming, 2019; Ghoshal, 2005; Jandrić & Loretto, 2021; Kitchener & Delbridge, 2020; Parker, 2014, among others), coupled with their pragmatic role in generating income for universities (Parker, 2021; Pettigrew & Starkey, 2016).

In total, we interviewed 32 participants – ranging from early-career academics to professors and those in leadership positions – across academic and professional posts with the focus primarily on activity *within* the school. Our findings indicate a wide range of perspectives on collegiality along its horizontal and vertical dimensions, with a clear focus on interpersonal relationships and colleagueship. Features of the vertical dimension of collegiality such as academic voice and individual roles in decision-making were only sporadically recognised as a core feature of academic work and life. The university has reduced academic participation in central organisational activities and introduced a new layer of hierarchy over the last 10–20 years. Moreover, the participants experienced increased centralisation of decision-making during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the result that their understanding of collegiality as centred on its horizontal dimension only became more embedded. The reasons for this are two fold. First, the extent of the disruption of the pandemic on the established teaching, research and leadership practices and on personal circumstances has led to a stronger reliance on collegiate support among participants across the horizontal dimension. Indeed, the capacity to self-organise that sustained ABS and many other university departments during the early stages of the pandemic in particular owes much to the collegiality shown by individual academics. Second, the fundamental changes in the spatial arrangements of work prompted by the pandemic and its aftermath have led to an array of issues and new approaches to maintaining a collegiate environment through alternative modes of communication, some emerging informally among staff, and others initiated by line managers. The importance of interpersonal relationships for maintaining a collegiate environment has made this period particularly challenging for those who recently joined ABS and who, in our sample, were all early-career academics or professional services staff. Their accounts speak volumes on the importance of space and place in building and maintaining a collegiate community particularly as the initiation practices commonly available to newcomers (Kligyte, 2021) had broken down due to the pandemic. In this sense, the paper contributes to the current discussions on collegiality by providing an important insight into the complex and variegated nature of horizontal collegiality in the contemporary, centralised UK university.

While our findings strongly feature the accounts of positive experiences of horizontal collegiality and the role that school leaders played in sustaining collegiality at the departmental level, the pandemic has also led to increased centralisation of decision-making and increased bureaucratisation of processes by the central university, impacting the vertical dimension of collegiality. Accounts by the participants in leadership positions indicate the emergence of tensions between different levels of the institution and difficulties in translating the decisions coming from the centre into practice which was then negatively experienced 'at the chalkface'. Here, this paper provides more nuance to the discussion on managerialism and centralisation, as it indicates the importance of agency within and in sustaining 'collegial pockets'2 (Lazega, 2020). We show how departmental senior staff actively looked for ways to ameliorate some of the actions and wording coming from the central university in order to 'carve out' space for horizontal collegiality at the school level. These examples and experiences all indicate the importance of choice and effort across institutions, 'collegial pockets', and individuals in supporting and maintaining a collegiate environment.

This paper continues with the review of relevant literature on collegiality, and the features of its horizontal and vertical dimensions are established. This is followed by a discussion of collegiality in UK business schools. We then discuss the methods used in the empirical study, including the studied institutional context and participants. Findings are presented next, followed by discussion and concluding remarks.

## **COLLEGIALITY: MAPPING KEY TERMS TO DIMENSIONS**

Looking into the etymology of the term is revelatory of some key aspects of collegiality. 'Collegiality' originates from the Latin, *cum*, that is, 'with', and the Greek root *leg*-, which originates different words such as *legere*, that is, 'to tie', 'to gather'; *lex*, that is, 'law', 'legal'; and *logos*, that is, 'word', 'speech'. This etymology points immediately to how 'collegiate' also implies a specific form of governance that serves to tie together a community of people who have a say but also have knowledge at the core of their interests. In the literature, collegiality remains an elusive term with a broad and complex remit, commonly linked to governance, professions and disciplines, and behaviour (e.g., Kligyte & Barrie, 2014). Sahlin and Eriksson-Zetterquist's (2023, Vol. 86) multi-dimensional model offers more analytical nuance, by which collegiality is found at the intersections between its vertical and horizontal dimensions.

As a mode of university governance, collegiality is often discussed as an antithesis to growing managerialism and bureaucratisation within higher education institutions (Hull, 2006; Kligyte, 2021). We consider collegiate governance an element of its vertical dimension; it broadly includes the representation and inclusion of staff and students in decision-making processes across the institution (Sahlin & Eriksson-Zetterquist, 2016). This is often seen fundamentally at odds with the predominant managerialist approach to university governance, one characterised by efficiency through simplification and centralisation of decisionmaking (Tight, 2014). In the UK, the increase in size and complexity of higher education institutions has been accompanied by increasing managerialism and centralisation with the idea of a self-governing, autonomous university based on consensus seen as less efficient and more costly by both senior university leaders and policy makers.

In practice, managerialism and bureaucratisation have led to fundamental changes in the way academics are perceived by their institutions, and often utilise practices that are at odds with the collegiate values. Various performance management practices, as well as streamlined and prescriptive bureaucratic processes, are very much omnipresent across institutions and can be found in all aspects of academic life (Dean & Forray, 2018). In line with free market ideals, market competition – with a complex3 relationship to collegiality – is omnipresent in the UK university context, and is presented as means for increasing the quality of academic outcomes (Musselin, 2018). For the most part, the use of managerial approaches follows the same principle, and is commonly justified through the lens of efficiency and quality 'improvement'.

Managerialism, however, also requires a fundamental shift in the approach to, and experiences of, work for individuals in the system. As the academic priorities change, the extent of bureaucratisation and changes in the scope of academic work create new pressures that all contribute to the sharp rise in mental health issues among academics, often linked to feelings of being lost, overworked and stressed (Hull, 2006). Teaching and research activities are becoming aligned either to the increasing desire for cost-efficiency or, more importantly, to commercial aspirations of higher education institutions in their struggle for market position. In this sense, managerialism contributes to 'organizational obliviousness' towards existing and emerging societal challenges (Gatzweiler, Frey-Heger, & Ronzani, 2022), driving the deterioration of the impact of HEIs and their agency in shaping political and cultural landscapes (Beckmann & Cooper, 2013).

These tensions between the institutional alignment towards market-driven existence and the individual shared values across different levels of the institution indicate the extent to which collegiality is necessarily linked to profession, as an 'agentic response by professionals […] to transformative forces within and across organisations and work settings' (Denis et al., 2019, p. 324). Critical perspectives on changing processes and practices have always had a prominent position in academia (Musselin, 2018), taking into account the importance of profession to academic authority and legitimacy (Alvesson & Spicer, 2016; Knights & Clarke, 2014). The role of profession in disrupting bureaucracy was also recognised by Max Weber, who considered it divisive (Waters, 1989). In the context of collegiality, profession is an important feature of its horizontal dimension; a shared language and a shared set of principles that not only provide opportunities for professional development for those who are its members but also a basis for initiation of early career colleagues (Kligyte, 2021). While the extent of individual alignment to profession did slow down changes brought by managerialism, changes have been numerous and impactful. For instance, the introduction of Workload Allocation Models4 – or WAMs – as means of explicit and supposedly precise measurement of activities and outputs by academics has become a norm across the UK university sector. However, as Hull (2006, p. 38) argues, the "introduction of WAMs is, arguably, yet another nail in the coffin of 'academic collegiality': the categorisation and measurement [of] our work removes another aspect of our professional autonomy and hence reduces the possibilities for collegiality". The use of WAM also provides universities with a tool to control pressures put on academic staff by shifting the weightings allocated to each standardised activity. For example, reductions in workload for teaching and administration may be used as either carrot or stick in regard to 'research performance'. It is also a manifestation of increasing individualisation and instrumentality in UK higher education.

To further understand the tensions between managerialism and collegiality, it is important to consider the day-to-day experiences of individual and communal academic life, or its behavioural aspect (Kligyte & Barrie, 2014). As managerialism prevails as a new form of 'governing by numbers' and targets (Ezzamel & Reed, 2008) in higher education, collegiality remains perhaps most visible in the interpersonal interactions. Tight (2014), however, posits that the divide between managerialism and collegiality is not necessarily as deep and as prevalent. The co-existence of collegiality and managerialism is shaped by the socio-political context, variations in institutional structures and contexts, and individual perspectives (with academics with longer tenure more resistant to change, and early career scholars more welcoming to the changing landscape). In line with Tight (2014), collegiality does not simply exist in the system; it co-exists within a complex institutional eco-system of vertical and horizontal relationships. Exploring these relationships and identification of possible areas of convergence requires a closer examination of the specific context of UK higher education more generally and the UK business school model more specifically.

## **COLLEGIALITY AND MANAGERIALISM IN UK BUSINESS SCHOOLS**

Since the 1980s, the UK higher education sector has been fundamentally shaped by a strong push towards choice-and-competition principles (Le Grand, 2009). The first rapid expansion of the sector was seen in early 1990s due to the increase in student numbers and the resulting transformation of polytechnics into universities (Trow, 1992), followed by the introduction of tuition fees in 1998. While the concerns about these developments were continuously raised over the past decades (e.g., Ball, 2004; Brooks et al., 2016; Peters, 1992), universities continued to attract record student numbers and increasing levels of external funding (Collini, 2017), while at the same time receiving less support from the public purse (Statista, 2023). Through these changes, the fundamental structure of most universities remained largely unchanged. UK universities are legally registered as charities. Governance of most institutions is now structured around three levels: (1) a Central university office, the highest governing body; (2) several Colleges or Faculties, structured around broad-range disciplines (e.g., Life Sciences, Physical Sciences, Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities); and (3) individual departments or schools. While there is some autonomy on each hierarchical level, departments or schools (including business schools) cannot be considered as standalone, independent institutions. It is important to note that a small number of influential universities in the UK employ different structures of governance (e.g., Oxford). However, for the purpose of this paper, the focus remains on this dominant structure.

Business schools represent a particularly fast-growing part of the UK university landscape over the past several decades. In 2021/2022, business and management programmes at UK business schools enrolled a record 19% of all students enrolled into UK higher education (HESA, 2023) across all disciplines, and the student interest for business and management does not show signs of declining any time soon. Business schools are somewhat outliers compared to other departments or schools within UK universities, not least because international accreditations relying on quantitative measures are widespread across the sector, with a so-called 'triple crown' of accreditations from AACSB, AMBA and EQUIS a strategic aim for many UK schools. Business schools are also driven by external professional accreditations. Professional bodies such as CIPD, CFA and CIMA govern not only the professional context of academic work, but are also introduced in the curriculum through market-friendly accreditations of undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. Outcomes of business school teaching and learning are further assessed on the global markets through an array of external rankings and ratings, each following different approaches and producing very different results (Wilkins & Huisman, 2011). With publications still very much central to academic progression, business school research outputs are closely governed by external journal ratings, most notably CABS Journal Guide and FT 50 despite recent interest in the proclamations against using citations or journal status as a proxy for research quality contained in the DORA – Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA, 2023). Governance by metrics, then, is omnipresent in UK business schools to an extent that the wider university is still to experience (McCarthy & Dragouni, 2021), and it is surprising that there is only limited empirical work on collegiality done in this context (Bissett & Saunders, 2015; Miles et al., 2015).

Such reliance on external validation across disciplines and academic work is not without its consequences for business school members. Fleming (2019) dubs the outcome one of 'self-alienation' from collegial governance; 'playing the game' necessarily requires a departure from collegiality. Similarly, De Vita and Case (2016) identify the process of alienation of academics from business schools, and advocate for changes in the business school cultures towards more inclusive decision-making process that would allow for a more collegiate environment. The situation, however, seems to be moving in an entirely different direction. For instance, Parker's (2014) experiences from a European business school indicate that the voice and the capacity of academics to resist change are fundamentally eroded in the institutional push towards managerialism. In contrast to this example and similar evidence of struggle elsewhere, other influential work (e.g., Vidaver-Cohen, 2007, p. 285) more or less explicitly accepts the newly established regime as an unavoidable reality, and advises business school academics to 'trust the school to support their goals for collegiality, professional development and intellectual growth'. Nevertheless, there seems to be an overarching consensus that collegiality and autonomy are vital not only to the ever-changing idea of higher education and its societal and political role, but also to the institutional and individual perspectives and relationships.

Here, it is important to note the temporal aspect of change. The rise of managerialism has been a topic of academic discourse for decades now. Over 30 years ago, Peters (1992, p. 128) warned about the fate of higher education under managerialism, arguing that the "preoccupations with the measurement of performance have the potential to change fundamentally the nature of institutions of higher education [and] will effectively cut across entrenched values of institutional autonomy, academic freedom, collegiality…" This process has been slowly unfolding for years, with new generations of academics continuously joining the ranks (Tight, 2014) at its different stages. This suggests that, as the role of collegiality transformed under the pressures of managerialism, the individual perspectives on the role and importance of collegiality in academic life also changed, at least to an extent. Thus, both the institution of collegiality and individual understandings of this have been evolving. Considering the speed of this process, we suggest that the recent COVID-19 pandemic represents a unique opportunity to study collegiality. The pandemic caused a fundamental disruption of institutional and individual routine that was both sudden and crippling across all aspects of academic activity. Its temporal dimension, as a moment of fundamental uncertainty for people, groups and organisations that have emerged and – for the most part – passed soon after, makes the COVID-19 pandemic a unique opportunity to understand what happens with collegiality along its vertical and horizontal dimensions in a moment of sudden crisis and the collapse of norms and practices that while evolving were for decades supported, presented and accepted as an inevitable part of academic life.

In light of these discussions, and bearing in mind the institutional context of a UK business school, we ask the following research question: *What are the key considerations upon which the development of a collegiate environment is supported or constrained at the departmental level?*

## **METHODS**

To explore this question, we focussed on an ABS, widely acknowledged as a leading UK school and part of a research-intensive university. The business school itself holds a range of recognised business and management education accreditations. Apart from exemplifying current trends in business school education discussed so far, this business school also displays a strategic focus on research and teaching with a broad societal impact. Such a focus has been variously labelled purpose-led, social/public good or public-value-driven. These strategies are increasingly discussed and implemented in UK business schools, and represent – at least in principle – a shift away from the outcomes-focussed business school model (see CABS, 2021, for examples of institutions taking this approach to teaching, research and leadership). Thus, while this is a single case study, it is reflective of both wider sectoral trends amongst business schools and more recent 'cutting-edge' developments.

Our study is set against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, a context distinctive due to the extent of the disruption and its impact on organisational and individual routines. In the UK, the COVID-19 pandemic led to three lockdowns. The first lockdown was announced on 23 March 2020, only several weeks before the semester was ending for most UK universities. In our study, the initial lockdown remains the one that participants discussed the most, due to its sudden and fundamentally disruptive nature. Overnight, staff were told to stay at home and work from there as far as possible. In that period, all in-person teaching and research either stopped or moved online. Being close to the end of the semester, the uncertainty and disruption for most staff were time-bound, lasting only about three months before the summer vacation gave staff more time to adapt to new ways of teaching and doing research in the upcoming academic year. This in itself, of course, disrupted summer plans already challenged by the pandemic and further impacted on work-life balance.

While recent qualitative empirical studies on collegiality have predominately focussed either on a particular group within the higher education (e.g., McGrath et al., 2019), or had a broader sample of participants from different institutions (e.g., Kligyte, 2021), we interviewed 32 participants across academic and professional services posts, all working at the same institution. In light of our interest in a wide range of perspectives on collegiality within the higher education context and the changes emerging from COVID-19 pandemic, we focussed on the one hand on participants in managerial and leadership roles, and on the other hand, early career academics and, notably, staff members who started their posts with ABS either immediately before, or during the COVID-19 pandemic. Eighteen participants in the sample held leadership or academic administration roles, from line management of academic and professional services staff to members and chairs of different boards and other governing bodies within ABS. For the most part, these participants were senior academics and had a comparatively longer tenure with ABS. Five participants were new starters or colleagues who joined ABS during the pandemic. This group includes both early career academics and professional services staff. Finally, nine participants were those early in their careers, but who had been with ABS for longer. Some of them joined the School only recently before the pandemic took place, and others had more complex career paths, sometimes within ABS.

In each interview, we invited the participants to share their views on collegiality, the state and nature of collegiality at ABS and its sources, and the implications of the pandemic on their views, practices, expectations and ambitions. Considering the complexity of the term, we chose not to define or presuppose what collegiality means for our participants; instead, we invited them to share their views and thoughts on the meaning of the term. We also collected information on their position in the institution, and we discussed their career trajectories to date. This approach allowed for an analysis of participants' accounts across the vertical and the horizontal dimensions of collegiality, and to map out different perspectives on collegiality across the institution. All interviews took place between March and October 2022. This timing allowed the participants to reflect on the time of the pandemic from a point in which a large majority of the immediate pandemic-related challenges have recently either been resolved or gone, but are still very fresh in their memory.

Throughout the data collection and the analysis, the authors reflected on and discussed their position, considering that at the time of the crisis they all worked in the UK business school sector, but in very different positions within the academic hierarchy. During the pandemic, the first author was both in a postdoctoral role and in his first lectureship position as a newcomer to a new institution, and the second and third authors were established professors who have held leadership and senior academic roles. These conversations and reflections were not only relevant for building rapport with interviewees but also provided a suitable sounding board for findings emerging from the participants.

## **FINDINGS**

The findings are structured around three key themes emerging from the data. First, we discuss the differences in the ways participants defined and perceived collegiality. Next, the reflections on the COVID-19 pandemic on collegiality are presented and discussed, taking into account the perspectives of our participants in different organisational positions and stages in their careers. Finally, we use three examples from practice in ABS that exemplify the emergence and maintenance of a collegiate environment through choice and effort: (1) challenges brought by the changes in spatial arrangements of academic work, (2) the resulting changes to horizontal and vertical communication, and (3) changes to managing performance evaluations.

#### *Perspectives on Collegiality*

In line with the diversity in theorisations of collegiality in the literature and empirical experiences as explored in this volume, participants offered various definitions and perspectives on collegiality and its role in day-to-day academic activities. For many, collegiality was not a term that they thought about or indeed talked about much, and around a fifth of participants admitted to googling the term before the interview. For most, collegiality was first and foremost linked to community and culture, and it was seen as the responsibility of each individual staff member to build and support it. From this perspective, key to collegiality is prioritising the community over individual interest, as Participant 13 argues:

I think a simple definition I would give of collegiality is actions and activities you perform in the workplace that are meant to help and support others, or the community, or your group rather than are just instrumental to your own goals. So, collegiality could be being part of a workshop, interacting, creating the right atmosphere, mentoring colleagues, meeting colleagues informally to give advice, supporting them when they're not feeling well or experiencing difficulties and contributing to all the community aspects of your work in a way that may not be instrumental to you but you in a way, sacrifice your time or give your time for the community. (P13, leadership role, over 10 years at ABS5 )

In this sense, collegiality is grounded within the context of interpersonal relationships and is linked to the immediate organisational environment. Concepts such as trust, personal and professional support, teamwork, communication and connection were seen to be integral to the collegiate environment:

I think my understanding would be just having that companionship with your peers really. Just trusting and believing in them and just having that good rapport with your peers, with the people you're working with. Because your rapport can be at an individual level, but the main fabric that ties all of them together is the vision that you want to achieve. So I think it's just sort of working together as a team and just building that internal rapport. (P2, research role, new starter)

Interestingly, those who discussed collegiality along these lines did not necessarily perceive the university as a naturally collegiate space. This was particularly evident for those who joined academia from non-academic backgrounds, for whom the collegiate environment in academia shared similarities with their experiences in industry, albeit with some fundamental differences:

Having had a previous career in an industry where so much is about supporting your colleagues […] the situation in academia is that a lot of people become very used to working independently or not necessarily working in a collegiate way with their immediate colleagues. (…) If you are an academic whose role is necessarily [to have] a portfolio […] then your immediate collegiate thing may not be necessarily completely within your institution because your research agenda could be further afield. (P26, academic role, new starter)

These various perspectives remind us that the university is a diverse institution, populated with a heterogenous membership for whom the notion of collegiality may mean different things or indeed be more or less meaningful.

#### *Reflections on the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Collegiality*

The increased uncertainty in the UK and globally surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic and its implications for universities has in the case of ABS resulted in increased centralisation of decision-making at the college and central university levels, and additional bureaucratisation of processes across teaching, research and leadership activities. The participants' accounts testify to the extent of centralisation of decision-making that took place in the first instance when the pandemic hit:

The challenge of moving to online remote teaching […] just required a whole new set of negotiations with colleagues, different expectations. Of course, a whole lot of uncertainty and a level of uncertainty that was never really resolved. I don't think it's resolved now either […] So, people were looking for a simplification of what to expect. At no time did I feel that we really got to it, because we were responding to UK Government guidelines and the university guidelines. (P4, leadership role, over 10 years at ABS)

An important factor to take into consideration at the time of such disruption is the extent of the pressures felt by those in leadership positions. For participants who were in line management positions, the main focus was predominantly on supporting their colleagues, while at the same time negotiating a new set of expectations with them. At the departmental level, those in leadership positions have also found themselves between a rock and a hard place, with regular day-today activities completely and fundamentally disrupted and replaced by constantly changing pressures from above and below.

It was almost like you're suddenly part of this online emergency committee trying to kind of respond to this stuff. Because often, you know, senior management meetings are quite routine, you go through the same things each year. Now it's promotions, now it's performance reviews, now it's recruitment time. There's a nice rhythm to it. And then suddenly we're thrown into something where we're having to make plans with tremendous uncertainty, you know these apocalyptic noises coming from the university centre [regarding the financial uncertainties and their implications]. (P12, leadership role, over 10 years at ABS)

The centralisation of decision-making to the central university led to exasperation for those working in leadership positions within ABS. The extreme uncertainty surrounding the pandemic particularly in the early days required a rapid response across all aspects of university activities, and the school sought to contribute extensively to the central decision-making process. The final decisions from the centre, however, were not only made with little to no clarity, but they also clearly indicated the school's lack of influence:

Business school's voice was in the minority. So, I wasn't clear how decisions were being made. I was only aware [that] we were asked to feed in very quickly and then quite often [it] went in a different way anyway. You know, we're in the middle of a pandemic. The decisions were being made and we just had to roll with them, because we had so much to do in such a short period of time, in such weird and uncertain circumstances. Then, I think as it's moved on, I think College is retaining a lot of that decision-making power, and the Centre as well. (P15, leadership role, over 10 years at ABS)

ABS is a good example of the trend experienced by UK business schools over the past few decades with regard to increases in student numbers and the expectations they have from their business and management education experience. ABS was clearly focussed on supporting students through the pandemic and providing them with quality education and care. However, this focus exposed some systemic challenges business school academics face, particularly in relation to workloads.

The intensity of work changed and the length of work changed. For most people it was a real struggle and was really quite hard. That happened in a context where we had seen rising numbers of students anyway within the school. So, in some ways you have a bit of a perfect storm, because you have increasing workload anyway. A workload allocation model that showed most people had a hundred percent before we even got to Covid-19. […] teaching became even more transactional […] more discussions about, well, how many hours allocated for that, and how many hours allocated for that. (P4, leadership role, over 10 years at ABS)

Considering it led to increased bureaucratisation, the pandemic has also sparked some interest in alternative perspectives on institutional systematisation of work processes and the common understanding of what is appropriate across the wider institution. Some participants who experienced the increase in bureaucratisation began to question the appropriateness of such processes and the resulting effect on the entire community and a shared perspective on the institutional mission.

So we do have to have bureaucracy and paperwork to run ourselves as an organisation, but generally speaking we try to keep that as an absolute minimum for everybody's sake within a school. You know, we don't want to have unnecessary paperwork. Personally I think, and the pandemic has not helped with this, our central professional services teams are further from the schools than they have ever been; organisationally, mentally, and emotionally. […] If we have to fill in paperwork, that's okay, it's not a problem. if we have to go through processes and we all agree it's appropriate let's do that. […] But the purpose of the institution is not to produce and fill in paperwork and I think that's something that we need to think about, how do we reconnect all the bits to the university so we feel like one team all supporting the academic mission rather than one team saying, 'You have to do this it's good governance' and we are saying, 'Well it might well be good governance but it's effectively stopping us doing this stuff and this stuff is what we do'. So we need to have a conversation about how we do the stuff and wrap good governance around it. (P9, leadership role, professional services, over 10 years at ABS)

A group that was particularly affected by the pandemic is those who began their posts with ABS either immediately prior, or during the pandemic as, for most, a new post also meant a new personal and professional environment. Those in line management positions were very much aware of these challenges and made efforts to include new starters in the community. While these efforts were appreciated, many of our participants who were new starters with ABS still felt disconnected from its community.

I think that sense of an overall, whole tribe with a sense of cohesion has been definitely weakened. We had four people who joined us just before the pandemic struck and so literally it was like, 'Okay, here's your office, go home for two years'. You know, they were new to the city, didn't know anybody, so it was very tough for them. (P1, leadership role, over 10 years at ABS)

I do [feel a part of ABS], but not fully. I certainly feel part of my team. I certainly feel like I can do my job. I still feel on the fringe of the school. I know what's going on, I know who people are, but I haven't- I've joined in on activities to immerse myself within the school, but because of the restrictions with the pandemic, I still feel like it will take another year or so before I feel I fully fit within in the school. (P10, professional services, new starter).

The contributions from various members of the school demonstrate both the significance of the impact of the pandemic but also variously reveal certain tensions within the wider organisational arrangements of ABS and how individuals both experienced and responded to these.

#### *Building and Maintaining a Collegiate Environment*

So far, the findings show how the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on the institutional and individual priorities and processes on multiple institutional levels, and how these changes affect the formation of a collegiate environment. In the last part of the findings, we further elaborate on how collegial environment is dependent on the choices and efforts made by both individual academics and academic leaders within 'collegiate pockets' (Lazega, 2020) who combine to sustain a departmental 'island of collegiality' within the wider university structure. We focus on three distinctive examples in which structural obstacles to a collegiate environment brought by the pandemic have been recognised and proactively dealt with. First, we show the extent to which the loss of physical space for interpersonal communication has been challenging for maintaining a collegiate environment. Following this, we discuss the ways in which both the horizontal and vertical communication shifted to accommodate the lost opportunity to share the same physical space. Finally, we use the example of changes made to yearly performance reviews as a managerial response to increased career pressures felt by academic staff, prioritising empathy and care in an effort to sustain a collegiate environment at the time of crisis.

#### *Importance of Space for Sustaining a Collegial Environment*

The limits on using office spaces and lecture theatres during the pandemic came up repeatedly as one of the key factors influencing the participants' perception of collegiality. In contrast to professional services staff who exclusively worked from office spaces prior to the pandemic, working remotely was not necessarily novel for those in academic posts:

I think lockdown proved that everybody could work from home. In the past, our professional services were told, 'You cannot do your job at home'. Now we've done that for two years, so everybody knows it can be done. (P14, leadership role, over 10 years at ABS)

### For ABS management, spatial arrangements of work have become a matter of strategic importance:

The building itself suddenly becomes a player in the whole pandemic game, especially as you're moving towards teaching, so how the facilities are managed becomes important. [Space] was seen as nowhere near strategic until we started having to do the risk assessments for the buildings, get all the one-way systems in, work out how many people we could get in a particular teaching space, work out which teaching spaces had good enough ventilation to be used for classes. And often doing this as the rules from the government are shifting as you're going along. (P1, leadership role, over 10 years at ABS)

Arguably, the most immediate shift occurred in the context of moving teaching and learning from physical to virtual environments. The extent and the urgency of this move resulted in stronger collegiate support between colleagues who shared their experiences with others and self-organised to help each other and 'keep the show on the road'. Other activities, such as formal meetings and boards, all shifted to online communication channels as well. As the uncertainties and concerns regarding the pandemic eased, a sense remained that some of these activities should stay online going forward, either because they seem more efficient, or to alleviate unease for those who still have reservations towards in-person meetings. That said, there was a strong sense that online environments provide much less opportunities for building community and collegiate environment.

I think that basically what we're going to move to is some sort of hybridised model, which is a mix of digital and in-person. I don't see us going back to the kind of pre-pandemic model in all its manifestation. I just don't see that happening. I think we will end up with, as I say, a mixed model. I hope that that will allow for more in-person kind of contact, and more in-person kind of interaction. I genuinely miss, as I know lots of people do, the kind of cut-and-thrust of being in a seminar room together, and kind of debating the toss about whatever we're looking at. And I think it's, I think we've got used to [digital means of communication], but I wouldn't want to see them replace in-person. (P11, leadership role, over 10 years at ABS)

In light of the nature and scope of restrictions dictated by the UK government, new rules for using spaces for teaching and research were established centrally, with no input from ABS. As in many other university spaces, access to building was restricted and only allowed at certain times to collect belongings from offices. The restrictions in use of the building were particularly challenging for early career colleagues and those who started with ABS immediately before or during the pandemic.

We hired a few new colleagues during the pandemic or just before and I haven't spoken to them for a year or two or more. I've seen them in meetings, there was an interaction at research seminars but I didn't have a conversation, which I would have 100% in the building. I'd knock at the door. I'm lucky because I sit in an office where there's always people coming and going, and that's my chance to meet them. And I felt bad. I was asking myself, 'Should I get in touch?' They didn't, and I didn't. (P13, leadership role, over 10 years at ABS)

As previously mentioned, participants shared the view that community and collegiate environment is built on interpersonal communication and interaction since those moments, such as an informal chat or an impromptu conversation over coffee, were not replicable in the virtual environment. Not being able to communicate with colleagues in person was a big obstacle for the inclusion of newcomers in the culture at ABS, as well as for the development of collegiate environment.

#### *Horizontal Communication in Support of Collegiate Environment*

With buildings closed and most activities moved online, the way staff communicated also underwent a significant change. As with spatial arrangements, many academic staff had previously been exposed to online communication due to international research collaborations and other activities. Still, the sudden shift of all academic activities online was stressful for most, and particularly for those early in their careers and new starters:

It's been a bit of a baptism by fire. I'm module leader on two third year modules that I've come in to cover. So, I've been trying to work out what I think, what this means, what are the processes and practises. But it just means I'm sending out a lot of emails where I'd have loved to just get to know the people behind the email. Hopefully they wouldn't think I'm such a pain – oh, it's me again, I need to know this now. So it just makes it really stressful – instead of building bridges you feel you're burning them. (P5, academic role, new starter)

Along the formal communication channels such as Zoom and Teams, people also communicated informally, with WhatsApp the favourite channel used. Early on in the lockdown, colleagues connected to discuss the rapidly changing context of the pandemic, changes in institutional response to the pandemic and its effect on students, and also to support each other at the time where not everyone had the luxury of being supported outside of the workplace. However, as the new processes and expectations settled, the need for such support seems to have predominately disappeared.

We had a WhatsApp group, and we'd have virtual coffee mornings every week. And to start with, you'd get about 25, 30 people showing up with their kids, and the WhatsApp group was really active. And then once everyone just got into the new way of working, we got rid of the WhatsApp group now. The coffee mornings, we don't bother holding them because you might get two people turning up. I think people needed it because they were initially a little bit shaken. […] That was at a time when you were not really even allowed to leave the house for long. And I think that people just felt that need to kind of connect. (P17, leadership role, over 10 years at ABS)

#### *Vertical Communication in Support of Collegiate Environment*

A key source of information about new ways of working and the institutional response to the pandemic was the weekly email circulated by ABS leadership. The importance of the content and the positive and reassuring tone of these emails is overwhelmingly shared among participants, by those in leadership positions who were contributing to these emails as well as those who received them as staff members, early career colleagues, and new starters. At the same time, regular email updates were also shared by college and university management directly to staff.

The Dean does have these weekly update emails. I've always felt them to be relatively informal and relatively supportive. I've never really had a problem with what the Dean is saying or the tone of them, I find it difficult to characterize what the tone is. Let's just say that, it's fine. I don't feel that there's too much dictatorship going on or something. The other communication we get is directly from the vice-chancellor. That's a different kettle of fish entirely. [Those emails are] formal and very proper and avoiding anything remotely controversial. Mostly, I don't read them anymore. (P28, academic role, more than 5 years at ABS)

The way key messages were shaped by the ABS management was overwhelmingly considered a vital element for building cohesion across the school. With constantly changing rules and regulations coming from the centre, it was seen as important by the Dean and senior management to prioritise the message of wellbeing and care, as opposed to merely instruct and command.

At a school level, we have what I think is an amazing line of communication. The Dean sends out a weekly roundup. I know that they put an awful lot of thought into the wording of those weekly messages so that people didn't get anxious or didn't feel, 'Got to do this, got to do that'. (P14, leadership role, more than 10 years at ABS)

When discussing the nature and extent of communication between individual staff members and central university, those who attended webinars and discussion panels witnessed an interesting trend. These meetings were used to convey key messages outlined in formal email correspondence and, in principle, allowed staff members to voice their concerns and ask questions. However, as participant 14 experienced, these sessions rarely allowed answers.

Sometimes the sessions were so boring, you actually forgot what you were listening to. I logged into every single one of them, and it was just these scripted instructions [being] read, and we're doing this and we're doing that. Very detailed and, as I said, very dry. There would be chat down the side with people's names on, and people would ask direct questions that just weren't answered. They were just skirted over. They obviously had somebody who was monitoring the chat, and then asking the speaker questions but ignoring the really pertinent questions that people were asking. I was quite surprised that people put their names to some of those questions. It was very public, there were hundreds and hundreds of people on these calls and they weren't shy to put their names on some of the questions, which I found quite interesting. Sometimes the tones of the questions were very critical […] and sometimes I thought, 'Whoa, that's so brave of you to ask the question. I'd like to ask that question but I wouldn't dare put my name in this chat'. I'm a coward [laughter]. (P14, leadership role, over 10 years at ABS)

Those, however, who engaged in the conversation within ABS had a startlingly different experience. As previously discussed, many decisions were made centrally and with input by ABS, but with little insights into the decision-making process, even for those in management roles. With this in mind and the message of care and community coming directly from the Dean and the school management, there was a sense of community present at ABS. People felt empowered to voice their views and concerns without feeling either alienated or dismissed, while for the most part fully aware that it might not have an effect at all on the decisionmaking outcome.

Yes. I do think that we had a voice. If we wanted to raise something we could. I do think that there were people there that would listen. As to how much they could actually do is a very different matter but, that being said, I still feel like if I wanted to raise something in a school meeting there was a platform for me to do that and it would be heard. It wouldn't be shut down or dismissed. I think that's especially important because I'm a member of professional services staff and there is still a feeling that there's a difference between academic and professional services staff. (P10, professional services, new starter)

The communication strategy adopted by ABS leadership in an effort to promote a collegiate environment, then, required them to reveal their own limited influence on decision-making processes along the vertical dimension of collegiality. This revelation, however, also created moments of ambiguity for those in line management roles, especially when coupled with a dark and ominous tone of communication coming from the central university level about the impact of the pandemic on the institution:

Then, suddenly, we were all at home and connecting via Zoom. And what I found was, because I had very good intentions at the beginning, I thought, well, I'll make sure I give everybody a kind of Zoom catch-up every little while. But the first couple of people I did, I got to the end of the conversation, I said, 'Okay, well, better be going now' And they sort of went, 'Oh, is that it, then?' And I said, 'Yes'. They said, 'Phew, I thought there was something you had to talk to me about. I've been sitting here on tenterhooks waiting for you to get to the bad news'. So, I kind of gave up doing that because I found, even when I told people, 'Don't panic, it's just a chat', they still kept waiting for the thing they had to be talked to about. Which is not even my management style anyway but somehow that just seemed to be the sense, once you are making a formal arrangement to have a conversation, as opposed to just bumping into them in the kitchen, it was something to worry about! So, it actually kind of discouraged me a bit. (P1, leadership role, over 10 years at ABS)

This gives us an important insight into the challenging, emotionally demanding and complex work needed from academic leaders seeking to construct and maintain horizontal collegiality in a wider context where vertical collegiality beyond the school has broken down and, in this instance, where the centre is warning of major implications from financial losses due to the pandemic.

#### *Yearly Performance Reviews*

Along with threats to employment security, the pandemic was also perceived as having a significant negative impact on what were considered as key factors influencing a 'successful' career trajectory, and was a source of worry particularly for those earlier in their academic careers. With research activities and data collection processes effectively stopped, the evaluation of performance through research outputs such as journal articles has become a significant challenge:

All of these opportunities that have been missed, we cannot account what the impact to our careers is going to be. We might have missed journal reviews, we might have missed collaboration opportunities. We definitely have missed networking […] I think that we are not going to have the same career development […] It's like when there was economic crisis, there was a lot of research on how people who started in a lower position, it took them a longer time to climb to the same status level. I think that for us or in any other profession, they would probably have had the same experience hitting the pandemic at different levels. (P31, academic role, new starter)

Like most UK business schools, ABS conducted yearly reviews of individual performance, structured around a one-to-one conversation with the line manager about the activities conducted in the previous year, and discussing plans for next year and future career development. The pressures brought by the pandemic were recognised by ABS management, and a decision was made at the school level to make the process optional during the pandemic with staff members choosing whether they wished to discuss their performance and personal development. The structure of the conversation also changed, from key discussion points focussed on research, teaching and leadership activities, to a dominant theme of wellbeing, care and organisational support:

We offered three levels [of yearly reviews]. You could have the full blown one with the usual questions and forms, you could have just a bit of a cut down version where it's a discussion around a list of stuff you've done, or you could literally just have a chat over a virtual coffee. Or you could have nothing. So, there was effectively four levels people could choose from, and different people did choose different things. I mean some of the people thinking about promotion wanted the full bells and whistles [process] because they felt that would help them prepare strategically for that. Other people, you know, it's much more like, 'I'm ticking over as best as I can, so we'll just have a quick chat and carry on'. And the forms were deliberately changed as well. So, whereas the usual [process] forms ask you for progress against objectives, that was completely cut this time, it was just literally, 'What have you done in the last year?' And whether or not it was what you planned to do or not. So, yes, there was a very deliberate policy, from the school level, that we followed down through the sections. (P1, leadership role, over 10 years at ABS)

This particular example of how ABS leaders sought to ameliorate both the impact of the pandemic and the lack of sensitivity on the part of the centre is noteworthy in that it is manifest through subversion of the formal bureaucratic processes of management. At the same time, it casts some light on the agency that local leaders may be able to exercise in sustaining a collegiate environment within their own school.

## **DISCUSSION**

Our aim in this paper was to explore key factors of influence that sustain or hinder a collegiate environment in the context of UK universities. Our focus is placed on a business school, an institution within the higher education system in which managerialist approaches are deeply embedded in academic activities and academic life (Ghoshal, 2005; Parker, 2014). Our case is a well-established, large UK business school which makes a major financial contribution to its university and has a strong reputation supported by external accreditations, but which is also characterised by a strategic focus on teaching and research activities with a wide societal impact; a focus that is becoming increasingly visible across UK business schools (CABS, 2021). This makes our case an interesting one, as it provides us an insight into the interplay between a managerialist focus on cost efficiency and delivery of financial and other measurable outcomes, alongside more salient values linked to wider social issues. When considering the current literature on collegiality, we show the extent to which the tensions between the increase in managerialism and bureaucracy in the UK higher education sector – and in business schools in particular – have been extensively discussed (De Vita & Case, 2016; Fleming, 2019; Parker, 2014). While we are seeing fundamental changes in governance of higher education institutions as a result of increased managerialism in decision-making and bureaucratisation of processes, those changes have been gradual. As a result, it is important to recognise the extent to which the concept of collegiality changes its meaning across different generations of academics and others working in the higher education context. Tight (2014) offered a similar argument when suggesting that we should reconsider thinking about managerialism and collegiality as concepts necessarily in tension. Here, the recent COVID-19 pandemic provides a unique opportunity to explore collegiality in a moment; in a moment of distress, disruption, and a breakdown of some of the fundamental managerialist principles upon which higher education is increasingly governed, at least in the UK. The pandemic has had an effect on every single aspect of academic work and institutional governance, making it an excellent empirical setting for getting a deeper insight into what collegiality means to both staff and leadership. As a result, our sample is quite diverse in terms of career position, role within ABS, and tenure. This allowed us to explore collegiality on multiple levels within the school and gain a deeper understanding of collegiality and its perceived role in academic life 'at the chalk face' or the computer screen as it became during the pandemic.

Our findings show the extent to which collegiality is both elusive and key to academic life. For many, collegiality is very much understood along its horizontal dimension: collegiality is equated to interpersonal relationships, trust and support (Kligyte & Barrie, 2014). This is particularly relevant in core academic activities such as teaching, where the extent and speed of change that was required during the pandemic were both remarkable and extremely challenging. From this perspective, ABS was almost unanimously considered a collegiate place due to the positive experiences people had with receiving support from their peers, both in professional and personal matters. It is important, however, to recognise that such collegial behaviour, intrinsically linked to the shared institutional and professional context (Denis et al., 2019; Hatfield, 2006), does not represent collegiality in its wider sense as a system of governance nor as institutional *modus operandi*. Even if the focus is kept on the horizontal aspects of collegiality alone, there were significant tensions and challenges emerging in our participants' accounts. This was particularly the case with those who joined ABS recently before or during the pandemic and who, while feeling supported by their new colleagues, still struggled to truly became a part of the community. It is precisely here where the horizontal dimension of collegiality can be seen in its complexity; collegial behaviour is only part of what makes for a collegial environment. Another benefit of our focus on the pandemic is the fundamental shift in space and place of academic work. Being together in the same physical space has come up in the data as an important condition for building and maintaining a collegiate environment. As the hybrid modes of work became more established in the aftermath of the pandemic, there is a clear sense that virtual environments are viewed as suitable or even desirable for conducting formal, bureaucratic processes. Such environments, however, could not support a collegiate environment. With both colleagues and line managers working hard to explore options such as informal WhatsApp groups informal coffee breaks, these were all limited in emulating an in-person, informal community and communication.

Another important feature of the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on higher education in the UK was a strong shift towards increased bureaucratisation of teaching and research practices, and centralisation of decision-making on the university level. This is not surprising, considering the extent of the crisis and the impact it had on the entire institution and indeed sector. This, however, also created a number of challenges and has further emphasised some of the key contentions with managerialist approaches to governance within higher education. The pandemic provided an opportunity for managers to further draw the decision-making power into the centre, leading to a further reduction of the capabilities of academics and other staff members to have a say in matters of governance and operations. The extent to which decision-making was opaque becomes clear in the accounts of those in leadership positions, who were frustrated by a process in which they were invited to feed in perspectives from the school, and then required to execute commands with no understanding of whether their voices were heard or had an impact at all. While the narrative of a crisis was supportive of a more centralised approach – particularly in areas such as the use of physical space, which was governed by central government – there is a sense of concern that the pandemic-induced centralisation is here to stay beyond the crisis.

This raises a question of resistance. The vertical dimension of collegiality, that is, collegiate decision-making, or a meaningful voice of staff and students in governing the institution, have been only sporadically recognised by our participants as a feature of academic life. In line with Tight's (2014) argument, senior academics in our study seem to have been more interested and aware of the vertical dimension of collegiality than their early career colleagues. It is, however, not helpful to draw a straight line between seniority and collegiality; senior colleagues tend to hold leadership positions that require them to reflect on collegiality and collegiate environment. At the same time, there were many junior colleagues who have shown a strong interest in collegiality and were frustrated with its erosion during and particularly after the pandemic. For instance, the experiences of those who engaged with the opportunities to make their voices heard, which were provided by the central university, have largely been disheartened by the lack of inclusion, and have for the most part experienced 'information dump', as opposed to a two-way conversation. With questions not only unanswered, but also ignored and dismissed, any sense of inclusion in the decision-making was eroded.

Our focus on the department level also allows us to unpack some of the complexities in the roles of academic leaders in regard to collegiality, highlighting the choice and effort made to ameliorate aspects of the lack of vertical governance at the central university level and its negative consequences. For example, ABS and its management took a different approach in the nature of communication and in terms of staff inclusion. The information received or, in some cases, negotiated with the centre was carefully crafted to emphasise the messages of community and care. The Dean of ABS was particularly praised for their focus on employees and their wellbeing during the pandemic. These contrasting experiences show the extent to which collegial environment is defined by not only the content, but also the *tone* of top-down communication. In essence, the information provided by the central university and the school was very similar. However, in the case of ABS, a constructive and participatory tone of the communication from academic leaders across the school sustained the sense of community, while a tone of caring and genuine care for individual well-being – not necessarily a feature of the communication from the centre – sustained a sense of togetherness.

## **CONCLUDING REMARKS – COLLEGIALITY AS AN OUTCOME OF CHOICE AND EFFORT**

Throughout this paper, we have argued for the importance of perception on collegiality both as a form of governance and as a function of interpersonal relationships and professional norms and conventions. For most in the sample group, collegiality was not necessarily considered an individual choice, particularly along its vertical dimension. Perhaps due to the extent of disruption caused by COVID-19, there was little sense in the data of genuine passion towards collegiate modes of governance and decision-making. We, however, suggest that choice and effort are key to collegiality; an institutional choice and effort to develop and project and/or protect values and principles that support the emergence of collegiality, and the individual choice to, in turn, embrace and put effort into building interpersonal relationships and professional identities. The importance and need for individual scholars and academic leaders to work together on building and sustaining a collegiate environment is only further emphasised by the lack of recognition of collegiality as an intrinsic and inevitable part of the UK university environment.

With the case of ABS, we show the extent to which a collegial environment relies on actions within collegiate pockets (Lazega, 2020) which, while discussed and shaped by those working at the management level, are not grounded in managerialist norms; ABS leadership *chose* a different approach, one based on the emphasis of care for individuals and the community. Moreover, ABS leadership put substantial *effort* in sustaining a collegiate environment across a range of managerial roles and collegiate pockets. While the pandemic represents a brief albeit highly disruptive moment in time, lessons learnt from it are very much applicable on a continuous basis, at times of 'business-as-usual'. This choice and effort may not necessarily lead to significant and immediate changes towards more collegiality and inclusion of individuals in the decision-making processes across the wider institution. It does, however, provide grounds for establishment of the department as an *'island of collegiality'*, supporting the resistance to entrenched managerialist values within the university hierarchy.

For individuals, the choice exists in a complex network of actions and interests that form each individual academic career. Business schools only represent one of many platforms for career development, and individuals need to manage their efforts carefully. The choice towards collegiality, therefore, needs to be made not only within individual business schools and universities; it must be made within a wider ecosystem, from school, programme and course accreditations and rankings, to governance of research activities such as grants, publications and other outputs of academic work. Only then, we can anticipate current and new academics and other staff to proactively seek inclusion and be able to expect their voices to be heard.

## **NOTES**

1. See Eriksson-Zetterquest and Sahlin's Introduction (2023, Vol. 87).

2. See Sahlin and Eriksson-Zetterquist's Introduction (2023, Vol. 86).

3. See Kosmützky and Krücken's paper (2023, Vol. 86) on competition and cooperation in academia, in which they show how the two concepts are closely interconnected.

4. Hull (2006) explains Workload Allocation Models as tools for categorisation of academic activities and their measurement against a standardised unit of measure, with an aim to ensure fairness in distribution of work across academic staff. Teaching, research and administration/leadership are the most commonly used categories of academic work in UK universities.

5. In presenting the findings in this paper, we label each quote with relevant information about the participants' positions in ABS. Each participant is labelled with a P1–P32, length of time in employment with ABS (new starter, less than 2 years; less than 5 years; over 5 years; and over 10 years) and their primary role: academic/research – those in research roles only/ professional services – support roles to academic activities/leadership – those in managerial roles.

## **ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS**

We are grateful to Kerstin and Ulla who gathered together a truly collegial group of scholars, whose company and wisdom we have enjoyed along the life of this project. We feel fortunate to have experienced such collegiality in action.

We also wish to thank the participants in our case study. They have given us an opportunity to reflect on what it means to work in a British university these days; what works and what could work better.

## **REFERENCES**


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# SECTION 2 REVITALIZING COLLEGIALITY

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# AN UNSETTLING CRISIS OF COLLEGIAL GOVERNANCE: REALITY BREAKDOWNS AS ANTECEDENTS OF INSTITUTIONAL AWARENESS

Logan Cracea , Joel Gehmanb and Michael Lounsburya

*a University of Alberta, Canada b George Washington University, USA*

## **ABSTRACT**

*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* 

**exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited. These works are published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of these works (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode**

**ISSN: 0733-558X/doi:10.1108/S0733-558X20230000087004**

**Revitalizing Collegiality: Restoring Faculty Authority in Universities Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Volume 87, 77–109**

**Copyright © 2024 by Logan Crace, Joel Gehman and Michael Lounsbury. Published under** 

*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.*

**Keywords:** Taken-for-grantedness; institutional theory; collegial governance; collegiality; sensemaking; institutional change; reality breakdown; institutional awareness

## **INTRODUCTION**

Theorists have long recognized that social reality is the result of a consequential process of construction done by actors (Berger & Luckmann, 1966), but this is not always apparent to those that do the constructing (Weick, 2020). Social worlds are inhabited by individuals (Hallett & Ventresca, 2006) who typically take-for-granted and perceive as objective the fundamental elements of their subjective reality, leaving them largely unquestioned (Jepperson, 1991; Meyer & Rowan, 1977). Institutions provide social order and inhabitants often remain unaware that things could be otherwise (Zucker, 1983). Increasingly, scholars are recognizing that this lack of awareness may be more vulnerable than previously thought (Harmon, 2019; Steele, 2021).

In this study, we show how *reality breakdowns* temporarily generate awareness of the constructed nature of the social world. When their activities are disrupted, inhabitants may obtain awareness of their institutional surroundings and transition into an "unsettled" period (Swidler, 1986) wherein taken-for-granted norms and practices become actively reconsidered (Gehman, 2021). This process may stimulate inhabitants to consider alternatives to a problematic present (Emirbayer & Mische, 1998) which can inspire and facilitate changes in their institutional arrangements (Dacin et al., 2002; DiMaggio, 1988; Micelotta et al., 2017). Yet, when cracks begin to form in their established social reality, inhabitants often rise to the defense of the established social order and actively attempt to reaffirm the status quo (Lok & de Rond, 2013; Steele, 2021). Reality breakdowns generate institutional awareness with the potential to stir the hearts and minds of inhabitants and can serve as moments of inspiration that instigate transformation, as well as moments that reaffirm the status quo.

Unpacking the intricacies of such reality breakdowns is thus pivotal to understanding the conditions under which different types of responses are likely to materialize. Although there is a great deal of research on *how* actors successfully shape their social worlds across various theoretical perspectives, including institutional entrepreneurship (Battilana et al., 2009; Hardy & Maguire, 2008), cultural entrepreneurship (Glynn & Lounsbury, 2022; Lounsbury & Glynn, 2001, 2019), institutional work (Lawrence et al., 2013; Lawrence & Phillips, 2019; Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006), social movements (Briscoe & Gupta, 2016; Schneiberg & Lounsbury, 2017), and others, there is far less understanding of what initially motivates these processes in the first place. Scholars have called for increased attention to microprocesses (Creed et al., 2010) and argued that reflexivity and awareness are important and neglected elements (Lawrence et al., 2013; Weick, 2020). Reality breakdowns are the initial junctures for catalyzing such processes. Shifting the locus of scholarly attention to these happenings may surface important insights into the precipitating dynamics underlying motivations to transform or preserve social worlds. This is particularly salient when a reality breakdown appears to be a catalyst for change but fails to motivate substantial action.

Our primary aim in this paper is to unpack *how inhabitants respond to and handle reality breakdowns.* We pursue this line of inquiry in the context of collegial governance – a highly entrenched institution in the field of higher education. Our longitudinal ethnographic study follows the collegial governance system at a large North American university prior to and through an unexpected and significant disruption. The time-honored tradition of collegial governance is one of the most extreme examples of a pervasive institution in the academy and we use this empirical setting to foster greater understanding of how institutional inhabitants react to reality breakdowns.

Our findings reveal that inhabitants engaged in a highly consequential process whereby they constructed the severity of the breakdown. The multivocal nature of collegial governance led to a wide range of perceptions of the severity of the breakdown which inhibited their ability to take collective action. Inhabitants who perceived the breakdown to be severe attempted to affirm the status quo by reversing the institutionally divergent decision, but this effort ultimately failed, leading to an effort to develop change proposals. However, throughout this process inhabitants engaged in various forms of cognitive sensemaking – that is, attributing the reality breakdown to anomalous conditions, orienting toward the future, and designating change as formidable – which served an important function by diminishing the formulation of these new possibilities. As a result, what might have been a moment for transformation ultimately passed with little consequence. Our findings shed light on the neglected phenomenon of reality breakdowns by foregrounding the extremely consequential process of severity construction and focusing on an environment with extreme heterogeneity among inhabitants. We contribute to the literature on institutions and sensemaking by highlighting how sensemaking processes play an important mediating role between institutional awareness and change efforts. We show how even when institutional inhabitants develop institutional awareness and the capacity to imagine new possibilities for their social worlds, sensemaking efforts can diminish and reorient the need for change. Our findings also contribute to the literature on organizational institutionalism (Greenwood et al., 2008) by highlighting the potentially enhanced role of codified rules during periods of institutional awareness.

## **THEORETICAL BACKGROUND**

#### *Reality Breakdowns*

Institutions are composed of "reciprocal typifications" derived from beliefs about the roles of actors and their behaviors in given situations that provide order in the flow of the social world (Berger & Luckmann, 1966). Put plainly, social worlds are constituted by a set of expectations regarding who can do what and when. Takenfor-grantedness arises whenever conformity to these expectations of the social world becomes unquestioned (Meyer & Rowan, 1977). These expectations create a virtual or "as-if" reality that fosters a lack of awareness about the elemental components comprising the social world and possible alternatives. In the words of neoinstitutionalists "for things to be otherwise is literally unthinkable" (Zucker, 1983, p. 25). Such taken-for-granted expectations are relatively unreflexively inherited by new inhabitants, supporting harmony and the longevity of the ordered nature of social reality (Gehman, 2021). When social worlds are characterized by such arrangements, they are said to be in a more settled period (Swidler, 1986).

Berger and Luckmann (1966) argued that a breakdown or crisis can occur whenever a happening challenges the socially defined reality. Because institutions are composed of typicalities, any atypical or unexpected occurrence or action risks disrupting the harmony and stability of the social order. Note that while reality breakdowns do challenge socially defined reality, they are not inherently negative events. Although this idea has been invoked infrequently in the decades since Berger and Luckmann's initial work, scholars across different domains have posited similar arguments. In Table 1, we summarize these disparate prior studies to illustrate the theoretical language deployed and similarities in conceptualizations of what we refer to as reality breakdowns.

Swidler (1986) described certain junctures that transition settled arrangements characterized by taken-for-granted traditions and common sense into more unsettled periods in which the social world can be questioned. In doing so, she drew explicitly on Kuhn's (1962) empirical demonstration of scientific paradigm shifts as a case of how belief systems "break down." Weick (1993) introduced a similar concept using the theoretical language of a "cosmology episode," which occurs when belief in the orderly nature of the universe is severely disrupted. Actors are met with bewilderment when their reality ceases to function as expected. More contemporary studies have applied a practice-theoretic approach, coining the term "practice breakdown" to refer to situations in which unexpected events disrupt the flow of practice (Lok & de Rond, 2013; Yanow & Tsoukas, 2009). Steele


*Table 1.* Summary of Prior Studies on Reality Breakdown.

(2021) argued that taken-for-grantedness is precarious and inherently vulnerable to unraveling when oddities or breaches prompt inhabitants to question what is really going on. In this way, the original institutional impetus is reactivated and revitalized (Gehman, 2021).

The common thread linking these seemingly disparate works is a mutual interest in happenings or moments that violate institutional inhabitants' expectations – hereafter, *reality breakdowns*. As Weick (2020, p. NP18) noted, "an 'awareness' of constructed life is not a constant," and it is precisely these reality breakdowns that make inhabitants aware of the constructed nature of their social systems. When disrupted by a reality breakdown, institutional inhabitants acquire the capacity to reflexively and explicitly consider socially constructed elements of their social world. Surprise is clearly fundamental to the notion of a reality breakdown, but scholars have theorized that such disruptions also vary substantially along two important dimensions: locus of awareness and severity.

Berger and Luckmann (1966) suggested that breakdowns can manifest either individually or collectively, and different scholars have focused on different loci of awareness. For example, Yanow and Tsoukas (2009) theorized the individual locus of awareness with an emphasis on how individual practitioners can be disrupted by surprising occurrences. They further suggested that the severity of such breakdowns for practitioners can range from simple *malfunctions* at one end of the continuum to *temporary breakdowns* to *total breakdowns* at the other end. Steele (2021) drew on ethnomethodology wherein the interaction is the relevant locus of awareness. From this perspective, *oddities* are akin to malfunctions that start with an individual, but almost immediately become apparent to others present in the interactional encounter. Failure to correct such oddities can produce *breaches* that are more severe and have effects that extend beyond the immediate interaction. Others have focused on collective breakdowns affecting coherent assemblages of inhabitants. Weick (1993) as well as Lok and de Rond (2013) focused on breakdowns in organizations, whereas others focused on more nebulous or distributed loci of awareness (Kuhn, 1962; Swidler, 1986). Even when the locus of awareness is collective, reality breakdowns are argued to vary between minor and major severity depending on the nature of the disruption (Lok & de Rond, 2013).

#### *Responses to Reality Breakdowns*

Organizational theorists' interest in reality breakdowns relates to their potential to impact the stability of social systems, regardless of their severity or which locus of awareness is given primacy. Therefore, of primary importance is how institutional inhabitants respond to them and what they do with their newfound institutional awareness. In the next two subsections, we highlight two overarching responses that are theoretically possible.

#### *Institutional Change*

One fundamental component of Swidler's (1986) notion of unsettled periods is that during such periods of upheaval actors are able to conceive of new strategies of action. The reflexivity and awareness that accompanies a reality breakdown is thus an opportunity for institutional inhabitants to not only reconsider the current system, but also generate novel ideas about how to do things differently. Directly referring to Swidler's work, Emirbayer and Mische (1998) described this as a projective activity oriented toward imagining new possible futures. In their view, agency is always *toward* something, the key takeaway being that a reality breakdown can shift what precisely agency is oriented toward. This can occur regardless of which locus of awareness is being considered, stirring motivation for change in both individuals (Creed et al., 2010; Toubiana, 2020) and more macrolevel collectives (Kuhn, 1962; Weick, 1993). Therefore, reality breakdowns and the formulation of alternative possibilities can motivate institutional inhabitants to modify their arrangements.

Institutional change has proven to be an enduring topic that has captivated scholars' interest for decades (Dacin et al., 2002; DiMaggio, 1988; Micelotta et al., 2017), and reality breakdowns are clearly relevant to this literature. However, it is critical to highlight that reality breakdowns represent the very first moments in which the seeds of doubt and chaos are planted in the hearts and minds of institutional inhabitants. In the process of institutional change, such breakdowns are viewed as precursors to any effort to modify institutional arrangements. Steele (2021) purported that breaches can serve as catalysts, while Lok and de Rond (2013, p. 189) similarly argued: "In cases in which total breakdowns trigger a new course of action, practices can change." The core point here is that institutional inhabitants engaging in change efforts is an effect where the cause is a reality breakdown and its resulting awareness of the constructed nature of reality.

As Micelotta et al. (2017, p. 1892) observed, a wide range of approaches to institutional change "provide a vocabulary to categorize tactics and strategies." These include perspectives as diverse as institutional work (Lawrence et al., 2013; Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006), social movements (Briscoe & Gupta, 2016; Schneiberg & Lounsbury, 2017), institutional entrepreneurship (Battilana et al., 2009; Hardy & Maguire, 2008), cultural entrepreneurship (Glynn & Lounsbury, 2022; Lounsbury & Glynn, 2019), and others that seek to illuminate the dynamics underpinning institutional change. However, while such answers help elucidate *how* actors are able to modify institutional arrangements, they do not adequately explicate *why* precisely they are motivated to do so. We argue that an important question is both *why* actors decide to embark on this journey as well as *why now*. Focusing on the phenomenon of reality breakdowns and resulting institutional awareness enables such questions to be explored.

Our approach shares an affinity with theoretical arguments underpinning work on exogenous shocks (Clemens & Cook, 1999; Fligstein, 1991) or environmental jolts (Meyer, 1982) which argue that changes are instigated by "happenings" rather than manifesting randomly. However, as illustrated in the terms "exogenous" and "environmental," these frameworks often draw on ecological perspectives and view changes as being external and top-down. They do not necessitate surprise and are caused by "some external force or legislative deus ex machina smacking into stable institutional arrangements" (Clemens & Cook, 1999, p. 447) which forces the organizations in an environment to adapt. In contrast, a reality breakdown emphasizes institutional awareness and how institutional inhabitants' understanding of the social world fractures unexpectedly when faced with disruption. Also, as explained in the next subsection, organizational adaptation is not an inevitable outcome of such disruptions, but rather only one possible result.

#### *Reaffirming the Status Quo*

Even though reality breakdowns can enable inhabitants to reflexively consider previously taken-for-granted elements of the social world and imagine possible alternatives to these arrangements, they may not capitalize on or leverage these opportunities. Berger and Luckmann (1966) used the theoretical language of "crisis maintenance" to refer to the way in which reality breakdowns are addressed by actors. More recently, scholars have directed significant attention to the role of "custodians" who actively address these disruptions to preserve stability (Dacin et al., 2010, 2019; Wright et al., 2021). The thrust of this argument is that even in social worlds ostensibly characterized by stability, actors may sometimes be required to engage in efforts to sustain this permanence.

Emirbayer and Mische (1998, p. 1006) suggested that during unsettled periods, "actors might resist change and hold tightly to past routines"; likewise, Steele (2021, p. 349) noted that "participants feel the need to reassert and retrench the status quo." Reality breakdowns frequently result in institutional inhabitants rising to the defense of their established social order. In some cases, preserving the stability of the social system is primarily a cognitive endeavor in which reality breakdowns are largely neglected. For example, happenings that ought to have been actively considered by institutional inhabitants can sometimes be neglected and normalized, thereby enabling the social world plasticity to absorb abnormalities (Lok & de Rond, 2013; Weick, 1993). Steele (2021) likewise noted that when oddities call into question the intelligibility of the social order, actors are generally able to correct the peculiarities of the interaction. This harkens back to the original phenomenologists who argued for the need to bracket out the natural attitude and see past all that is taken-for-granted (Gehman, 2021). In other cases, actors reverse the actions that caused the disruption, thereby restoring order and eliminating the need for change (Lok & de Rond, 2013). This amounts to reinstitution, a revitalization of the original institutional project by making the task personal (Gehman, 2021).

#### *Precipitating Dynamics*

The study of reality breakdowns answers calls by scholars to study the earliest moments of microprocesses of institutional change (Creed et al., 2010; Seidel et al., 2020; Smets et al., 2012). By foregrounding institutional awareness and the unraveling of taken-for-grantedness (Gehman, 2021; Harmon, 2019; Steele, 2021), reality breakdowns allow us to study the currently neglected role of reflexivity (Lawrence et al., 2013; Weick, 2020). For organization theorists, the puzzle is to unpack the contingencies under which such occurrences lead to the reshaping of social worlds as well as those in which they fail to do so. Despite clear recognition of a range of possible responses to these events, scholars have yet to explain why some cases elicit particular responses and others do not. The primary argument for precipitating conditions under which different types of responses are likely to materialize is variation in the characteristics of the breakdowns.

One critical element of theoretical importance is variation in severity. Relatively mundane malfunctions or oddities are argued to elicit basic corrective responses that can swiftly overcome breakdowns (Steele, 2021; Yanow & Tsoukas, 2009). Lok and de Rond's (2013) empirical work demonstrates that institutional inhabitants respond to minor breakdowns with mere containment activities, which could be as simple as smoothing over or neglecting breakdowns altogether. On the other hand, they discovered that major breakdowns require more serious restoration, such as reversing the actions that caused the disruptions. Thus, one explanation would be that severe breakdowns lead to change and less severe breakdowns lead to reaffirmation of the status quo. However, they observed no institutional change efforts associated with either major or minor breakdowns in their empirical context, suggesting that even severe reality breakdowns can lead to reaffirming the status quo rather than modifying institutional arrangements.

In summary, reality breakdowns occur across different units of analysis such as individuals, interactional encounters, and collectives, whether tightly interwoven or more distributed. Such breakdowns occur with varying levels of severity and create opportunities for reflexivity and institutional awareness. We also know that responses during subsequent unsettled times can include efforts to reaffirm the status quo as well as efforts to modify institutional arrangements. However, we have very little understanding from prior literature about why institutional inhabitants exhibit markedly different reactions. This gap is incredibly important, because institutional transformation processes are often studied after they occur and are traced back to disruptive events. This results in a success-biased literature that misses the counterfactual stories in which substantially similar events lead to unrealized possibilities for change. There seems to be a knowledge void regarding the intermediate steps between a reality breakdown and efforts, which may determine institutional inhabitants' course of action. Our inductive study supports a better understanding of this phenomenon by following a reality breakdown and responses to it during the ensuing period of institutional awareness.

## **METHODS**

Studying reality breakdowns is a challenging task because, from a pragmatic perspective, they may fade into obscurity with little historical record, particularly when institutional inhabitants manage to successfully reaffirm the status quo. Furthermore, by definition, breakdowns are unexpected, making them unlikely to be predicted *ex ante*. Ethnographic techniques (Hammersley & Atkinson, 2007) with a longitudinal orientation, together with a stroke of serendipity (Merton & Barber, 2004), enabled us to capture this phenomenon. Our research setting was a large North American university that experienced a massive reduction in government funding. In response, the incoming President launched a strategic change initiative which included, among other things, a redesign of the structure of the academic units at the university. Initially, we sought to study structural transformation. However, during the process, there was an unexpected assault on collegial governance. This reality breakdown was unanticipated and shocking, both to us and to the institutional inhabitants we were observing. This reality breakdown we observed was the product of sheer fortunate serendipity, but was so fascinating that it was impossible not to direct our attention to this captivating phenomenon. Having already observed the events leading up to this moment, we leveraged a prime opportunity to unpack how the involved actors responded in real time.

#### *Research Context: An Assault on Collegial Governance*

Collegial governance, also called shared governance, is thought to have originated in ancient Roman civil courts and the church before proliferating to higher education (Strand, 1992). Collegial governance is often referred to as a core academic principle and a "tradition," which mirrors the exact terminology in Swidler's (1986) characterization of more settled arrangements. Myriad configurations of collegial governance can be found in universities around the world (Sahlin & Eriksson-Zetterquist, 2016). In North America, a university typically has an academic senate composed of ex-officio members, appointed members, and elected representatives in conjunction with a governing board (Covaleski & Dirsmith, 1988; Hills & Mahoney, 1978). In our case, the academic senate was responsible for academic affairs of the university, subject to the authority of the university's board, and was composed of a wide range of actors, including members of central administration, deans of all academic units, students, faculty members, and others such as library support staff.

In their ethnographic work, Lok and de Rond (2013) focused on the selection system for boat race competitors in a specific social world. Likewise, collegial governance can be conceptualized as a "decision-making system" in a specific social world – in this case, a university. Thus, we sought to understand what differentiates collegial governance from other types of decision-making systems.

The focal university's website and the guidebook for academic senate members described dimensions of collegial governance, such as respect and openness, meaningful engagement, and participatory and inclusive decision-making. We also participated in the training for new senate members in which the governance team described collegial governance as a participatory decision-making system. The field-level understanding of collegial governance was substantially aligned with the university's practices. Other local universities described collegial governance in similar ways; one even copied the focal university's guidelines verbatim. Examples of common themes include "diversity of views," "respect," and "participation." In sum, collegial governance practices facilitate participation and meaningful engagement in decision-making by a diverse array of organizational members.

Collegial governance differs from decision-making systems that might be found in other types of organizations or enterprises without mechanisms for member engagement. In the focal university, inclusiveness was achieved through three mechanisms. First, the university had a bicameral structure with two governing bodies: the senate which was primarily responsible for academic affairs, and the board which has senior oversight of the university and handles its conduct, as well as management and control practices. The senate was a legislatively mandated governing body, unlike a corporation which typically has only a board of directors. Second, the majority of academic senate members were elected by their constituents (i.e., faculty and students). Each academic unit (e.g., engineering, business) was allocated a proportionate number of student and faculty representatives. Finally, the senate operated on a oneperson, one-vote basis. Many decades prior to our study, the senate's structure was strategically designed to have twice as many elected faculty as ex-officio positions and parity between the number of elected students and faculty. The intent was to ensure that each group would need to persuade other groups of the merit of their ideas.

Fig. 1 is a graphical representation of the composition of the focal university's senate and board during our study period. To ensure anonymity, we report relative rather than absolute numbers for each group. The total number of academic senate members was in the hundred range. The board was a much smaller group, with less than 30 members, most of whom were appointed by the head of the department of education in the jurisdiction that provided government funding. The board also included elected representatives from both the non-academic and academic staff unions, a faculty member representing the academic senate, a student representative, and alumni of the university, as well as the presidents of the undergraduate and graduate student unions.

#### *Empirical Case*

The jurisdiction that funds the university is well known as highly conservative. For more than four decades, the government was controlled by the conservative party. A liberal leaning government led the jurisdiction from 2014 to 2019, at which point a newly formed conservative party united different factions and re-seized control. Members of this party began implementing an extreme rightwing agenda and attacking traditionally liberal institutions, including public sector unions and universities. The focal university's budget, largely reliant on

*Fig. 1.* Composition of the Governing Bodies.

government funding, was slashed dramatically by nearly 7% (from approximately \$468 million to \$435 million) in the first year, followed by two even more drastic reductions in each of the next two years. Overall, the government reduced the amount of funding provided to the university by nearly one-third, a decrease of approximately \$124 million. To respond to these extreme austerity measures, the incoming President announced a proposed restructuring initiative focused on increasing efficiency by centralizing functions, and by extension, eliminating jobs. In designing this initiative, the university signed a multimillion-dollar contract with a consulting group that marketed itself as a higher education specialist and the architect behind similar university efficiency reforms in Australia and the United Kingdom. One part of this plan was academic restructuring to consolidate academic units into larger, more efficient ones.

The President's academic restructuring initiative was announced without a concrete proposal. Instead, communication emphasized the general idea that the university could cut costs while preserving the core mission of teaching and research. The President initiated the process by establishing a steering committee to help formulate draft proposals in consultation with the university community. The committee had no formal authority, but would present its proposed models to the academic senate. As the entity that handles academic affairs in the collegial governance system, the senate was charged with deliberating these proposals and editing them as necessary before voting on a recommendation that the President, who chaired the academic senate meetings, would then take to the governing board for final approval. This process unfolded over a seven-month period.

However, during the deliberations, the President developed a preference for a model that diverged from what the academic senate ultimately voted to recommend. When he brought the proposal before the board, he expressed his disagreement and preference for an alternative model. He subsequently recused himself from voting on or discussing the matter at the meeting due to a conflict of interest, leaving the board to make the final decision. The board discussed the merit of both models, but ultimately diverged from the academic senate's recommendation in favor of a compromise that was more closely aligned with the President's preferred model. In Table 2, we present an outline of key events leading up to the decision.

The board's decision to amend the recommendation constituted a significant disruption to the academic senate. Most members had been operating under the notion that the academic senate's decision would be "rubber stamped" by the board such that all of their engagement had been a battle for the fate of the university. Thus, the board's decision to reject their recommendation was an unexpected disruption that raised their awareness of the nature of their collegial governance system.

#### *Data Collection*

In an ethnographic study, the primary data source is field observations. Since the university is a public entity, meetings of the governing bodies and all subcommittees were open to the public. Agendas were publicly posted by the governance team on the university website prior to each meeting and we observed those relevant to our research. We also registered for their FYI list which enabled


*Table 2.* Timeline of Events Leading to Reality Breakdown.

us to receive reminders and meeting materials via email in advance of meetings. Because our study period coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic, all meetings were held virtually and observed via Zoom or a YouTube livestream, depending on the size and nature of the assembly. In addition to these more formal meetings, we attended an array of more informal events (e.g., town halls and roundtables) to gain insights into the process.

We also conducted 18 semi-structured interviews with members of the senate. All interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed. The interviews began with open-ended questions followed by key questions related to collegial governance. The primary function of the interviews was to ascertain insiders' perceptions of collegial governance and the reality breakdown from those involved. For example, we typically asked participants for their thoughts about the board's decision to amend the motion recommended by the senate and inquired about their views on collegial governance. While a great deal of information about the stances of different actors could be gathered from observing meetings, these interviews served as a critical source of knowledge about the stances of those who seldom spoke during such meetings and revealed how some actors' perspectives diverged from their public statements.

Finally, we gathered documents from diverse sources, such as governing body meeting agendas and minutes which contained important graphical and textual data about meeting topics, emails between senate members, articles from the student newspaper, social media and blog posts, etc. These assorted documents augmented our understanding of discourse occurring in markedly different relational spaces and from actors with more peripheral roles in collegial governance.

#### *Analytical Approach*

Because our primary goal was inductive theory building (Charmaz, 2006; Glaser & Strauss, 1967), an iterative approach was appropriate for data analysis (Miles & Huberman, 1994). We iterated between data collection, analysis, and relevant literature as the process unfolded in order to make sense of the theoretical significance of the empirical story. Although this was a non-linear process with some leaps of creative ingenuity (e.g., Langley, 1999), our analytical strategy can be distilled to a few important aspects that were central to our derivation of theory from the data.

At the outset of our empirical work, we focused on identifying the agendas of the academic senate members and attempting to discern how institutional inhabitants used the collegial governance system. During the first seven months of the process, we were primarily interested in whether and how academic senate members used tools of the social world in attempts to shape the process and outcomes toward their preferred ends. We had anticipated that the board's decision would mark the end of the decision-making process. After the reality breakdown occurred, we returned to our data collected while the structural transformation was unfolding. Attention to collegial governance in the ongoing discussion exploded in a single day, thus it was pivotal for us to explore any relevant data that we might have inadvertently overlooked before the reality breakdown increased its saliency. Our primary aim was to ensure that we accounted for any explicit references to collegial governance by members of the academic senate prior to the breakdown. We searched the database for the phrase "collegial governance" so that we could record any such incidents and which senate members were involved, if any.

Then, we shifted the focus of our analysis to the reality breakdown and its aftermath. It was important to analyze in great detail how institutional inhabitants responded. We were able to categorize most members of the senate based on their role at the university (e.g., faculty and student) and academic unit (e.g., business and medicine). As we attempted to identify response patterns associated with particular categories, it quickly became apparent that the meaning of collegial governance was highly salient to institutional inhabitants. Therefore, in addition to placing a stronger emphasis on meaning in our data collection efforts, we analyzed institutional inhabitants' understandings of collegial governance and variations in their responses to the reality breakdown. Finally, as Lok and de Rond (2013) highlighted, breakdowns that are severe enough can attract attention from external audiences whose reactions may be consequential. Thus, another dimension of our analysis focused on understanding the responses of both institutional inhabitants and other interested parties who could potentially shape the aftermath of the reality breakdown. Next, we present our findings and theoretical insights, from pre-breakdown activities through the reality breakdown to institutional inhabitants' reactions to the disruption.

## **FINDINGS**

#### *Pre-breakdown Activities*

Prior to the reality breakdown, collegial governance was largely taken-for-granted. In analyzing the pre-breakdown data, we found that an overwhelming majority of members of the academic senate had never even uttered the term prior to the board's decision. Although collegial governance was largely taken-for-granted, it was by no means uneventful. Many actors described higher than normal levels of involvement and engagement from members of the academic senate, as illustrated in the following exchange between a faculty member and a dean:

*Dean:* One of the things that I was most optimistic about in this whole process was just the sheer level of engagement … it was real engagement. It was probably the most engagement I had seen at the university since I arrived.

*Faculty:* I agree with you [dean], and in fact, I haven't seen that level of engagement since I came in, which was 1999.

Under normal circumstances, the academic senate tended to handle more mundane topics such as academic programming. Thus, members described the structural transformation as "the most important work many of us will ever do" (Admin) and made claims such as "the future of the university is at stake" (Faculty). It is worth noting that tensions were high during the process; this massive change initiative did not unfold smoothly, with frictions surfacing during consultations and town halls. Nevertheless, at this point, most inhabitants did not question the collegial governance system and the rules of the game; rather, they were playing the game and contentions arose as they deployed their selected strategies of action.

Generally, senate members attempted to use the collegial governance system to achieve their desired outcomes. During discussions in committee meetings, members tried to acquire information about the proposals, offer new ideas that could be implemented, express approval or disapproval for different models, etc. In Swidler's (1986) terms, collegial governance provided the toolkit that actors used to the best of their ability to shape the proposal's formulation. This approach seemed to be quite effective. One senate member retrospectively described it as "a collegial process up until that point" (Faculty). Indeed, the final proposal that was sent to the board contradicted the steering committee's preference; it had been formulated by a group outside the steering committee and was added to the agenda through the mechanisms of collegial governance. One administrator reflected:

Frankly, I am proud of [the senate] for the way that it engaged in a very, very significant way. And nobody will say that is exactly what they had envisioned, but I think we would all agree that a collegial process was executed and that was the consensus result. (Admin)

This sentiment was shared by some of the most actively engaged senate members who supported and had helped create the rejected model:

I think the thing that was meaningful to me is that when it matters, people mobilized, and they did something, and we had an opinion, and the opinion actually was approved by [the senate]. So, the system kind of works. (Faculty)

#### *Reality Breakdown and Awareness*

The board's decision to amend the senate's recommendation was an idiosyncratic event in the university's history. Although the education act in the jurisdiction stipulated that a university board had the authority to modify or reject recommendations from the senate, the board had historically abstained from exercising this power:

It's just been generally accepted that [the senate] is the be all and end all on most academic decisions, and this certainly felt like one of them. (Student)

[The senate] has been put in a position that it has never been [in] before by the decisions of the board and by decisions of the leadership. (Faculty)

For the board to have gone in a direction that is different from that of [the senate] is unusual, I think it is fair to say, and I think probably unprecedented in most of our living memory of the governance relations at the [university]. (Admin)

Perhaps the most common reaction to the breakdown was a reflexive awareness of the concept of collegial governance. For senate members, this disruption unraveled its taken-for-grantedness: "I am at a loss as to what collegial governance means for us, [the senate] and the university" (Staff). Collegial governance became a central topic in the senate's discourse and a significant amount of time was devoted to discussing the events of the board meeting and collegial governance more broadly. Institutional inhabitants explicitly questioned what it meant to have a collegial governance system: "It felt like [the senate] was disrespected. And that's where I started to wonder: Do I really know what collegial governance looks like and how it is envisioned" (Faculty)? In light of their newfound awareness that the board could overrule their decisions, several members also questioned the academic senate's role in such a system:

I also wonder what is the role of [the senate]? … So, after we spend all these hours, are we just chopped liver? I have better things to do of course. (Faculty)

The question that I still have is: What happens next time the senate has to make a big academic decision that affects the future of the university? And that's where I think a lot of the distrust in collegial governance lies, because now the board has set a precedent that that is something that can happen. (Student)

Through our interviews and ethnographic work, it rapidly became clear that members of the senate did not agree on the meaning of collegiality. Rather than reflexivity and awareness of something "factual" like a piece of objective information, we found the reality breakdown revealed different understandings of collegial governance. First and foremost, collegiality was seen as something ambiguous; one student representative referred to it as "an abstract concept." When we asked participants what it meant, they frequently responded with "That's a good question" and then struggled to articulate their understanding. Others noted how they had consulted various sources on the meaning of collegial governance following the breakdown: "I had looked up the definition just to be clear, and to my understanding it was obviously collegial, right?" (Student); "When I first got on the [Senate] somebody provided me some information … I went back and I looked at one of the PowerPoints a month or so ago" (Faculty).

Despite this overall ambiguity, there seemed to be at least some convergence around the idea of collegial governance as involving participatory decisionmaking. As we highlighted earlier, this is how it is conceived at the macrolevel across higher education. Informants described it as being an inclusive conversation or discussion that involved diverse views and voices prior to making decisions, or as a student put it: "Good discussions leading to good decisions that are well informed and that have the participation of people across campus." Some informants also referenced a structural component for participation that involved explicit consultation with the senate:

It has to be inclusive and … then the inclusion has to be codified … It requires structures that specifically state that … certain things have to be done in a participatory fashion. (Faculty)

There has to be this kind of fulsome, healthy disagreement sometimes, debate often, and there have to be processes built in around that to allow people to express their understandings of how the processes should flow. (Student)

I guess like making decisions in consultation with [the senate] and through [the senate] is … the main way that I interpret collegial governance. (Faculty)

Despite this general consensus that collegial governance involves participatory decision-making, there were two primary points of divergence. The first was an emphasis on "collegiality" as a cultural component that included friendliness and respect in discussions with others. "One of the things that I do always try and mention in conversations of collegiality is ensuring that the situation we create and the culture we create is friendly and open" (Student); "It has to be respectful on all sides and carried out professionally. Everyone has to be held to a certain standard of decorum of professional behavior" (Faculty). Other institutional inhabitants used language such as animosity, antagonism, or hostile to describe a cultural atmosphere that was non-collegial. "People get very, very angry and they speak very passionately about these things and I don't think that that's collegial" (Student).

The second point of divergence was around the notion of authority. Some senate members interpreted collegial governance as meaning that authority on academic matters was to be vested in the senate: "What it means is that the university should be fundamentally run by the academics" (Faculty). Others disagreed, arguing, "Some of the interpretations are really far more grassroots than was intended by the guiding documents" (Faculty). Such institutional inhabitants viewed the university's bicameral governance structure as indicating that authority was vested in the board: "When it comes to the mandate of the institution, as per the [education act], the board does play a role in it" (Student). These actors often referenced the education act as highlighting that in the collegial governance system, the board was a well-intentioned participant that brought its own expertise to participatory decision-making.

Interestingly, few categorical patterns explained these divergent conceptualizations of collegial governance. For example, respectful communication was raised by students who perceived a power imbalance in the senate, so we initially suspected this to be a unique aspect of their understanding of collegial governance. However, senate members in other categories also cited respectful communication as a central component. Likewise, not all students articulated this view, with one arguing that there had been "conflation of the idea of collegiality with friendliness or niceness." We observed a great deal of variation within groups, with some very explicit rejections of both dimensions.

These understandings of collegial governance which were both ambiguous and divergent can be described as "multivocal." Multivocality is used across different literatures to refer to things that are subject to multiple interpretations (Ferraro et al., 2015; Furnari, 2014; Ocasio & Joseph, 2005) and shares an affinity with the notion of polysemy (Gümüsay et al., 2020; Meyer et al., 2018). A faculty representative noted that senate members embraced "radically different ideas on the [senate's] role." This multivocality was important because different interpretations of collegial governance also shaped perceptions of the reality breakdown. One senate member astutely noted: "I am afraid that our discourse is functioning on different levels. I am afraid that some people think collegial governance has been achieved last term and some people vehemently disagree" (Staff).

The multivocality surrounding collegial governance helped shape how institutional inhabitants reacted to the disruption, and therefore helps explain the vehement disagreement. The process operated much like a jury attempting to convict a criminal, but all jurors basing their verdicts on different definitions of the crime such that little consensus could be achieved. For members who felt that collegial governance was more about the academic senate possessing authority, the magnitude of the disruption was severe. For those who felt that collegial governance primarily involved having an engaged discussion before the board made the final decision, the magnitude of the disruption was considerably less significant. As inhabitants developed institutional awareness in the wake of the reality breakdown, they began to reflexively evaluate elements of their social world in attempts to identify what truly constituted collegial governance. Indeed, because a formal discussion commenced in the senate, there was basically no way to avoid this institutional awareness, making it a pivotal moment for all institutional inhabitants. Yet, each inhabitant experienced a consequential process whereby they constructed the severity of the breakdown; importantly, this process was shaped by their individual interpretations of collegial governance and other substantive characteristics of the breakdown. For example, some focused on the fact that the board compromised while others acknowledged that the President had a tough job.

Well, it's kind of a hybrid. It wasn't full out, just disregard. A lot of people were super upset; they're like "They totally disregarded [our recommendation]. It's bullshit!" … sort of [crying] bloody murder: "This is unbelievable!" And I'm like, "Well, it's kind of a hybrid. Is it that unbelievable?" (Faculty)

The President in this case was particularly controversial because he did not speak at that meeting, which is to say he did not advocate for what was decided … I think that that's led to concerns about his leadership. But you know, I understand. He is new in the job. It's a tough job. (Faculty)

Some institutional inhabitants had relatively muted reactions, describing themselves as indifferent or not having strong opinions. Others suggested that the vocal members were polarized, but that a lot of the quieter senate members had adopted more reasonable positions in the middle. Notably, some members of the senate did not perceive the breakdown as being severe: "I have no concerns about the decisions of the board, the [education act] and the university governance systems are abundantly clear that [the senate] recommends to the board" (Admin); "We have this power structure where the board makes the final decision … the power structure is important because it exists, and not only does it exist, but we are accountable to using it" (Student).

On the other hand, many members of the academic senate perceived the breakdown to be quite severe. Their reactions often were quite emotional, describing the actions of the board and the President as disappointing and frustrating: "Man, I was frustrated. Like, I am not going to lie. I was extremely frustrated by the [board's] decision. And I was also very frustrated by [the President], the way he approached that situation" (Student); "That was … depressing. … honestly, I want to express a feeling here rather than a rational statement" (Faculty). This sentiment was shared by senate members with varying degrees of involvement in the process, including members of the senate who were rather reserved, having spoken very little during the meetings and events we observed. One member described it as "disillusioning and disheartening" (Faculty) and another as "deeply disappointing" (Student). In sum, although all members became aware and reflexive about the nature of their social reality, the multivocal nature of collegial governance led to an array of reactions as diverse as the members of the senate.

#### *Attempts to Reaffirm the Status Quo*

Alongside this newfound reflexivity with regard to collegial governance was a series of aspersions about both the board's decision and the President's actions in what was perceived as a failure to support the senate's recommendation. In fact, some actors were using social media platforms such as Twitter to share live responses to the board meeting immediately after the decision was made. For example, the following social media posts were made by faculty members who were not on the academic senate: "The board has just declared war on collegial governance"; "Excuse me for asking, but who died and made the board majority the Rulers of the Universe(ity)? Oh right, the board majority did."

Both the graduate and undergraduate student unions at the university likewise issued statements expressing their lack of support for the board's decision. Although many responses on social media were nearly instantaneous, people continued to discuss the topic for a period of time after the event. A letter was formulated and sent to the chair of the board by the presidents of the two staff unions at the university who referred to the decision as "a direct contradiction of the spirit of [the senate's] recommendation – a recommendation that was arrived at after careful and extensive consideration, deliberation, and debate – and an affront to the principle of collegial governance." Similar letters were sent to the chair of the board by the faculty association at a neighboring university and two different professional associations in the same jurisdiction. A particularly noteworthy piece was an editorial in the student newspaper which took a highly antagonistic stance, referring to the event as signaling the death of collegial governance at the university and calling the board meeting a live execution.

The President was also subjected to this wrath because he did not support the senate's recommendation. The day after the decision, a senate member wrote that his declaration was "a direct betrayal of the collegial governance principles and processes of the university" (Faculty). A formal letter signed by roughly 40 department chairs at the university was sent to the President soon after regarding his actions at the board meeting. A similar letter was drafted and signed by both senate members and non-senate members of the university community. The letter read as follows:

Your statement to the board raises a serious issue with respect to collegial governance … Based on this recent course of events, it would seem that you, as President, may offer your own personal viewpoints rather than favouring a more neutral reporting of the [senate's] recommendations, and that this can happen without any forewarning to [the senate], thus undermining the collegial governance processes at the university.

More than mere harsh words, there were also calls to return to the model that the senate had recommended. The letter from the unions concluded with the following statement: "We call on the Board to reconsider its decision, respect collegial governance and bi-cameral decision-making, and approve the recommendation sent to it by [the Senate]."

This point is critical because, as we noted earlier, this was something that Lok and de Rond (2013) found in their empirical work. Namely, the status quo was upheld by restoring social order through the reversal of decisions that conflicted with the principles of the selection system. In our setting, the new model was not scheduled to be launched until seven months after the board's decision, which created a window for the decision to potentially be reversed to address the disruption and restore peace. Interestingly, as a product of the variation in perceived severity stemming from the multivocality of collegial governance, a large proportion of the senate membership did not participate in these demands, and the board did not relent and reverse the decision as requested. Additionally, some institutional inhabitants actively attempted to invoke formalized rules as they searched for ways to force such a reversal. For example, one senate member was exploring whether the board was allowed to consider a recommendation without first sending it to one of its subcommittees, as per a procedural policy at the university. Others directly consulted legislation in the jurisdiction.

I mean, the other thing about collegial governance is just like, LEGALLY who has the authority to do what? Right? So that's why myself and others were looking at the [education act], and it's like, the board does have ultimate authority. So technically, they could, I guess, make any decision they want. (Faculty)

#### *Post-breakdown Response: Toward Alternative Arrangements*

Despite these strong responses, the board effectively ignored the senate. The board described its decision as "exactly the process outlined in the [education act]" in a blog post on the day of its release, but remained silent thereafter. The President was much more responsive to the aspersions and at the first two meetings following the event, both of which were subcommittee meetings, he explained his thought process and allowed attendees to express their concerns. Essentially, he argued that he was in a peculiar position as both chair of the senate and a member of the board, but believed he had a legal fiduciary responsibility to express his personal opinion in his role as a board member. He followed this with a blog post explaining his reasoning to the broader university community and prepared to explain it to the full senate as well, but upset members of the senate were not satisfied.

Given that the decision was not reversed despite attempts to do so, institutional inhabitants began to embrace the idea that some changes were necessary. "There should have been another way of actually presenting the [senate] proposal to the board with enough substance, with enough explanation, so it might have an honest chance" (Faculty). As articulated by one faculty member, the reality breakdown caused some to question the integrity of the entire system: "This is a failure of such magnitude that it calls into question the integrity of the governance of this entire institution … The question now is: What is to be done?"

These institutional inhabitants began to imagine possible changes that could be made to address the failure of collegial governance going forward. To facilitate this collective discussion, the academic senate voted to add an item to the agenda to discuss this matter which ballooned into an entire extended length meeting. They invoked a parliamentary procedure from Robert's Rules known as "Committee of the Whole" which had essentially two net effects. First, the President stepped out of the role of chair and ceded it to a faculty member for the duration of the senate deliberations. This essentially gave the senate free reign to discuss whatever it wanted, particularly since one of the two issues at hand was the President's role. Second, rather than making decisions, the committee of the whole made recommendations to the main senate body, making it a rather lowstakes environment. In other words, the sky was the limit in formulating recommendations for change.

#### *Sensemaking Mechanisms*

Interestingly, institutional inhabitants continued to engage in a cognitive sensemaking process that diminished and reoriented the recommendations. We identified three sensemaking mechanisms: attributing the reality breakdown to anomalous conditions, orienting toward the future, and designating change as formidable.

Some actors engaged in sensemaking by attributing the reality breakdown to anomalous conditions, such as the reduction in funding, the new government, and the pandemic.

The [university] alone has seen over \$100M in cuts and we are all feeling the effects of it. This is a year where we are in the middle of a pandemic and that has made it even more challenging … so when we talk about collegial governance, I think we really need to be discussing these points. (Student)

Many institutional inhabitants attributed the reality breakdown to the funding reduction, as this was the primary motivation behind the structural transformation in the first place. The President often referred to the funding shortfall as a financial crisis; indeed, the entire strategic change initiative was predicated on managing the problematic situation in an effective manner. Likewise, some academic senate members attributed the breakdown to the budget cuts and the unreasonable timelines for implementing them. In doing so, they framed the disruptive shock as an abnormal event under extreme circumstances that would be unlikely to reoccur. "Editing the motions as was done, not ideal governance, but, we are in a pressure cooker situation. We have timelines that are not our choosing, and destinations that we have to reach that were set by others" (Admin).

Institutional inhabitants also attributed the reality breakdown to the new government responsible for the funding reduction. Even senate members who supported the President's model had negative things to say about the role of the government in the process. In addition, the new administration had prematurely ended the terms of some government-appointed board members. Some believed that certain board members had been replaced with political "cronies" who were responsible for the unprecedented decision to amend the senate's recommendation.

The real problematic nodal point here is between the [government] and the [board] … if that had been dealt with the way it was envisioned by the people who put this in place, we would not be having these problems between the [board] and the [senate]. (Faculty)

Inhabitants who employed the second sensemaking mechanism, orienting toward the future, tended to view the reality breakdown as less severe and wanted to focus on tackling what they viewed as pressing threats to the university's survival. One administrator referred to it as being "in the middle of the swamp" and emphasized the need to forge ahead to escape the morass. A few members similarly focused on what they perceived as larger threats, such as a government proposal to implement "super-boards" that would oversee multiple higher education organizations. They strongly advocated moving forward to pursue the university's mandate of teaching and research with a focus on survival. They felt that arguing about collegial governance was a distraction and a waste of time, and some inhabitants even suggested that the debate would only play into the government's hands: "The last thing you want to do is show the [government] that there's turmoil. Like, at the end of the day, our real enemy is not us. And we shouldn't be fighting with each other like this" (Student); "I'm afraid that the way we responded to that just reveals even more how dysfunctional we are to those politicians, so I don't think we helped ourselves a lot" (Faculty).

The final sensemaking mechanism was designating specific types of institutional changes as formidable, if not impossible to achieve. Inhabitants actively assessed the amount of effort it would take to plausibly bring about the transformations they were imagining. The education act was salient in this regard. "I don't think it's anything that can be particularly enforced like through policy, especially 'cause most of that has to go through the [education act]" (Student). One way to address the issues that caused the breakdown would be to change the formalized rules, which was perceived to be a formidable task. "It's true. They have that power. Okay. There's nothing we can do about that, unless we change it, and that's difficult to impossible to do anyway" (Faculty); "I also feel like even if the [education act] did give [the senate] more authority, like if the government doesn't like it, they could just change it too" (Faculty).

Even members of the senate who believed the board should not possess the authority to override them perceived that it would require a monumental amount of work to mobilize against a government that clearly did not support them and change the legislation. Unsurprisingly, this mechanism was used by members of the senate who perceived the breakdown to be severe.

#### *Outcomes*

These sensemaking mechanisms were important mediators in institutional inhabitants' interpretations of the necessity and desirability of change, ultimately reorienting recommended proposals and limiting their scope. For example, although actors developed institutional awareness of the concept of collegial governance and initially perceived a need for transformation, attributing the reality breakdown to anomalous conditions allowed them to interpret the disruption as necessitating less urgent modifications. The senate's locus of attention shifted inward, away from the board, as members began focusing on aspects such as dynamics of the senate itself. For example, the notion of collegiality as culture was given a shocking amount of attention during the deliberations. One faculty member told us in an interview that although she had initially thought the committee of the whole was a good idea, she was dismayed by the "anti-collegial" discussion at the meeting, which was quite contentious. Another issue that emerged pertained to the composition of the academic senate and the appropriate proportions of administration, students, and faculty members. This was interesting, given that the senate had approved the original model by approximately 80% of the vote. The focus had shifted so much toward internal matters that recommendations related to the sources of the reality breakdown had all but disappeared. Rather than achieving the initial goal of imagining new possibilities to address sources of the perceived failure of the collegial governance system, the process yielded primarily superficial recommendations with one exception. Notably, this occurred even though the meeting was run as a committee of the whole controlled by a faculty member and thus had nearly unlimited potential to generate new possibilities. We summarize the recommendations developed by the committee of the whole in Table 3.

The first recommendation to hold a vote of no confidence in the President and chair of the board was overwhelmingly defeated. Two recommendations


*Table 3.* Recommendations of the Committee of the Whole.

were unrelated to change at all. The first suggested a reaffirmation of the senate's collegial culture, and the second pertained to the implementation of the model that had been approved by the board rather than changes to the collegial governance system. Two recommendations related to improving dynamics unrelated to the roles of the board and the President in senate proposals. Among the six recommendations, only one sought to address a component of the reality breakdown by suggesting the creation of a joint body between the board and the senate to increase communication. Notably, although some institutional inhabitants suggested that the senate should be able to submit recommendations directly to the board when the President disagreed with them, no procedural changes were proposed.

## **DISCUSSION**

To explore how institutional inhabitants respond to and attempt to address reality breakdowns, we undertook a processual ethnographic study of collegial governance in a large North American university undergoing a strategic change initiative implemented by the incoming President. We followed collegial governance from its initial taken-for-granted state through a disruption that brought the concept to the forefront of discourse and studied the responses of institutional inhabitants. In Fig. 2, we present a theoretical model illustrating the process that we uncovered through our empirical work. The model demonstrates how the reality breakdown created institutional awareness that led institutional inhabitants to question their social world and construct the severity of the breakdown. Those who perceived the breakdown to be most severe attempted to restore order by demanding a reversal of the decision. When their efforts failed, institutional inhabitants attempted to imagine alternative possibilities. However, this process was "compressed" by simultaneous sensemaking regarding the efficacy and

*Fig. 2.* Response to a Reality Breakdown.

desirability of change via the mechanisms of attributing the reality breakdown to anomalous conditions, orienting toward the future, and designating changes as formidable. The final result was a diminished and reoriented set of recommendations. We discuss the implications of our findings and theoretical model in the remainder of this section.

#### *Reality Breakdowns and the Social Construction of Severity*

Our findings contribute primarily to the study of reality breakdowns. Although Berger and Luckmann (1966) initially articulated that breakdowns in reality could threaten the stability of social reality, they are rarely a central research focus. Research on reality breakdowns answers calls to unpack the role of reflexivity and institutional awareness as an initial motivating force (Lawrence et al., 2013; Weick, 2020) and enables us to understand the earliest moments in microprocesses of change efforts (Creed et al., 2010; Smets et al., 2012). Reality breakdowns unravel the taken-for-grantedness of elements of the social world (Steele, 2021) and instigate unsettled periods (Swidler, 1986) in which institutional inhabitants become aware of these elements.

Our primary contribution builds upon groundbreaking ideas related to variation in the severity of disruptions (Lok & de Rond, 2013; Yanow & Tsoukas, 2009). While scholars have argued that disruptions may vary in their severity, they have paid relatively less attention to how severity actually manifests. Generally, the severity of reality breakdowns being studied is considered to be similar across institutional inhabitants (Lok & de Rond, 2013). However, our findings suggest that severity is not an inherent characteristic of reality breakdowns, but is constructed by institutional inhabitants via an incredibly consequential process. Some inhabitants may perceive a breakdown as quite severe and exhibit strong emotional reactions, while others may perceive it as trivial and conclude that only slight corrective action is necessary. The construction of severity is critical because institutional inhabitants typically need to be aligned to take significant action (Lok & de Rond, 2013; Steele, 2021).

We found that collegial governance is both ambiguous and subject to multiple interpretations; thus, we describe it as multivocal, a concept that has been invoked in an array of contexts (Ferraro et al., 2015; Furnari, 2014). The multiplicity of meanings fosters interpretive flexibility (Pinch & Bijker, 1984) among a diverse array of actors, and the multivocal nature of collegial governance makes the process of constructing severity all the more intriguing. In settled times, largely taken-for-granted expectations may persist as long as multiple interpretations of the reciprocal typifications do not conflict. However, when a breakdown occurs, institutional inhabitants become aware of and reflexively consider the nature of their social world and recognize the existence of a multiplicity of meanings. Although reality breakdowns threaten the validity and viability of the collegial governance system's foundational principles, multiple interpretations may inhibit attempts to initiate change. It is interesting to note that differences in the perceived severity of the breakdown shaped reactions to the disruption within the same assemblage of inhabitants in our setting.

In future work on reality breakdowns, exploring differences in how institutional inhabitants construct the severity of breakdowns could prove fruitful. Our setting can be described as a somewhat extreme case because principles of the collegial governance system explicitly supported a "diversity of views" thereby intentionally bringing together people with markedly different backgrounds. For example, the final recommendations were put forward by those with backgrounds in history, political science, computer science, particle physics, and literature. However, other contexts may have relatively little heterogeneity and thus different dynamics. Multivocality seems to facilitate responses oriented toward survival, whereas a more mutual understanding may facilitate responses that enable institutional change because institutional inhabitants are likely to hold similar views regarding the severity of the breakdown. Another important question relates to how the process of constructing severity may differ based on the characteristics of reality breakdowns. We noted, for example, that for some, the board's compromise reduced the perceived severity of the failure of collegial governance. Additionally, documents that codify rules in detail do not exist in all settings, which could further complicate institutional inhabitants' sensemaking process. Thus, important questions remain about how and why this severity might be constructed differently under different circumstances.

#### *Sensemaking and the Antecedent Microprocesses of Institutional Change*

Our second contribution to the literature concerns specific sensemaking mechanisms following a reality breakdown and the development of institutional awareness. Our findings share affinities with earlier research while revealing intriguing points of divergence that fortify our knowledge of responses to reality breakdowns. For example, Lok and de Rond (2013) found that institutional inhabitants attempt to restore the stability of the social order after reality breakdowns by reversing actions that do not align with expectations. In their context, the coach was the prime source of authority, but when he made a decision that was misaligned with the principles of the selection system, institutional inhabitants of the boat club questioned that authority and attempted to reverse the decision.

Although our empirical case unfolded similarly, our findings diverge because the attempt to restore the status quo through reversal was a resounding failure, whereas the efforts of the boat club were successful. In our case, the failure to achieve a reversal prolonged the process as different actors cast aspersions upon the relevant parties and taken-for-grantedness continued to unravel. Thus, failed attempts to uphold the status quo and stabilize the social world led to a perceived need for change. However, institutional inhabitants continued to attribute the reality breakdown to anomalous conditions, orient toward the future, and designate changes as formidable, all of which served to diminish and reorient the recommendations.

A great deal of research has been conducted on how institutions can be changed in literatures as diverse as social movements (Briscoe & Gupta, 2016; Schneiberg & Lounsbury, 2017), institutional entrepreneurship (Battilana et al., 2009; Hardy & Maguire, 2008), cultural entrepreneurship (Glynn & Lounsbury, 2022; Lounsbury & Glynn, 2019), institutional work (Lawrence et al., 2013; Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006), and others. Yet, these perspectives tell us primarily about the tactics and strategies that are deployed (e.g., mobilization, theorization, framing, or boundary work) once actors have decided to pursue change, and are thus much less informative about why they decide to engage in such efforts in the first place. By focusing on the initial moment of institutional awareness that serves as a potential catalyst, we can unpack how inhabitants decide whether or not to engage in change efforts and where these efforts are targeted. This foregrounds the important role of microprocesses in shaping responses to reality breakdowns. In our context, the situation certainly could have led to the imagination of new possibilities and a radical change effort to bring them about, as many prior works have found. Surprisingly, this was the road not taken.

Our findings also strengthen links with the literature on sensemaking (Weick, 1995). Although scholars have previously suggested a connection between institutions and sensemaking (Weber & Glynn, 2006), studies at the interstice of these theoretical domains have generally emphasized how sensemaking is shaped by institutions and vice versa (Maitlis & Christianson, 2014; Weick et al., 2005). Notably, our findings suggest that more attention should be directed toward the role of sensemaking in motivating institutional change efforts specifically. Reality breakdowns lead inhabitants to reflexively question the foundations of institutions. This newfound awareness of the constructed social world that they inhabit also leads to sensemaking of both current institutional arrangements and alternative possibilities, including how they might be implemented. Such moments of institutional awareness can simultaneously motivate change efforts and efforts to reaffirm the status quo, but sensemaking seems to be a key mechanism underpinning the process whereby institutional awareness can lead to variable outcomes.

Major findings from prior research on reality breakdowns show that inhabitants are largely successful in reversing decisions that run counter to expectations and reaffirming the status quo. Our findings, however, suggest that such efforts can indeed fail. Even though institutional inhabitants began to develop alternative possibilities after their initial attempts to uphold the status quo failed, they simultaneously continued to engage in sensemaking, focusing instead on interpreting the extent to which change efforts should be undertaken and the locus of these efforts. For example, attributing the reality breakdown to anomalous conditions served as a sensemaking mechanism to determine how much change was necessary, while designating change as formidable served as a sensemaking mechanism about the perceived plausibility of change efforts. These sensemaking efforts shifted attention away from a change effort aimed at addressing the source of the reality breakdown and toward internal dynamics unrelated to the disruption.

A substantial benefit of studying reality breakdowns is that it focuses precisely on the unraveling of taken-for-grantedness and the development of institutional awareness, thereby capturing complex processes as they occur. We could imagine a plethora of similar situations in which a disruption surfaces an opportunity for change that is squandered by inhabitants who talk themselves out of it, which outsiders may (incorrectly) perceive as institutional harmony. Nevertheless, radical transformations are undertaken in many cases. Plausible reasons may be predicated on the types of efforts deployed to reaffirm the status quo, environmental or historical conditions at the time of the event, and the substantive nature of the breakdown. For example, both Kuhn (1962) and Steele (2021) argued that anomalies become ingrained in collective memory and these anomalies may accumulate over time. Perhaps one crisis of collegial governance is acceptable as anomalous, but subsequent events may initiate a sensemaking process that motivates more extensive change.

We advocate devoting attention to reality breakdowns as a way to foreground institutional awareness as a concept in explaining change and as a way to engage counterfactual thinking about unexplored possibilities. Fundamentally, the phenomenon speaks to the long-standing debate on embedded agency (Emirbayer & Mische, 1998). The approach to studying reality breakdowns is event-centric and suggests that agency is omnipresent, but the locus of agency can be temporarily redirected toward various components of the social world. Exploring institutional inhabitants' consequential sensemaking during unsettled periods can reveal the motivations and precipitating factors that facilitate modifying these worlds or deciding not to do so. The institutional entrepreneurship literature has followed extensive transformations in many contexts, from Grappa production (Delmestri & Greenwood, 2016) to child labor in soccer ball manufacturing (Khan et al., 2007). Likewise, the work of social movements scholars has yielded insights about institutional transformation in contexts as diverse as yoga (Munir et al., 2021) and mobilization against the mafia (Lee et al., 2018).

But why does it "make sense" to change, and why now instead of 50 years ago or 50 years from now? Why might a significant event that appears to be a prime moment for a social movement be negotiated away? When addressing these questions, focusing on reality breakdowns can illuminate the microprocesses that determine the resulting course of action. Focusing on how sensemaking of these events shapes motivations for change may foster a better understanding of the ostensible stability of social worlds. Seemingly trivial sensemaking can be the difference between galvanizing a transformation and upholding the status quo.

#### *The Influence of Formalized Rules in Unsettled Periods*

Another contribution is our finding that codified, formalized rules seemed to play a fundamental role in the reality breakdown and its aftermath. Formalized rules shaped some actors' understanding of collegial governance, which had consequential implications for the social construction of the severity of reality breakdown. Some actors scoured these formalized rules to look for loopholes to reverse the board's decision or to justify the breakdown. Finally, even as alternative proposals were being formulated, these rules helped constrain action and diminish the change efforts of institutional inhabitants.

The regulatory pillar of organizational institutionalism is chronically underexplored. While not often a central focus of contemporary institutional theory, it seems that during unsettled periods, formal rules may serve an enhanced role. Codified rules can fade into obscurity when they are not invoked, but may resurface from their dormant state when reality breakdowns occur. Institutional inhabitants defer to these rules for myriad reasons. We found that the "official" rules of the game helped facilitate multivocality because some actors used them to interpret meaning. Even when actors disagreed with the rules, they constrained change efforts and inhibited further action. One reason for this may be that formal rules are perceived as more concrete and objective aspects of reality than amorphous norms.

Scholars have rightly asserted that regulatory frameworks contribute an institutional story only insofar as they "embody taken-for-granted societal norms and values" (Greenwood et al., 2008, p. 12). However, a central component of reality breakdowns is the unraveling of this taken-for-grantedness (Harmon, 2019; Steele, 2021). Gehman (2021) suggested that taken-for-grantedness facilitates less intentionality with regard to the "aims" of the social world, whereas questioning enables a more precise articulation of purpose. In contexts involving reality breakdowns, this means that, at least for a moment in time, institutional inhabitants engage in reflexivity and develop awareness about the norms and values that these rules embody.

The fact that institutional inhabitants deferred to formalized rules for an array of reasons suggests the fundamental role that codification may play in shaping the capacity for change during unsettled periods. As a contemporary example of such ideas, the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court followed similar dynamics in which the rapid appointment process violated an informal norm, but "technically" did not break the rules. Although they may be initially developed to codify cultural norms and general aims, laws and formal rules may subsequently become taken-for-granted and their explicit purpose forgotten. These laws become artifacts that are inherited by new generations of inhabitants (Gehman, 2021) and shape how future actors understand the social world, as well as their ability and motivation to change it. Enshrining social reality into formal codified rules may create a kind of persistence that facilitates uncanny endurance long after norms cease to be shared. Our case was peculiar in the sense that the rules were established by the government. It may be that reality breakdowns are better able to overcome rules when codified at the organization level rather than enforced by an external entity. Scholars should investigate this effect in greater detail in future work.

#### *Multivocality and the Erosion of Collegial Governance*

Finally, our research has important implications for research on collegiality. Although the concept of collegiality has been explored by organizational theorists in a variety of professional contexts (Greenwood et al., 1990; Lazega, 2001), it has heightened significance in academic settings (Baldridge, 1971; Sahlin & Eriksson-Zetterquist, 2016; Waters, 1989). By demonstrating the ambiguity and multivocality of collegiality, our evidence confirms that it is "far from a theoretically specified concept" (Sahlin & Eriksson-Zetterquist, 2023, Vol. 86). Moreover, there might be a tendency to view such varieties of collegiality (Cloete et al., 2023, Vol. 87) as being a product of different manifestations of collegiality across distinct contexts. Our findings take this a step further by demonstrating the multiplicity of interpretations within the same setting. We observed remarkable variation in the understanding of collegial governance among members of the same academic senate. Our story is particularly interesting because it reveals important tensions between different aspects of collegiality. While it may be true that collegiality can be both a horizontal cross-university phenomenon and a system of authority relationships between faculty and others, either type of collegiality in isolation may be unstable. In our case, an over-reliance on norms as a mode of governance came with consequences.

As an additional contribution, our research speaks to the erosion of collegiality and faculty authority observed in recent years. The model that was initially approved by the academic senate before being modified by the board would have saved equivalent amounts of money through shared services without eroding faculty authority through the creation of another layer of administration in the form of executive deans. Thus, the consequence of this board decision was both a perceived violation of collegiality and a decided shift in the direction of managerialism. Furthermore, while our case shares an affinity with others regarding the prominent role of the state (Harroche & Musselin, 2023, Vol. 87; Kosmützky & Krücken, 2023, Vol. 86), responsibility for the reality breakdown cannot be attributed solely to austerity measures, since both models would have addressed the financial shortfall. In other words, the university could have upheld the collegial decision-making process, and its failure to do so had compounding ramifications on collegiality and the extent of faculty authority at the university going forward.

While scholars around the world have observed a decline in collegial governance as many universities shift toward managerialism, important questions remain at the university level about how such a decline unfolds. Faculty representatives in academic senates or other such governing bodies may be in a position to resist against the erosion of collegial governance; however, little is known about the processes whereby institutional inhabitants protect collegial governance and thwart its erosion, or fail to do so. Our study provides insights from the frontline of a blatant attack on collegial governance that ultimately led to a more managerial mode of governance. One insight is that the crisis in which the university found itself was highly consequential in this process. For example, conditions perceived as anomalous, such as the pandemic and a substantial decrease in funding, were salient factors in shaping the response, and many participants were already worn out before the reality breakdown occurred. This is reminiscent of a "shock doctrine" (Klein, 2007) or a policy implemented during a crisis while constituents are emotionally drained and otherwise distracted. The type of "disaster managerialism" we witnessed may be one particularly effective way that collegiality is eroded despite resistance, considering the common criticism of collegial governance as "slow" (Eriksson-Zetterquist & Sahlin, 2023, Vol. 87; Östh Gustafsson, 2023, Vol. 86). The outcomes of such micro-level processes at the university can be the difference between the preservation and reinforcement of collegial governance or the further decline of this fundamental component of the academy.

In conclusion, findings from this study substantially advance our understanding of the extremely generative phenomenon of reality breakdowns, providing much-needed insight into the origins of institutional awareness that can spark the process of imagining new possibilities and ultimately lead to institutional change. By following the events of a significant reality breakdown in the collegial governance system at a large North American university, we were able to both unpack the consequential process of severity construction and demonstrate the importance of sensemaking in shaping institutional inhabitants' responses. Reality breakdowns remain a fruitful line of inquiry for scholars interested in the stability of social worlds and counterfactual roads not taken, as well as drivers and motivations of institutional change. Moreover, our findings show how such microprocesses can be highly consequential for the protection of cherished institutions such as collegial governance which are threatened by increasing managerialism.

## **ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS**

We would like to thank the many authors of this double volume for thoughtful comments on our paper and generative conversations over numerous workshops, with special thanks given to our reviewers for their valuable feedback. We would like to extend particular appreciation to Kerstin Sahlin and Ulla Eriksson-Zetterquist, both for their tireless editorial work and for bringing this collegial community together. Earlier versions of this paper benefited from feedback provided by members of the Strategy, Entrepreneurship, and Management Department at the Alberta School of Business and participants of the 2022 Alberta Institutions Conference. We are especially grateful to Chris Steele for providing multiple rounds of insightful suggestions that significantly enhanced our work. Finally, we would like to thank Kara Stephenson Gehman and Cornelia Gustavsson for invaluable editorial and administrative support.

## **REFERENCES**


Khan, F. R., Munir, K. A., & Willmott, H. (2007). A dark side of institutional entrepreneurship: Soccer balls, child labour and postcolonial impoverishment. *Organization Studies*, *28*(7), 1055–1077.

Klein, N. (2007). *The shock doctrine: The rise of disaster capitalism*. Macmillan.


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# WHO'S A COLLEAGUE? PROFESSIONALIZING ACADEMIC LEADERSHIP AS A PLATFORM FOR REDEFINING COLLEGIALITY

#### Ravit Mizrahi-Shtelmana and Gili S. Drorib

*a Faculty of Education, Kibbutzim College, Israel b Department of Sociology and Anthropology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel*

## **ABSTRACT**

*The study discusses the professionalization of academic leadership in Israel by analyzing and comparing two different training programs: the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's (HUJI) program and the CHE-Rothschild program. The HUJI program began in 2016 to train the professoriate to take charge of leadership positions alongside a separate program for administrative staff, while the CHE-Rothschild program was launched in 2019 to train academic leaders, both professors and administrators from universities and colleges nationwide. The analysis reveals two "ideal types" of collegiality: While Model A (exemplified by the HUJI program) bifurcates between the professoriate and administrative staff, Model B (exemplified by the CHE-Rothschild program) binds administrative and academic staff members through course composition, pedagogy, and content. The study suggests a pattern of redefinition of collegiality in academia: we find that while academic hierarchies are maintained (between academic faculty and administrative staff and between universities and colleges), collegiality in academia is being redefined as* 

**Revitalizing Collegiality: Restoring Faculty Authority in Universities**

**Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Volume 87, 111–136**

**Copyright © 2024 by Ravit Mizrahi-Shtelman and Gili S. Drori. Published under exclusive** 

**licence by Emerald Publishing Limited. These works are published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of these works (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/ licences/by/4.0/legalcode**

**ISSN: 0733-558X/doi:10.1108/S0733-558X20230000087005**

*extending beyond the boundaries of the professoriate and emphasizing a partnership approach to collegial ties.*

**Keywords:** Higher Education; academic leadership; collegiality; Israel; professionalization; managerialism

## **1. INTRODUCTION**

Referring to its strong faculty-led governance, the HUJI in Israel is jokingly referred to as "the last German University." Indeed, despite the swell of managerialism in universities worldwide, the governance of the HUJI's affairs is largely in the hands of the professoriate. For example, while the university president, who must come from among the professoriate, is elected by the university's Governing Board, the university rector, who serves as the chief leader for academic affairs, is elected by the faculty senate, which is composed of elected professorial delegates. Likewise, heads of academic units – department heads and faculty deans – are each elected by their departmental or faculty peers, and appointments to other leadership roles (vice-deans and vice-rectors, heads of research institutes, and even heads of central committees) require approval by vote of the High Academic Committee. In these various ways, the principle of academic collegial governance, namely *primus/prima inter pares* (first among equals), remains a strong ethos and is secured in a series of rules and procedures. Nevertheless, in the mid-2010s, the HUJI's then-President Prof. Menachem Ben-Sasson decided to initiate a leadership program for academic faculty. Although the authority of academic faculty over university governance remained uncontested, the growing complexity of university operations demanded training of the professoriate to take charge of the expanding responsibilities of leadership positions. Organized and led by two faculty members with expertise in management coaching and policy studies, the first-ever professionalization course for the professoriate to be held in Israel was launched in 2016 at the HUJI. After the Head of the Israeli Council of Higher Education (CHE), Prof. Yaffa Zilbershats, was invited to introduce the Israeli higher education system to course participants, she was inspired to start a national program for training academic leaders. Soon thereafter, with generous funding from the Rothschild Foundation, the national CHE-Rothchild initiative of Movilim BaAcademia (Leadership in Academia) was launched in 2019, with a team of professional management coachers at its helm. To date, these two training courses – the HUJI and the CHE-Rothschild courses – remain the only training programs or fora for academic leadership in Israel. Importantly, these two training courses offer very different frameworks for academic leadership: Through their diverging strategies for composition of participants, leadership partners, and scope of course content, the HUJI and the CHE-Rothschild courses for professionalization of academic leaders each offer a unique definition of leadership within a collegial institution and, through it, a unique definition of collegial governance.

Professional leadership training is strongly associated with managerialism. While managerialism has penetrated deeply into organizations of various sectors worldwide, it is still firmly resisted in academia, taken as an offense against academic traditions that reinforce academic definitions of excellence, namely institutional self-governance coupled with independence and authority of the professoriate. On the matter of professionalizing academic leadership, the tension between academic tradition and managerialism is clear: Whereas the ethos of academia is anchored in guild-like training of junior academics by senior academics, with emphasis on disciplinary methods and theories, managerialism requires the acquisition of executive and administrative skills, as well as leadership and organization knowledge. In addition, over and above the content of the training program, discussions about who is eligible to participate in the program raised questions of who is an academic leader and, importantly, who is a colleague. The study at the core of this paper is an analysis of the various programs for academic leadership in Israel since 2016, extracting two models for defining collegiality and governance in contemporary academia.

In the following paper, we investigate professional leadership training in Israeli academia by analyzing and comparing the HUJI and CHE-Rothchild courses. Specifically, we study the composition of participants, course curricula, and the designed relations among course participants and the expected relations among academic leadership. Our analysis reveals two "ideal types" for collegiality. Model A, which is exemplified by the HUJI's dual professional training programs, bifurcates between the professoriate and administrative staff. Consequently, collegiality is defined and reinforced within each group; namely, professional collegiality among administrative staff is different from professional collegiality among academic faculty. Model B, which is exemplified by the CHE-Rothschild program, binds administrative and academic staff members – through course composition, course pedagogies, and course content – even if it is engineered to reproduce academic hierarchies (between academic and administration, between universities and colleges, and between majority and minority groups). These findings about the emerging professionalization of academic leadership in Israel allow us to argue that whereas the penetration of managerialism into academia is often described as a *replacement* of collegiality, where the collegial mode of governance is replaced by managerial governance, our study suggests a pattern of *redefinition* of collegiality regarding leadership and governance of academia. We find that collegiality (at least, regarding academic leadership) has been extended beyond the boundaries of the professoriate, thus redefining *who* is an academic colleague, and is described as a partnership, thus redefining the *nature* of collegial ties.

Following a brief discussion of the literature on collegiality, leadership, and governance in academia during the era of rising managerialism, we turn to an empirical investigation, starting with a description of the case of Israelis' higher education system and emphasizing issues of governance, leadership, and professionalization to contextualize our discussion of collegiality. In this empirical study, we analyze formal training programs of academic leadership in Israel, focusing on the composition, relations, and content of such courses. We conclude with a discussion of academic collegiality in the context of authority, social divides, and professional ethos.

## **2. GOVERNANCE, COLLEGIALITY, AND ACADEMIC LEADERSHIP**

Governance mode is expressed in the structures and procedures for decisionmaking and, therefore, in the framework for who decides and the sphere of their authority to decide. The tension between traditional academic governance and the encroaching managerialist governance mode is revealed in the definition of who is counted among the team of academic leaders. In other words, the marking of the circle of leadership in academia – who is included or excluded and, importantly, what communities of practice they represent – indicates the definition of the collegium. This triangulates academic governance (the structures and practices institutionalized to enable decision-making and operations), collegiality in academia (community-based arrangement of the institution of science and thus of academic life), and leadership in academia (governed by the ethos of *primus/prima inter pares* but increasingly professionalized in professoriate training and the inclusion of non-academic managers/administrators in even the closest decision-making circles).

It is widely acknowledged that managerialism has "seeped into every 'nook and cranny' of university life" (Deem et al., 2007) worldwide (see Lee & Ramirez, 2023, Vol. 86; Östh Gustafsson, 2023, Vol. 86, for the Swedish context). As its penetration affects other professions (e.g., Rosa & Almeida, 2020, regarding social work; Waldenström et al., 2019, regarding journalism; Wright et al., 2020, regarding nurses) and public-sector agencies (e.g., Christensen & Lægreid, 2010), managerialism in academia transforms modes of operation and administration and challenges professional principals and traditions. Moreover, in academia, managerialism also challenges well-established practices and structures of collegial governance – faculty tenure appointments (Pineda, 2023, Vol. 86) and recruitment (Gerhardt et al., 2023, Vol. 86), research collaborations (Kosmützky & Krücken, 2023, Vol. 86), senate discussions and decisions (Crace et al., 2023, Vol. 87), peer review procedures (Sahlin & Eriksson-Zetterquist, 2023, Vol. 87), and rituals and norms of academic life (Quattrone, 2023; Sahlin & Eriksson-Zetterquist, 2023, Vol. 86). Collegiality in academia can be understood as the idea of academic freedom, a form of professional moral foundations (Boulous Walker, 2019), as a culture of work (Sahlin & Eriksson-Zetterquist, 2016) or as the essence in which the university is understood (Barnes, 2020). At the same time, collegiality can be seen as a structural form. Sahlin and Eriksson-Zetterquist (2016) characterized the structural form as collective decision-making made by representative boards, appointment to leadership positions according to the principle of *primus inter pares*, and the critical dialogue through peer review of publications, research funding, and promotions (p. 3). The two facets of collegiality, namely the idea of academia and the structural form, are interdependent; the former provides the ideal for collegial structures and practices (Barnes, 2020), hence differentiating the structural meaning of collegiality from managerialism.

Managerialism in academia challenges well-established practices and structures of collegial governance. For example, academic collegiality determines that academic faculty are elected to hold positions of academic leadership, and that they steer university administration alongside their scientific endeavors (Sahlin & Eriksson-Zetterquist, 2016), and managerialism is defined by management's discrete function within the university (Shepherd, 2018). While academic collegiality determines that assemblies of the faculty, such as the university senate, are the prime decision-making bodies and that decisions are achieved through seminarlike deliberation of the collegium (Sahlin & Eriksson-Zetterquist, 2016), managerialism is defined by managers having the right to manage (see Crace et al., 2023, Vol. 87; Shepherd, 2018). Whereas academic collegiality is a "form of governance that relies on scientific norms" (Sahlin & Eriksson-Zetterquist, 2016, p. 9), managerialism defines management as generic and universally applicable, as well as rational and value-neutral (Shepherd, 2018). Last, academic collegiality accentuates collegial deliberation (conflict management), and a spirit of collaboration, taking "pulling one's weight" in collective tasks as the "fourth pillar" of academic evaluation (Hatfield, 2006); it is the basis for the political work of organized professionalism that constitutes professional ethos within academia (see Denis et al., 2019; Sahlin & Eriksson-Zetterquist, 2023, Vol. 87). However, managerialism is defined by "a shift from inputs and processes to outputs and outcomes" and by "more measurement and quantification of outputs" as performance indicators (see Harroche & Musselin, 2023, Vol. 87; Shepherd, 2018). In these various ways, managerialism's penetration into academia has quaked academic traditions to their core, also regarding the professional or vocational training of academic leaders.

## **3. PROFESSIONALIZATION OF ACADEMIC LEADERSHIP**

Among the academic traditions shaken by the penetration of managerialism is that of vocational training: Whereas the ethos of academia is anchored in guild-like training of junior academics by senior academics, with emphasis on disciplinary methods and theories, managerialism requires the knowledge of administration and organization. This means that the traditional academic mode, which trains academics along the stepped process between student, lecturer, and professor, reflects the training process within the medieval guilds between apprentice, journeyman, and master. This also means that there is no formal step or stage in the process of academic training that formally prepares one for taking a leadership role in academia. Rather, if anything, junior academics come to be involved in decision-making within their close academic department (department-level roles such as serving as academic advisor to a BA cohort of the department or as a member of the departmental curriculum committee), and the scope of decisions they are authorized to make expands along their academic promotion to more senior ranks (gradually becoming head of departmental committees; then head of faculty-level committees or of disciplinary departments; then deans, vice-rector, or vice-president and rector or president). In this way, academic rank traces both scientific excellence and recognition, as well as governing authority. Importantly, leaders of such guild-like associations, also in traditional academia (a) are elected by their peers, with the electorate tracing the authority span of the elected academic leader, and (b) do not necessarily have to follow a prescribed leadership "promotion" with an expected sequence of positions. Therefore, elected leaders not only go through the stepped process of professional promotion and leadership experience, but they also must be increasingly active and public within their community of peers to be elected to high-ranking decision-making positions. This coincides with the traditional *primus/prima inter pares*: Academic leadership is from among the professoriate, such positions are obtained with support of the relevant professoriate community, and no formal training is required for such leadership roles because the assumption is that the professor has already experienced leadership as a member of the community.

Managerialism, on the other hand, allocates decision-making authority based on knowledge and experience of administrative skills, namely of strategic planning, systemic analysis, budgeting and finance, human resource management and negotiation, and alike. These managerialist considerations are not specific to any type of organization or sector, being defined as adaptable to specific settings and conditions. Because managerialist knowledge is general, so is the occupational training for it: Even in academic organizations, managers and administrators are appointed and promoted according to their success in executing managerial tasks.

These two contrasting modes of professionalization processes delineate two contrasting models of who is included in the circle of decision-makers and thus who is considered a colleague. According to the traditional guild-like academic mode of governance and professionalization, only professors are considered colleagues, whereas the managerialist mode of governance and professionalization considers only administrators and managers as colleagues. This bifurcation of governance–professionalism–collegiality modes is evident in, for example, Glynn's (2000) study of the 1996 strike at the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. The strike revealed the contestation between two professional logics, namely between the "elements of economic utility (where financial return symbolizes success) and normative ideology (where artistic creativity and excellence symbolize success)" (Glynn, 2000, p. 295). The conflict came to the surface during the strike as identity claims of two professional groups – professional managers and professional musicians. Similarly, Jandrić et al. (2023, Vol. 87) described how UK higher education was subjected to tensions between leaders in different positions due to disruptions caused by COVID-19. Now more than ever, such contestations between professional logics or groups, and therefore both models of governance–professionalism–collegiality, are influenced by the discourse of diversity in the workplace (Dobbin & Kalev, 2022); in academia, such discussions of diversity also rotate around corrective admissions and recruitment (Long, 2007). This discourse of diversity and inclusion challenges all sorts of social boundaries. By extension, this discourse also blurs the hierarchical distinction among two professional groups in academia, namely professors and managers. One way to manage this tension is the demand for professionalization of academic leadership, namely the call for professoriate to be trained in management and for managers to be introduced to academia.

Seeing the swell of professionalization in professional organizations such as academia, we seek to understand how the emergence of training programs for academic leadership reflects and defines academic collegiality. Specifically, who is included in the professionalized vision of an academic leader? What is the envisioned mode of relations among the trained academic leaders? Importantly for discussions about this complication, how does this definition of professionalized academic leadership speak to the notion of academic collegiality? We investigate the characteristics of various professionalization programs for academic leadership held in Israel since 2016, seeking an answer to the following general question: *How does the swell of managerialism and professionalization of academic leadership affect who is a colleague and the nature of collegiality?*

## **4. ISRAELI ACADEMIA: TEST CASE FOR PROFESSIONALIZING COLLEGIALITY**

Israeli academia was founded in the early 20th century in the spirit of Zionist revival and with strong principles of political independence, institutional autonomy, and academic freedom. These principles, while imprinted in structures and practices, especially in Israel's universities but also in its more recently founded colleges, are coming under assault, especially lately. The penetration of managerialism into Israeli academia, and specifically the calls for professionalizing academic leadership, are among such challenges to the traditional principles. Seeing the juxtaposition between such a strong academic legacy, also regarding governance and collegiality, and a more recent wave of managerialism sets Israeli academia as a test case for the study of academic governance, collegiality, and professionalization.

#### *4.1. An Overview of Israeli Academia*

The first academic organizations were founded in British-Mandate Palestine/The Land of Israel in the mid-1920s, some two decades before the founding of the State of Israel. Today, a short century later, Israeli academia is a sizeable, mature, and vibrant field. At present, the Israeli higher education system comprises 60 higher education organizations accredited by the CHE, enrolling some 340,000 students (in 2021–2022). The field comprises 10 universities (eight public research universities, one public open university, and one private university), 29 academic colleges (20 public and nine private), and 21 teacher colleges (all public). For "science in a small country" (Ben David, 2012), Israeli academia is very successful: For example, Israeli academia is third among European countries in share of ERC grants and three of Israel's universities are consistently ranked among the Shanghai list's top 100.

Israeli academia is on par with global excellence: By setting global standards of excellence (in publications and research funding) and encouraging internationalization (in faculty recruitment and student exchange), Israeli academia is oriented toward global higher education; concurrently, regulation of Israeli academia is centralized in the hands of the CHE, and almost all academic instruction is in Hebrew. Despite the overwhelming orientation of Israeli academia toward the American model, the first academic institutions in pre-State Israel were designed to emulate the then-leading Germanic tradition: The Technion was founded in 1924 as a polytechnic, the HUJI was founded in 1925 as a humanist university, and Sieff Institute, later renamed the Weizmann Institute, was founded in 1933 as an institute for advanced scientific research. These academic organizations were also heavily imprinted by the European tradition of academic governance, with secure mechanisms for collegial decision-making and concentrated control in the hands of the professoriate. After the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, this tradition was anchored in state laws, specifically in the 1958 Higher Education Law that secured autonomy (and monopoly) for universities and freedom for individual academics.

Over the years, this format of collegial governance was increasingly challenged, reaching systemic rapture in the 1990s. First, the 1993 legal reform allowed for the opening of academic colleges, shattering the monopoly held until then by universities and forming the impetus for a series of reforms and struggles in Israeli higher education. Second, the 1997 convening of the Meltz Commission's directive was to assess the structural and administrative features of Israeli higher education with a goal to change the line of authority within the governance of higher education organizations in Israel, calling for managerial authority to take precedence over academic authority. Both these circumstances paved the way for managerialization of higher education organizations in Israel: They allowed for dramatic expansion of the national higher education system, resulted in increased complexity of the system as a whole and of the administration of each higher education organization, and affirmed the critical importance of administrative capacity. While most of the Meltz recommendations were not equally implemented, mostly because of the great variety and complexity of governance arrangements across the various higher education organizations, all Israeli higher education organizations were placed under an intense, strict new public management regime involving more measurement and quantification of performance, added accounting and reporting, and greater emphasis on service delivery. This shift expedited Israeli higher education organizations' move toward managerialist reforms in each such organization and across the field as a whole.

Yet, while most of the Meltz Commission recommendations centered on governance and administrative reform, the commission did not address the professionalization of academic leadership of higher education organizations. Rather, the professionalism of university governance is mentioned only twice, and, on both occasions, it is noted indirectly. First, professionalism is indirectly referenced in regard to the Board of Governors, noting that although it is the prime steering body of higher education organizations, it is composed of people who mostly have no experience or training in management and administration of complex organizations (Meltz, 2002, p. 5). The second mention of professionalization of academic leadership comes, oddly enough, in the response of the National Students Union to the Report, which is recorded by law as a part of the Report. Specifically, Point #5 of the National Students Union's official response (Meltz, 2002, p. 16), which officially calls for adopting the recommendations in full, also states,

Training of Faculty Deans and heads of academic units: The Union supports the proposal that candidates for Deanship would undergo management training prior to taking office and as a part of their work and calls for applying such guidelines also for other offices.

Seeing the centrality of professional administration to managerialist reforms and New Public Management initiatives, also in higher education (see Shepherd, 2018, pp. 1673–1675), it is most curious that the professionalization of higher education organizations' academic and administrative leadership is absent from the initial (1990s–2000s) managerialist push into Israeli academia.

### *4.2. Leadership Programs in Israeli Academia*

The issue of formal training of academic leadership surfaced only in 2015; until then, it concerned insufficient preparedness on the part of department chairs and deans, even of rectors and university presidents, which was whispered about but not included in strategic discussions. Interviews and e-mail records analyzed for this study reveal that communications about the need for such a course began at the HUJI in 2015, under the leadership and at the behest of then-HUJI President Professor Menachem Ben-Sasson. The initial spur came from observing training programs for civil servants in other countries. The adaptation of such programs to academia in Israel seemed sensible, considering governmental ministries' growing hostility toward academia for lagging in terms of modernizing its administration. Ensuing discussions highlighted several demands for the professionalization of academic leadership, including the intensifying complexity of higher education organizations and the mounting national and global challenges that such organizations face. Mentioned in such discussions, even if only implicitly, is the gap between traditional academic modes of recruitment for leadership positions and the modern-day duties of the heads of academic units. From the start, these discussions involved power struggles within the university. As one of the program organizers states:

The university's president wanted to choose the program participants, but the faculty deans protested that they were not consulted. It was on the verge of a rebellion against the program. The debates revolved around questions such as who will participate in the program? What are the criteria according to which the participants will be selected, and are participants willing to commit to this course? (Interviewee #1, HUJI program organizer)

Following such discussions and debates, the decision about nomination of course participants was in the hands of the president, at the advisement of deans.

Consequently, the first formal leadership program for academic faculty was launched at the HUJI in 2016. It included 36 participants from various faculties (see Table 2). The drive to implement an adapted leadership program for the administrative staff, which convened in 2018, came due to the success of the first university program for the professoriate. The objectives of this admin-focused program are deeply rooted in ideas borrowed from management training. Specifically, the course curriculum was designed around three thematic pillars: strategic thinking, managerial dilemmas, and the idea of the university as an organization. As noted earlier, this pair of training courses for academic leadership, albeit separated for the professoriate and for administrative staff, were groundbreaking in immersing the notion of academic leadership in the discourse of professional development, skills and capacities, and systemic–contextual knowledge.

This HUJI initiative inspired the 2019 launch of the first national program, organized and sponsored through a partnership of the CHE and the Rothschild Foundation, which was then formalized in an ad hoc program within CHE titled Movilim BaAcademia. The mission set for this program and displayed on its website and print publications is "to establish and nurture a strong network of senior members of Universities, Colleges and research centers, capable of coping with the transformations that will ensure continuing academic excellence, innovation and social impact."1 The intent for Movilim BaAcademia was to meet a dire need for national professional capacity in academia, recognizing that leadership and management training is not a part of the professional development of academic faculty and that professionalization is not a priority or prerequisite for being elected or nominated for leadership positions. With such aspirations, Movilim BaAcademia was directed to chart a new path for leadership in academia: In establishing the message of change-oriented leadership, the CHE-Rothchild program follows (O'Reily & Reed, 2010) definition of "leaderism" as a discourse and practices about leading change in public services. Importantly, like in the HUJI program, course participants in the national CHE-Rothschild program are also nominated, rather than selected through an application or election process. Here, too, presidents and rectors of higher education organizations propose the names of participants, who are then interviewed by a course team. The organizers frame this interview as an opportunity to coordinate expectations, and indeed, except for one decline by a prospective participant, the interview acts as a selection mechanism.

As detailed in the following analysis in this paper, the six courses share several core features but are nevertheless very different in their operationalization (curricular and pedagogical) of such principles. The aim of the first HUJI course, which targeted leaders from among the professoriate, is described as "the development of academic leadership among the senior academic faculty for the management of the university, while emphasizing policymaking, process initialization, and the molding of academic management" (excerpt from the "rationale" document for HUJI-Academic A). The aim of the CHE-Rothschild Foundation program is

the creation of a network of change leaders from the academic institutions in Israel that shall act to develop an excellent and innovative system that contributes to basic research, applied research, quality of teaching, and the progress of society and the economy. (Excerpt from the online platform, launched in January 2021, for the CHE-Rothschild program)

Seeing that the emergence of these training programs formally accentuates professional training and adds "leadership" as an ideal and a set of practices to the expressions of managerialism in Israeli academia, we seek to investigate the characteristics of the various professionalization programs for academic leadership held in Israel since 2016 and how they define who is an academic colleague and the nature of academic collegiality. We consider the Israeli training programs as encapsulating a certain understanding of academic leadership under managerialism and as sites for socialization into this new academic code of conduct and governance. Additionally, important to the theme of collegiality, such governance and leadership schemes respond to (and, we hypothesize, reshape) the traditional guild-like definition of academic collegiality.

## **5. METHOD AND DATA**

We investigate the characteristics of training programs for academic leadership held in Israel since 2016, extracting each program's envisioned "ideal type" of academic collegiality. We focus specifically on two programs: the HUJI's pioneering programs and the CHE-Rothschild Foundation's national program – not only because of their constitutive role in the notion of academic leadership in Israel but also because they represent two vastly different visions of collegiality. Of these programs, we analyze only courses that were fully completed, which means we exclude all courses currently in-session.2 Therefore, this list of programs is exhaustive: Until the end of 2022, no other 60 Israeli higher education organizations held a formal training program for academic leadership.

This list of training programs includes six courses dedicated to the training of academic and administrative leadership of Higher education organizations in Israel: Two courses organized by and for the academic professoriate and administrative staff of the HUJI of Jerusalem and four multi-institutional courses organized by Academic Leadership, an ad hoc agency created through a partnership between CHE and the Rothschild Foundation. Table 1 lists the two programs, the courses they offered and the basic characteristics of these six training courses for academic leadership.

We analyze two sets of information for each of the programs and courses. First, we analyze the composition of course participants to identify the boundaries of the collegial group. We identify participants' staff type (academic or administrative), home unit (by discipline or HQ), and membership in marginalized groups


*Table 1.* Programs for Training of Academic Leadership in Israel.

(by gender and Palestinian/Arab). The list of participants in each course was either given on demand (from the HUJI) or publicly available (on the CHE-Rothschild website). Second, we analyze how the composition constructs relations between the various academic groups within the university or the Israeli higher education system. This information is compiled from multiple sources: Interviews with course lead instructors, review of course-curricular material, and participation in the courses. Overall, we take such characteristics to mark the contours of the collegial group in academia, defining who is considered a colleague and what the expected ties among these academic colleagues are.

## **6. FINDINGS**

Given the pressure on professionalization and leadership-management of higher education organizations in Israel, our aim in this study is to identify the definition and configuration of academic collegiality. Analyzing a sample of the constitutive programs for academic leadership, we describe academic collegiality along four dimensions: (1) Coined phrases that identify the contemporary definition of academic collegiality; (2) composition of the group of program participants, which identifies the social and organizational profile of the academic colleague; (3) the relations among the program participants, which identifies the mode of collegial ties; and (4) the curricular content of the programs, which identifies the thematic and topical emphasis that articulate the notion of academic leadership, governance, and collegiality.

#### *6.1. Labeling Academic Leadership and Collegiality*

Academic leadership in Israel marked its uniqueness by naming and creating a new Hebrew-language word to describe this form. While the terms "Movilim" or "Movilut" are indeed the exact translation of the English-language term "leadership," the word is not listed as a Hebrew-language term by the Academy for the Hebrew Language. Instead, the term is a newly coined Hebrew-language word. Therefore, this uncommon yet commonsensical term accentuates its differentiation from authority, command, charisma, management, or administration.

The first use of the term was used in the HUJI's 2016 program for the professoriate, naming it The President's Program for Academic Leadership (הנשיא תוכנית אקדמית למובילות, Tokhnit HaNassi Le'Movilut Academit). This newly coined term was subsequently carried forward to the CHE-Rothschild program, starting in 2019: This national program is named Leaders in Academia (Movilim BaAcademia; (מוביליםבאקדמיה(. The name for this national program was designed to be sensitive to the notion that this new form of leadership is not inherently "academic" but rather "in" academia. The national program's name does not account for gender sensitivity: It uses the masculine form, the default form, in all formal and legal communication but is also gendered by definition. Significantly the 2018 HUJI course for an administrative term is titled Managerial Reserves (מנהלית עתודה ;Atuda Minhalit), which does not employ the newly coined term that speaks to leadership or its uniqueness in the academic sphere.

Through a naming process, contemporary academic leadership in Israel identified itself as distinct from management or administration and traditional or guild-like forms of collegiality. The new term creates a linguistic rapture for Hebrew speakers while establishing an obvious link with the English-language term and therefore harnesses cosmopolitanism's connotations to serve as a basis for legitimacy. Moreover, the newly coined term tilts the definition of "leadership" away from charisma (מנהיגות, Manhigut) or establishment (הנהגה, Hanhaga) and toward the iconic academic phrase of *primus inter pares*, recalling the imagery of one stepping ahead of the group that they lead. In these ways, the invention of the new term and its Hebrew-language connotations serve as a mechanism for marking distinction and disruption, a marker for the redefinition of collegiality. We therefore proceed in the following sections to the courses that are labeled with this new Hebrew term to reveal the meaning that is poured into the new term and that gives the contours for such redefinition.

### *6.2. Composition of Course Participants as Setting Boundaries for Academic Collegiality*

Who is included in the leadership program? The composition of the group for whom the program is designed indicates the boundaries of the collegial community and, therefore, who is considered a colleague.

The HUJI's 2016 program was designed for academic faculty already in charge of academic units. Among its participants were department chairs, newly appointed faculty deans, and heads of institutes. Only a single member was without a formal leadership title (and soon became head of an institute). As detailed in Table 2, 52% of participants came from the experimental sciences, 22% were women, and 5% were Palestinian/Arab, which only partially traces the proportions within the HUJI's academic faculty. The composition of the 2016–2017 course for academic faculty favors male leadership (22% of course participants, whereas 33% of academic faculty in the regular track, are women) and perfectly balances the experimental–humanist disciplinary division.3 The HUJI's 2018 program for academic leadership among administrative staff was designed solely for administrative heads of academic units, all of whom have academic credentials, but none hold a doctoral degree. The composition of this program was highly skewed toward university administration (55%, from such divisions as accounting and HR) over the disciplinary units (e.g., "field units"; 22% for each of the experimental faculties and


*Table 2.* Composition of the HUJI's Programs for Academic Leadership.

the human science faculties). This profile of program composition diverges sharply from the HUJI's administrative staff profile: The training courses for administrative staff far exaggerate the centrality of HQ staff over the admin staff from field units and disproportionally favors women over men.4

The HUJI's two courses for academic leadership demarcate academic faculty from administrative staff. They draw a firm boundary between the two groups by claiming that each group requires a distinct curriculum and pedagogy for leadership training. This confirms the naming distinctions: Academic faculty are destined to become academic leaders, while administrative staff members are destined to serve as managerial reserves. These differentiations affirm academic hierarchies between the professoriate and administrative staffers, customary in other professional bureaucracies (such as hospitals; see Bate, 2000; Bleiklie et al., 2015). Collegiality is set within each group and defined by functional roles within the organization. For example, the professoriate/academic is a collegium distinct from the administration's community of work colleagues.

The CHE-Rothschild program was engineered around an opposing profile of academic collegiality – and the composition of all four courses from 2019 to 2022 meets the same criteria (see Table 3). According to this profile, 80% to 82% of participants come from research universities (as opposed to academic colleges), 67% to 69% are academic faculty (as opposed to administrative staff), 43% to 51% are women, and 6% to 8% (one or two participants) are Palestinian/ Arab. Any deviation in these proportions is due to a mere change of one or two participants. The CHE-Rothschild program is designed to include administration staffers and academic faculty already holding senior positions in their academic institutions. They are drawn from all universities and selected colleges, yet none from teacher colleges (because they are administered by the Ministry of Education rather than governed by CHE). This profile also traces academic hierarchies. First, it gives the professoriate the authority of academic leadership. It also gives the professoriate more voice among the program participants and identifies it as the principal corps of academic leadership. Second, it sets


*Table 3.* Composition of CHE-Rothschild Program for Academic Leadership.

\* Share of participants who are from the nine public research universities (vs. from colleges)

\*\*Share of participants who are academics faculty, namely from the professoriate (vs. admin staff)

research universities as the prime academic institution: Whereas academic colleges (excluding teacher colleges) account for 34% of all Israeli academic faculty and 33% of all students, showing the large volume of colleges within the Israeli higher education system, only 20% of faculty in the CHE-Rothschild course come from colleges. Third, it paints a picture of gender- and nationality-ethnic parity, an idealized misrepresentation of Israeli academia. Whereas women account for 32% and Arab/Palestinian account for 3% of all Israeli academic faculty, these groups account for 43% to 48% and 6% among the cohort participants in the CHE-Rothschild course. Overall, the composition profile of academic leadership set by the CHE-Rothschild program draws the boundary of collegiality in academia around admin and academics, universities, and colleges. This expansive definition of the academic collegium creates a highly heterogeneous collegial community.

Who is not included in these profiles of the academic leader and, therefore, in the collegial community of Israeli academia? First, neither program involves students – even if the American model of student involvement ties students long after graduation through "aggressive" alumni activity. Second, neither program includes adjunct faculty – even if to students and indeed to the public, the distinction among instructors is often very obscure. Third, neither program invites members of the public at large – even if governing bodies of all Higher education organizations in Israel include representatives of the public, such as leaders of the industry, civil society, or political figures. Fourth, neither program regards employees of academia's contracting firms as partners to academic leadership – even if many such outsourced academic services are long-lasting. Lastly, while Israeli academia is highly international in terms of scientific standards for publication and funding and in the recruitment of academic faculty, all leadership courses are run in Hebrew only. This does not accommodate non-Hebrew speakers and therefore distances non-Israelis from the circle of academic leadership, even if not from their disciplinary collegium. In general, the profile of academic leadership is not exceptionally responsive to the expansion of academia's constituencies: While academia is increasingly tied to multiple constituencies, especially in the age of four academic missions,5 the training programs of future leaders of higher education organizations in Israel set a tight boundary, mainly around the professoriate. This means that while these groups – students, adjunct faculty, representatives of the public at large, and others – are involved in the governance of academia in Israel, albeit in different fora and forms, they are placed outside the professional preparation for leadership roles and thus also outside the boundary of collegial governance. In this sense, it is not only the time horizon of permanence that defines authority and influence in academia but also membership in the traditional guild-like community of academics, namely the professoriate.

It is important to note that although the composition of both programs is "engineered" and determined "from above," such a prescription is carried out by professor-administrators. In other words, because the administrative leadership of Israeli academia is in the hands of professors (university presidents, head of CHE), this entire professionalization project seems to be initiated by the administration of either the HUJI or the national CHE. Still, it is initiated and led by a member of the collegium, namely the elected or nominated *primus/ prima inter pares*.

The programs for professionalizing academic leadership in Israel generally set two "ideal types" for collegiality. Model A, exemplified by the HUJI's program, develops separate training courses for administrative staff and the professoriate. Consequently, collegiality is set within each group. Professional collegiality among administrative staff is distinct from professional collegiality among academic faculty. Consequently, Model A defines academic leadership as bifurcated. Furthermore, seeing that the program continues to be designed for HUJI alone, it also separates its academic leadership from other academic organizations. Model B, exemplified by the CHE-Rothschild program, binds administrative and academic staff members – even if engineered to reproduce academic hierarchies (between academic and admin, universities and colleges, and majority and minority groups). Overall, the sequence of the two professionalization programs demonstrates the pattern of redefinition of academic collegiality. The fact that the CHE-Rothschild program came after the HUJI program and made it redundant, and the replacement of Model A with Model B reveals the redefinition of the traditional definition of academic collegiality – namely, a transition from the traditional Model A where collegiality is reserved to the professoriate to Model B where collegiality is the bond among all who lead an academic organization.

#### *6.3. Setting Relations of Collegiality*

Collegiality is inherently relational: It defines one person through the relationships they keep with co-workers. In other words, saying that a co-worker is a colleague implies fellowship, conference, correspondence, affinity, partnership, collaboration, and a high level of equity and parity. Much of these implied relations are captured in the *primus/prima inter pares* (first among equals) principle of collegial leadership and governance. This adage infuses temporal scales into collegiality. Academic leaders step forward from the line of colleagues to assume their post as academic leaders for a given period, after which they return to the line of colleagues. Therefore, collegial ties last far longer than leadership tenure.

In addition to this analysis of these fundamental ideas of academic collegiality, the composition of the programs reflects the expected mode of relations between administrative staff and the professoriate. We, therefore, ask: What collegial ties do professionalization programs foster? We find that while both training programs – the HUJI's two separate courses for administrative staff and the professoriate and the CHE-Rothschild program's series of four courses – all speak the language of "partnership" between the administration and the professoriate, they still paint a different picture not only of the "ideal" colleague but also of the sort of collegial tie. This rallies around the notion of "partnership" despite the apparent differences between the two modes of composition. Therefore, Models A and B of collegiality redirect the question toward investigating relational modes.

Collaboration is evident given that administrative and academic staff work in the same organization and for the same goals. Nevertheless, the desired degree of such collaboration, from minimal tactical alliances to intense collaboration and teamwork, is debated. Fig. 1, which was used as the basis for a discussion in one

*Fig. 1.* Matrix of Options for Collaboration Between Administrative Staff and the Professoriate.

of the sessions of the 2022 CHE-Rothschild course, shows the matrix of options for collaboration between administrative staff and the professoriate. This display illustrates six optional modes for relations between administrative staff and the professoriate. Five of the six illustrations (except #1) acknowledge the differences between the administration and the professoriate because they draw two different circles. Nevertheless, each of these five illustrations describes the collaborations between the professoriate and the administrative staff differently. Illustrations #2 and #3 show distinctions complemented by zones of overlapping responsibilities, and illustration #5 shows separation. However, all are within the same organization, and illustration #6 describes the hierarchy of core (academic, professoriate) and periphery (administrative staff, support tasks). In extreme modes, illustration #1 represents a unitary vision of academic collegiality, while illustration #4 describes the distinction between the professoriate and administrative staff.

In addition, the size and position of the circle in the illustrations signal academic hierarchies. Most clearly, while illustrations #2 and #3 generally show similar relations of collaboration (with both distinct- and overlapping zones of authority for the two groups), they describe different images of hierarchical authority: Illustration #2 shows one group superior to the other, while illustration #3 shows equal positioning. Likewise, size also signals differences in authority. Illustration #5 shows that even within the same organization, one group is more significant and likely more authoritative than the other. Overall, the illustrations vary by (1) the extent of shared or overlapping responsibilities or spheres of leadership and (2) the priority of one group over the other, marking greater authority by vertical position or by size. Most importantly, these illustrations show potential relationships between groups and within the university's leadership team. By doing this, future leaders will be socialized into the fundamental concepts of governance and collegiality.

#### *6.4. Curricular Content as Prescribing Collegiality*

While it is mainly the composition of leadership courses that prescribes the parameters for collegiality in academia, course content can (re)define a colleague through the lenses of leadership and governance. In the following section, we briefly describe the curricular content of the various academic leadership courses, confirming the claim that increasingly academic collegiality is expansive and building collegial ties between administrative staff and the professoriate while reproducing academic hierarchies. Our analyses of curricula material reveal three main findings that speak to collegiality.

First, we find that all courses for academic leadership offer a mix of sessions on scientific and academic issues and administrative and leadership matters, albeit with some variation in emphasis across courses and over time. The various courses include such sessions as "the history of higher education in Israel"; "challenges of the public university"; "multiculturalism and gender in academia"; "intro to biomedical and bioengineering"; many lab and institute visits; and numerous meetings with Rectors and Presidents, to discuss their vision for the future of academia. In contrast, these professionalization courses also include sessions titled "principles of strategic thinking"; "work plan as tools for managers"; "mapping adaptive challenges"; "development of management resources in the public sector"; "budgeting systems at University X"; or "national budgeting for higher education," in addition to sessions with Rectors and Presidents that debated leadership style and managerial challenges. Subsequently, leadership training courses reflect managerialism and collegiality modes of leadership and governance.

Second, we find that the balance between the curricular emphasis on scientific issues and the emphasis on managerial issues changes. In proportional terms, the trend has been away from purely scientific and academic topics that focus on the characteristics of science and its institutions. Such scientificacademic topics occupied 36% of all sessions and 36% of all in-session hours in HUJI's 2016 course for the professoriate but only 14.5% of the total number of sessions and 15% of total in-session hours in the 2019 CHE-Rothschild course. In this sense, matters that are principal bonds to the scientific guild are diminishing in importance regarding the leadership and governance of the guild-like modern organization.

Third, while science academia is weakening as a pure and stand-alone curricular item, the balance does not necessarily tilt to pure managerialism. Instead, the courses increasingly converge on a hybrid form of what information, topics, and debates are helpful for current academic leaders. In other words, despite the differences in institutional scope (HUJI vs national) and staff (HUJI professors vs an ad hoc national agency led by coachers), we find a greater concentration of curricular material in the "hybrid zone," namely a sphere where academic and managerial themes are fused. Sessions that convey the hybrid curricular mode, mixing scientific and administrative discussions, carry such titles as "academic excellence and impact – combinatory models"; "college challenges vis-à-vis its neighboring area"; and "leadership narrative: I am a change leader in academia." These also reflect an expansive curriculum that accentuates partnerships and thus reflects the expanded notion of "the colleague." The hybrid curricular mode upholds that traditional academic logic is the supremacy of research over teaching and focuses on conferring leadership and managerial skills in line with managerialism.6

Last, we also found that the curricular items of site visits are also laden with an implied definition of who a colleague is. All six courses of the two programs include numerous site visits to help participants learn and experience scientific and administrative practices, operations, and behaviors outside their daily sight. For example, they visit other higher education organizations than their own, visit disciplinary units different than theirs, and come outside the gates of the Ivory Tower to see science labs in commercial firms and public research centers, as well as the administrative capacities of such diverse bodies, both private and public, as the Israeli military, governmental ministries, and even large infrastructure projects. The CHE-Rothschild program also takes its participants for two studies abroad to learn and experience academic leadership in top academic organizations in Europe and North America. In introducing course participants to these exemplary cases of leadership, we find their mark role models for the successful public sector and worldwide leadership. The programs also encourage building network contacts with the hosts, framing this advice as a valuable link to renowned and successful cases of 21st-century leadership of complex organizations challenged by a rapidly evolving social environment. We argue that this component of the curriculum extends the boundary of academic collegial leadership far beyond academia. It is explicitly stated that to be the best academic leader, one needs to or wishes to be and learn from whoever has something to teach us.

#### *6.5. Summary of Findings*

Our analysis dissects various components of six courses from two different programs, all designed for the professionalization of university staff and faculty in Israel. We find that each such component constructs and institutionalizes a new notion of academic leadership and new formats for academic governance and collegiality. First, by coining a new term for "leadership," these programs orient academic leadership away from traditional charismatic or bureaucratic leadership, giving rise to a new idea of leadership unique to collegial organizations. This new leadership is shaped through professional training. It is, therefore, also a re-definition of collegiality. Second, the composition of the various professionalization courses also drives a redefinition of academic collegiality. We show that each model sets a different rule for the composition of the group – solely the professoriate or administrative staff of a single university or a diverse but engineered assembly of academics and administrators from both colleges and universities – and, in doing so, each program prescribes a unique meaning for who is a partner to the leadership and governance of an academic organization and, by implication, a unique definition for who is an academic colleague. Third, we find that course curricula suggested various models for collaborative work, showing different formats for academic collegiality and governance. Fourth, in examining the curricular content, as well as pedagogies of instruction, of the six professionalization courses in the two programs, we find varying degrees of hybridity. All courses mix purely scientific-academic topics or sessions, purely managerial-administrative topics or sessions, and "hybrid" sessions that integrate such topics. Highlights of these findings are summarized in Table 4.

Over the timespan of progression from one course to another, the "hybrid" content category fuses scientific-academic with managerial-administrative. Together, we see the change toward a new academic colleague: one who is a partner in academic work and also in the leadership of academic organizations that are broadly defined, but most important, committed to the principles of scientific discovery and innovation, excellence, and collegial mechanisms of assessment and decisionmaking. Corresponding to Denis et al. (2023, Vol. 87), the hybrid form of collegiality we identify in professionalization courses intertwines managerial and scholarly logic and fragments intra-organizational networks of collaborative work.

All six courses of both programs for the professionalization of academic leadership construct a rather expansive definition of academic colleagues across disciplinary boundaries and academic units, academic organizations, and globally. Importantly, these professionalization courses apply this notion of crossing boundaries to bind professional groups: professional professoriate and scientists with professional administrators and managers, tying them into a combined collegium. This expansive reach stands in opposition to (Palfreyman & Tapper, 2014) 7 image of collegiality, which does not refer to governance tasks and does


*Table 4.* Professionalizing Leadership, Defining Collegiality.

not include the administrative staff of universities, and with that paints an opposite image than the answer given by the Israeli CHE-Rothschild program to the question "who is a colleague?"

## **7. CONCLUDING DISCUSSION**

Through a naming process, academic leadership in Israel identified itself as distinct from management or administration and traditional or guild-like forms of collegiality. The naming process carves a new sphere for academic leadership, using the new Hebrew-language term as a mechanism for marking distinction (for academia, from other sectors) and disruption (of traditional modes of academic governance and modes of management). Nevertheless, this new sphere of academic leadership reaffirms long-entrenched social hierarchies: Universities versus colleges, professoriate versus administrative staffers, men versus women, and in Israel also Jewish Israelis versus Arab-Palestinian Israelis.

In training and molding academic leadership, professionalization courses also redefine academic collegiality. Our findings regarding such professionalization courses in Israel reveal the existence of two models for who is identified as a colleague. Model A of academic collegiality, inherent to the HUJI's professionalization courses, sets administrative staff distinct from the professoriate, reinforcing relations of collegiality within each group. Therefore, Model A confirms the traditional governance mode of academia, reinforcing the university's definition as a professional organization governed by a guild-like professional group, namely the professoriate. Model B, propagated by the CHE-Rothschild professionalization program, challenges the academic tradition, bringing collaboration ideas from management education. Model B gathers administrative and academic staff members into a single program, setting the boundary of collegiality encompassing both groups. Even though there is a new mode of collaboration between professors and administrative staff, it is still based on the traditions of the academic hierarchy. Despite these fundamental differences between the bifurcated and combined notions of who is considered a colleague, all programs speak the language of cooperation and partnership among administrative staff and the professoriate. Such language does not, however, confirm what shape such collaboration or partnership takes, describing-cum-prescribing various options for collaborative governance and thus for collegiality.

The overall trend toward professionalization of academic leadership is not contested. Professional management penetrates every aspect of academic life, even in old and traditional universities where the legacies of institutional autonomy and academic freedom are strongly institutionalized. Nevertheless, such change does not necessarily mean an abandonment of collegiality. The new model of academic collegiality binds administrators and professors into a cooperative mode of academic leadership and frames their relations as a partnership. In contrast, the old model of academic collegiality referred only to the professoriate and left administrators as support staff for the academic mission and executors of the professoriate's vision and decisions. In this context, the transition of governance modes in academia is *not merely an encroachment* of managerialism onto academic affairs and a take-over by professional managers but a *redefinition* of who is a colleague in academia, identifying the boundaries of the academic community, and understanding the nature of the collegial tie in academia.

The overarching theme of this newly defined academic leadership that united the professoriate with administrative staff is science: that the primary considerations are academic, that organizational performance is science and science, and that budget and operations are in service of the academy. The importance of academic-scientific-scholarly considerations, rather than operational utility and efficiency, bolsters our conclusion that the Israeli professionalization courses for academic leadership demonstrate a redefinition of collegiality rather than a direct and insidious corruption of collegiality by managerialism.

The authority to define the form of academic collegiality is largely in the hands of the convenors of professional training courses, as these courses play a symbolic and operational role in setting the boundaries for the collegiate group. At the HUJI, a decision about the design of professionalization courses is in the hands of the university administration. The course for the professoriate was initiated and designed by the university president. In contrast, the course for admin staff was initiated and designed by the HR department, which is an administrative unit. This confirms the bifurcation because the two professionalization programs we have initiated by different academic leaders have been uniquely designed for the leadership responsibility of each group. Therefore, reifying the separation of the two collegiate groups. In contrast, the national CHE-Rothschild program was designed by a team of professional coaches who serve as lead instructors. At the same time, national considerations engage in its design, for example, the imbalance between universities and colleges. However, the insistence on gender and ethnic representation demonstrates that cooperation among the professoriate and administrative staff is constitutive to the program. This idea is intended to erase the boundary between the two groups and redefine collegiality as inclusive of both professors and administrators.

This redefinition of academic collegiality, which we trace in our study of professionalization programs for academic leadership in Israel, speaks directly to the themes of this assembly of studies in this double volume. First, the boundaries of who is considered a colleague are broadened to include the professoriate and administrative staff. As noted earlier, this is not necessarily a full expansion of the parameters of collegiality. Students and public representatives, included in other governing bodies of Israeli academia, are not considered professionalized, most likely because they are not considered full-time or long-term members of the institution. This touches on the terminological choice to specify "academic collegiality" or "collegiality in academia." Sahlin and Eriksson-Zetterquist (2023, Vol. 86), in the Introduction paper to this compilation, defined "academic collegiality" based on the importance of the scientific logic, therefore marking collegiality as inherent solely to those who are academics "by vocation," namely what we call here "the professoriate." Model A and the HUJI professionalization format exemplify this. "In academia" terminology, on the other hand, allows collegiality to extend beyond the professoriate and therefore is exemplified in Model B and the CHE-Rothschild professionalization format.

Second, our study shows the redefinition of collegiality along its vertical and horizontal dimensions. At the HUJI, with its bifurcated Model A, we find the preservation of horizontal collegiality, which is defined as "relations and interactions in the scholarly communities" and which is constituted around the "cognitive notion that expertise is built on science" (Sahlin & Eriksson-Zetterquist, 2023, Vol. 86; see van Schalkwyk & Cloete, 2023, Vol. 86). Such horizontal collegiality is reserved for the professoriate, reinforcing the traditional mode of academic governance. On the vertical dimension, the HUJI program for academics is designed mainly to strengthen the managerial capacity of the professoriate and, therefore, implicitly to resist the complete breakdown of vertical collegiality if and when "decision-making comes to be completely in the hands of administrators" (Sahlin & Eriksson-Zetterquist, 2023, Vol. 86). Seeing this definition of horizontal collegiality and its curricular focus on leadership skills and strategies, the national CHE-Rothschild program is not much concerned, let alone challenge, such horizontal collegiality. The rapture introduced by the CHE-Rothschild program, and possibly by Model B in principle, is focused on vertical collegiality. By enabling the operational and leadership partnership between the professoriate and the administrative staff, this program binds the "collegium" around decisionmaking structures. In addition to the professoriate-administrative partnership, the CHE-Rothschild program stretches the collegium across organizational boundaries and possibly also across national borders, because it encourages the borrowing of models from the vast global field of higher education. By operating in this way, the CHE-Rothschild program challenges traditional academic governance and offers a new vision of collegiality in academia. The choice to name the CHE-Rothschild program Leadership *in Academia* rather than academic leadership is most telling: The leadership team is professionally diverse (the professoriate and administrators), and "in academia" marks the sphere of vertical collegiality.

What binds the collegium in these distinct models? Traditional academic collegiality – here, Model A, exemplified by the twin HUJI programs – is organized vertically and horizontally around science's norms, or cognitive framework. In other words, the relations of affinity (horizontal) and the governance structures (vertical) are led by Mertonian notions of adherence to the vocation of science. This is made clear through the bifurcation of courses that separate the professoriate for the administrative staff. The newly redefined version of collegiality in academia, exemplified by the CHE-Rothschild program and Model B, breaks away from tradition by creating a new ethos of vertical partnership. While Model A binds vertical academic collegiality around the *norm* of science, Model B binds vertical collegiality in academia around the *goal* of science. If we set science as a unifying goal, the organization's ultimate "product" would be science. This would allow both the professoriate and administrative staff to work together toward this goal and tame the contest between the two groups, even if not resolved.

In conclusion, while the professional training of organizational leaders is strongly associated with managerialism, we find that the creeping professionalization of leadership in Israeli academia is also used to reinforce traditional modes of collegiality and to amend vertical collegiality. The professionalization courses for academic leadership constitute an arena for both horizontal and vertical dimensions of collegiality, tying together professionalization, collegiality, and governance.

## **8. POSTSCRIPT**

#### *February 2023*

The professionalization of academic leadership in Israel is ongoing. While our analysis covers all courses held until 2022, in early 2023, several new "spillover" programs were initiated. The first two are university-specific: One is held at the HUJI, it is designed for high-ranking administrative staff, and it is called Movilim BaIvrit (translated to Leadership at the Hebrew U); the other is held at the Technion, it is designed for academic faculty and administrative staff, and it is called Movilim BaCampus (translated to Leadership on campus). These two university-specific leadership programs run in parallel to the fifth round of the national CHE-Rothschild program of Movilim BaAcademia (translated to Leadership in Academia). Last, a fourth program targets academic leaders by their role in the administration. Lately, the CHE-Rothschild team has held two one-day workshops for incoming faculty deans from across Israel's higher education organizations. This proliferation of programs signals the institutionalization of professional academic leaders. The proliferation of the title phrase Movilim signals the acceptance of this new term to describe a new leadership model. The current pattern also marks the fracture of the notions of expanded collegiality, at least from the prism of professionalization. These various "spillover" programs seem to be designed for multiple slices of the overall or expansive community – by the university by admin/professoriate or by leadership position. Last, these various spillover programs are led by the same team that crafted and led the CHE-Rothschild program Movilim BaAcademia, whom, we remind, are management coaches rather than from among the professoriate. These various expansions to the Movilim programs are overwhelming any alternative voice about collegiality. After centuries where collegiality has been taken for granted, and after decades of fragmentation of academic collegiality by neoliberal practices (such as personalized contracts and quantification of performance), the hybridization of scholarly and managerial logics is becoming the new mode of academic professionalism, leadership, collegiality, and governance.

## **NOTES**

1. See https://leadershipinacademia.com/en/about/.

2. Namely, Course #5 of CHE that is currently still in session and two newly created university-specific programs; for more details, refer to Postscript section.

3. The overall proportion of Arab/Palestinian academic faculty is 2.5%, while the inclusion of a single Arab/Palestinian faculty member in the training course makes for 5%.

4. Whereas HQ staff account for 5.5% of all university administrative corps, 55% of the 2018 course participants come from these units of central university administration. Also, women account for 68% of all university administrative staff, 77% of the 2018 course participants are women.

5. The first academic mission of teaching and learning designates the constituency of students (and increasingly their parents). The second academic mission of research designates the constituency of science and of its beneficiary as humanity at large. The third academic mission of production of commercializable knowledge designates industry and government as constituents. And the fourth academic mission of social impact designates regional and national communities, as well as world society, as constituents. For review, see Oliver-Lumerman and Drori (2021).

6. For more details on the curricular aspects of the new mode of academic leadership, on the axis between scientific – managerial as well as additional axes within the curricula, see Mizrahi-Shtelman and Drori (2021).

7. In their book, Palfreyman and Tapper (2014) categorize four core elements of collegiality in universities (see Introduction), concluding with a vastly different portrait of who is a colleague in academia. They extract four core elements that define a colleague: (1) remain within the professorial community, even if across departments and universities; (2) remain within the bounds of the university; (3) focuses on research and knowledge; and (4) reaching out beyond the professoriate is inclusive of students only.

## **REFERENCES**


# MANIFESTATIONS OF COLLEGIALITY WITHIN UNIVERSITIES: DELOCALISATION AND STRUCTURAL HYBRIDITY AS GOVERNANCE FORMS AND PRACTICES

#### Jean-Louis Denisa , Nancy Côtéb and Maggie Hébertb

*a Health Policy and Management, School of Public Health (ESPUM) – University of Montreal – CRCHUM-CRDP, Quebec, Canada b Department of Sociology at Université Laval, Canada*

## **ABSTRACT**

*The theme of collegiality and more broadly of changes in the governance of universities has attracted growing interest within the sociology of higher education. As institutions, contemporary universities are inhabited by competing logics often defined in terms of market pressures and are shaped by the higher education policies of governments. Collegiality is an ideal-type form of university governance based on expertise and scientific excellence. Our study looks at manifestations of collegiality in two publicly funded universities in Canada. Collegiality is explored through the structural attributes of governance arrangements and academic culture in action as a form of self-governance. Case studies rely on two data sources: (1) policy documents and secondary data on various aspects of university development, and (2) semi-structured interviews with key players in the governance of these organisations, including* 

**Revitalizing Collegiality: Restoring Faculty Authority in Universities**

**Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Volume 87, 137–156**

**Copyright © 2024 by Jean-Louis Denis, Nancy Côté and Maggie Hébert. Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited. These works are published under the Creative Commons** 

**Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of these works (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/ licences/by/4.0/legalcode**

**ISSN: 0733-558X/doi:10.1108/S0733-558X20230000087006**

*unions. Two main findings with implications for the enactment of collegiality as a governance mode in universities are discussed. The first is that governance structures are slowly transitioning into more hybrid and corporate forms, where academics remain influential but share and negotiate influence with a broader set of stakeholders. The second is the appearance of forces that promote a delocalisation of collegiality, where academics invest in external scientific networks to assert collegiality and self-governance and may disinvest in their own institution, thus contributing to the redefinition of academic citizenship. Status differentiation among academic colleagues is associated with the externalisation of collegiality. Mechanisms to associate collegiality with changes in universities and their environment need to be further explored.*

**Keywords:** Universities; governance; hybridity; self-governance; Canada; higher education policies

## **INTRODUCTION**

The theme of collegiality and more broadly of the governance of universities has attracted growing interest within the sociology of higher education (Musselin, 2021). Collegiality is expressed in structure, behaviours, and culture and, as a mode of governance, co-exists and co-acts with other governance ideals (Sahlin & Eriksson-Zetterquist, 2016). The notion of collegiality involves discipline or domain-based communities of scholars that are self-regulated and autonomous from outside pressure or interference (Rowlands, 2017) and is associated with the notion of academic citizenship where service to students, colleagues, their institution, their discipline or profession, and the public are an inherent component of faculty roles and duties. Collegiality is associated with expertise and scientific or disciplinary excellence and is considered distinct from governance based solely on representative democracy (Sahlin & Eriksson-Zetterquist, 2016).

In this paper, we explore manifestations of collegiality as a mode of governance in two universities in Canada. We focus on how a combination of internal and external changes impact on the work of faculty, and on how universities' response to external demands and policies provides an enabling or limiting context for collegial governance. The conceptual background of the paper identifies recent transformations and challenges faced by institutions of higher education and identifies potential implications for the understanding of vertical and horizontal collegiality, academic citizenship, and more broadly for the institutionalisation of self-governance in universities (Sahlin & Eriksson-Zetterquist, 2023a). We then briefly expose our research methodology. Research findings from our two empirical case studies are presented at the level of the university as an organisation. The discussion and conclusion focus on the evolution, risks, and accommodations related to the manifestation of collegiality as a mode of governance within contemporary universities.

## **CONCEPTUAL BACKGROUND: TRANSFORMATIVE FORCES IN HIGHER EDUCATION AND COLLEGIAL GOVERNANCE**

Universities are perceived as an enduring and specific organisational form that has spread worldwide in the context of a massification of education (Rowlands, 2017). However, universities in most jurisdictions are under pressure to respond to multiple contingencies and expectations. Various broad policy trends such as managerialism, NPM (Christopherson et al., 2014) and economic and labour market policies (Klofsten et al., 2019) call for an intensification of the civic role of universities (MacFarlane, 2019), and EDI norms (Tamtik & Guenter, 2019) exert new demands and impact universities' development and governance. For some authors, pressure to incorporate concerned groups within governance has transformed the university from a republic of scholars to a stakeholder organisation (Bleiklie & Kogan, 2007) with negative implications for collegiality and collegial governance. Other work has focussed on the emergence of the enterprise university, and its impact on internal functioning (Harroche & Musselin, 2023, this volume; Marginson & Considine, 2000), including the rise of professional managers (Deem, 2010) and of a new academic elite and ruling class in universities (Capano & Regini, 2014; Musselin, 2013). These changes lead Christopherson et al. (2014) to predict a decline in the ability of these organisations to sustain a model that values all disciplines and domains equally, and Musselin (2013) to conclude that the power of academics is diminished in this context. A new professional and managerial elite emerges, sets standards, and applies them in the evaluation of academic or research performance, with significant implications for academic careers and relations among colleagues (Bleiklie et al., 2017; Engwall, 2020).

In Canada, research policies reflect these changes. Higher education and research policy is a responsibility shared between two levels of government in Canada: federal and provincial. Federal intervention has been a determinant in expanding research capacities within universities through major programmes like the Canada Research Chairs (CRC), the Network of Centres of Excellence of Canada, and the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) (Eastman et al., 2019). These programmes provide universities a strong incentive to become more research-intensive and competitive, and their reputational and financial benefits are strong motivators for individual professors. These programmes also affect the way research is practised, through the introduction of merit review panels that assess research according to its expected socio-economic impact as well as its scientific excellence, and through policies promoting knowledge transfer and research partnerships. These changes may impact on faculty's capacity to selfgovern knowledge production: a report by the *Advisory Panel for the Review of Federal Support for Fundamental Science* (2017) underlines the importance of establishing a better balance between investigator-driven research and prioritydriven research in Canada. Research-intensification policies also promote a culture of teaching relief in universities, which encourages external over internal activities and increases stratification among faculty, with an impact on academic citizenship (Stephenson et al., 2017). These changes are associated in Canada with the growth of a corporate type of governance within universities (Hurtubise, 2019; Pennock et al., 2016). Tension is also observed between provincial governments' increased involvement in the internal governance of universities and universities' autonomy (Eastman et al., 2018; Hurtubise, 2019). In addition, the growing role of faculty unions as a representative body in charge of negotiating their labour conditions may also have a negative impact on faculty participation in university governance (Stephenson et al., 2017). Overall, it appears that a combination of factors, from small-state political ideology to pressure for increased accountability, to the importance placed on universities in Canadian socioeconomic development, has increased the constraints imposed on universities (Bégin-Caouette et al., 2018) and impacts on the way they manage their internal affairs.

How these changes impact on universities as organisations and on the centrality of collegial governance within them is debateable. A recent survey conducted in French universities reveals a mixed effect, where the intensification of research activities has little effect on the participation of academics in decisionmaking, even as it increases the status and influence of the most prestigious institutions and researchers (Mignot-Gérard, Sponem, et al., 2022b). Looking at the evolution of UK universities, Raaper and Olssen (2015) find a sharp decrease in the autonomy and influence of faculty in the governance of university affairs. Works on the transformation of governance in contemporary organisations and organisational fields emphasise the notion of hybridity to capture the nature and complexity of these changes (Denis et al., 2015). Hybridity refers to a situation involving various elements that are not at first sight compatible or logically aligned. It also emphasises that changes in governance will not be structurally radical and uniform but will rather be based on a mix of approaches and models, such as the coexistence of NPM with structures that favour collegiality.

Collegiality is based on vertical and horizontal governance structures (see Sahlin & Eriksson-Zetterquist, 2023a). Vertical collegiality relates to the formal distribution of authority and to the rules of governance embodied in university structures. Horizontal collegiality refers to the relational substrate of collegiality enacted in the day-to-day life of academia within universities and across networks. The influence of situations of hybridity in governance on these two dimensions of collegiality remains uncertain. While structural hybridity has been the focus of many works, it does not fully capture the nature of changes involved in the transformation of governance. Collegiality as the institution of self-governance relates to subjectivities and how faculty enact academic citizenship through their identity, actions, and interactions (Sahlin & Eriksson-Zetterquist, 2023a). The notion of horizontal governance refers to these aspects but would benefit from integrating a more refined representation of the constellation of factors and influences that enable this enactment to develop (Denis et al., 2019). Informed by a governmentality perspective (Ferlie & McGivern, 2014), the governance of universities can be seen not only as a complex set of structures, instruments, and management practices used to shape and achieve the university's objectives but also as a subjective form of self-governance where individuals both internalise and contest goals and behaviours that appear institutionally desirable.

Attention to faculty enactment of collegiality in day-to-day university life opens the possibility of a more nuanced problematisation of collegiality where resistance, compliance, and co-production combine to impact on governance. How faculty conceive their main aims and act to achieve them will shape the contour of horizontal collegiality and its intersection with vertical collegiality.

Our review of works on transformative forces, and more specifically on research policies, underlines how contemporary modes of knowledge production and the internationalisation of science may impact on both vertical and horizontal collegiality. The boundaries that define various categories of faculty, such as researchintensive or more teaching-intensive groups, are thus redefined with implications for the manifestation of collegial governance within universities and within external scientific or disciplinary networks (Lamont & Molnár, 2002). Collegiality as an institution of self-governance appears as a political act that requires constant investment by faculty to assure its protection and adaptation (Denis et al., 2019). How current changes impact on this investment is an empirical question that we propose to explore in this paper.

## **RESEARCH METHODOLOGY**

In this paper, we focus on manifestations of collegiality within two universities that are chartered and publicly funded, like most universities in Canada. Both cases have autonomy of governance despite that their main source of funding is public money and are managed by a senior executive team composed of a university president and a group of vice presidents. They are located in the same provincial jurisdiction but in cities with distinct characteristics that may influence institutional dynamics. We focus on the organisational or meso level of analysis where we consider universities as organisations embedded within a broader social and political context and organisational field characterised by complex patterns of competition and collaboration that distinguish one university from another (Musselin, 2021). A case is defined as a single university. Both universities have faculty unions (labour unions) with a mission of protecting and negotiating faculty labour conditions. Over time, and with changes in the environment and the growing corporatisation of governance, faculty unions have expanded their role and advocated for a greater role for faculty and collegiality in governance.

We rely on two main sources of data to study manifestations of collegiality: (1) policy and institutional documents and secondary data on the characteristics of each university. Policy and institutional documents and sources consist of annual reports, annual budget statements, institutional data provided by the information office, by-laws, charters, and labour agreements; and (2) interviews with key informants. 12 semi-structured interviews, 6 at each university, are conducted with faculty (only one respondent has an administrative profile and career) involved in leadership or administrative roles between August and November 2022. For reasons of confidentiality, given the small number of interviews, the two cases are aggregated when presenting these data. The sample is composed of two deans, eight people from the president's offices, and representatives of faculty unions in each university. Interviews explore the evolution of collegiality, including the expression of academic citizenship and its challenges, with faculty who play formal leadership roles in the governance of their university. The sample is somewhat biased towards an over-representation of senior management or leadership participants in both institutions but provides key information on the representation, experience, and evolution of collegiality as a mode of governance. Thematic analysis is conducted (Miles et al., 2019). Interviews, each lasting an average of 1 hour, are transcribed and coded according to the following dimensions: the definition of collegiality, the experience of collegiality, the evolution of collegiality in governance, the tension between collegiality and other forms of governance, the impact of institutional transformations on collegiality and threats to collegiality.

We first present our research findings around empirical markers of the place of collegiality and its co-action with other governance ideals, based on a set of structural proxies associated with vertical collegiality and situations of growing hybridity. Structural markers used to characterise collegiality are based on the representation of professors (and researchers) within the different governance entities in a university and the participation of professors in core strategic university decisions, namely programme changes, faculty recruitment and promotion, workload and work incentives, the creation and allocation of research chairs and the development of large research initiatives. We then present the results of the individual interviews on how actors see the evolution of collegiality as a mode of governance within their university and outside the boundaries of their organisations.

## **RESEARCH FINDINGS: CHALLENGES AND PROSPECTS OF COLLEGIALITY WITHIN TWO UNIVERSITIES**

These cases are used to reveal aspects and mutations in collegiality conceived as an institution of self-governance based on vertical and horizontal manifestations of collegiality. Attention is paid to both the formal structuration and to the enactment of collegiality within these two cases. The cases have much in common and the attention here is more on what, together, they reveal about predominant trends in collegiality than an in-depth look at the specificities of each organisation to support a comparative analysis. We thus consider these cases as exploratory and use empirical situations to refine our understanding of collegiality.

Case I is a publicly funded university located in a large metropolitan area. The university has close to 70,000 students, of which 73% are undergraduate and 27% are graduate students. Case II is a publicly funded university in a smaller city with over 45,000 students and a ratio of undergraduate to graduate students similar to Case I. In both universities, faculties and departments cover all domains and disciplines and have since the late 1980s adopted a strategic orientation to increase competitiveness and research intensity. Public funding accounts for 69% and 67.2% of the total operating budgets of Case I and Case II, respectively, with between 17% and 19.3% coming from student fees. This implies that government policies could have a significant impact on the development of these universities and their governance. We will now look at changes in the structuration of vertical collegiality seen in both institutions.

### *Hybridity in Governance: Stability and Change in Organising Vertical Collegiality*

#### *High-level Governing Entities*

Both cases have contemplated changes in high-level governance entities. Case I implemented major changes to its governing bodies in 2018. The university's charter was considered outdated by the presidency of the institution, notably as it predated the creation of the faculty union in 1975. The presidency felt that the university board should make more space for other members of the university community (graduates, employees, and sessional lecturers) and for members of civil society (13 internal, including 4 professors, and 11 externals). The new charter also strengthens dean accountability to the board. Membership in the other two main governing entities (university senate and studies committee) also favours a more diverse representation of members of the wider university community. The university senate in Case I has an advisory role to the board and, following the reform, has a lesser role in the nomination of the university president. The board in Case II has also more external and non-faculty members from the university community (13 internal, including 3 professors and 12 externals). It also recently embarked on a process of reforming its charter but resistance from faculty and the union forced the administration to put the project on hold.

#### *Governing Academic Careers and Education*

Both cases demonstrate high stability in structures and formal rules for decisionmaking around career management and education. The involvement of professors in providing expert and evidence-based advice in committees that make core strategic decisions (recruitment, promotion) appears relatively stable over time (see Gerhardt et al., 2023, Vol. 86). In both our cases, decisions around recruitment and promotion are framed first at the departmental level, where primary academic units affiliated with a faculty follow strict rules defined in a collective agreement between the university and the faculty union, as well as rules set by the university senate. In Case II, the evaluation of faculty files for promotion is performed by the department head with no input from the faculty. University responsibility for approving departmental recommendations for recruitment and promotion is generally limited to assessing general parameters of excellence and integrity. In both cases, elements of corporatisation (the role of the department head and their removal as a member of the faculty union) are in place but co-exist with faculty participation.

Regarding workload, in both cases, labour agreements between the faculty union and the university include rules concerning the definition of individual faculty workloads and the role of the department head in this process. Information on the workload of each faculty member is shared with colleagues in departmental assemblies. The definition of workload is in both cases a more managerial process decided between the department head and the individual faculty member. A faculty member can discuss the distribution of workload at departmental assemblies and voice their support or concerns. There is a mix of collegiality, with the possibility of discussing workload in departmental assemblies, and managerialism, with the department head given a greater role in this process.

In the two universities, programme changes are stimulated by both university policies and faculty initiatives. The university may provide special funding to encourage, for example, the development of new interdisciplinary programmes. Departments or faculties may initiate changes through their programme committees, which are mainly composed of professors and student representatives and, when relevant, representatives of the concerned professional community or external stakeholders. At the university's corporate level, a formal governing entity (studies committee) oversees and approves programme changes. Overall, decisions concerning programme development, change, and termination are influenced by professors and researchers through their departmental or faculty relations and by university corporate strategies. There is a mix of collegiality and managerialism or corporate strategy with the possibility of extending participation to external stakeholders and giving voice to external demands. In addition, in accordance with rules around the allocation of public funds, the ability to attract students will influence the viability of a programme and its legitimacy within the internal ecosystem of the university, and these decisions are not solely in the hands of faculty.

The system of rules that govern academic careers and education appears relatively stable over time in these two universities but shows signs of hybridisation, with the growing influence of corporate strategies through the allocation of internal funding and priority-setting exercises in response to external pressures and expectations.

#### *Organising the Academic Workforce*

A principle behind collegiality is equality, in the sense that no field of expertise or competence will be subordinated to others. Self-governance of knowledge by the corps of faculty is the mechanism used to protect the equality of domains (Sahlin & Eriksson-Zetterquist, 2023a). In Cases I and II, some structural changes to the grouping of academic units have been achieved, with modifications in the number and rank of faculty positions. Table 1 shows the evolution over time of faculty positions across domains as a proxy for the ability to maintain the relative importance or significance of domains of knowledge within these universities. Most of these positions are tenure track. In both cases there is, at


*Table 1.* Evolution of Faculty Positions.

*Source*: Internal data issued by Cases I and II.

first sight, a general trend towards increasing numbers of faculty positions, with a slight decrease for literature and the humanities, suggesting the maintenance of institutional capacity to cover all domains of knowledge and value scholarship in domains that are not necessarily aligned with labour market priorities. However, a more granular analysis of these data reveal that sectors of literature, humanities, sociology, law, and history have experienced more fluctuation over time. Applied domains like administration and medical and health sciences have grown significantly. Data on student recruitment show a more favourable situation for Case I, where faculty numbers in domains like history, philosophy, literature, and sociology have increased over time. Case II also saw a decrease in student recruitment in non-vocational domains such as the humanities. These statistics on the evolution of faculty positions and student recruitment reveal a complex pattern of transformation, where the preservation of all fields of knowledge, and presumably their equal value within the organisation, is accompanied by a possible erosion of the position of some specific domains that appear less aligned with usable knowledge and labour market demands. Finally, in both cases, the increase in faculty positions over time is much less important than the increase in student enrolment, suggesting a significant increase in faculty workload (FQPPU, 2022).

#### *Funding as a Shaper of University Governance*

As discussed previously, the evolution of research policies at the federal level has the potential to influence the configuration and evolution of universities. Both cases have adopted policies and strategic orientations that promote research intensification. Faculty play a definitive role as critical resources to support research performance in line with corporate university strategies. Growing pressure for research intensification is a locus of status differentiation among faculty and sectors. The Canada Research Chairs (CRC) programme is a good example of the forces of differentiation between sectors. Table 2 shows the distribution of CRCs in various domains for Cases I and II. In both organisations, there is a concentration of CRCs in health sciences and research, with a much lower proportion in social sciences and humanities, and natural sciences and engineering. There is an undeniable favouring of health research, with vast research centres covering the whole spectrum of contemporary health research areas. The evaluation of applications for these CRCs involves a hybrid decision-making process that integrates peer review and university-level policy guidance.


*Table 2.* Research Chairs.

*Source*: Internal data issued by Cases I and II.

Similarly, philanthropic or partnership research chairs (*n*=85 in Case I and *n*=94 in Case II) are supported financially by external donors with a concentration in health research and natural sciences, agriculture, and engineering. While these chairs provide guarantees of academic freedom for professors and researchers, they are often jointly governed by donors, adding a layer of influence within the governance of research. External donations also influence the configuration of universities by stimulating innovation and investment in particular teaching and research programmes, which can affect the relative position of domains and disciplines within the organisation.

In addition, large research grants also have a strong impact on the development of universities. For example, Case I received a Can\$93M, and Case II received a Can\$98M grant in one of their domains of excellence. These programmes are based on interdisciplinary and partnership platforms that are critical for scientific performance.

Another marker of differentiation, this one at the individual level, is the bonuses offered to professors who excel in research. Bonuses related to research performance are a growing phenomenon and an indication of growing managerialism in universities and status differentiation among faculty (FQPPU, 2018). This managerialism combines with the trend towards a meritocratic collegial system where peerreview mechanisms play a key if indirect, role in determining eligibility for bonuses.

Overall CRCs and philanthropic or partnership research chairs and large research grants are mostly allocated in domains of applicable or usable knowledge and increasingly respond to criteria beyond scientific merit. Research intensification confirms or stimulates a trend towards a corporatisation and social responsibility approach to the allocation of research resources and bonuses along with a trend towards status differentiation among faculty.

#### *Enacting Collegiality within Universities: Vertical and Horizontal*

This section focusses on the experience and practice of collegiality within the structural context that we previously described. More precisely, we present data on how collegiality as an institution of self-governance is enacted in both institutions.

#### *Spaces for Collegiality*

Interviewees refer to and distinguish between the two manifestations of collegiality. Vertical collegiality appears to be increasingly restricted to teaching and research at the departmental level and involves a specific field of knowledge where professors are recognised as experts. These academic units are an important locus for the enactment of horizontal collegiality where relations and deliberation among colleagues support decisions around teaching and the management of academic careers (recruitment, promotion). Such decisions are rooted in a collegial governance process and respondents in our two cases do not question the active role of faculty in this regard. However, horizontal collegiality appears much less visible or explicit with regard to the strategic orientations of universities, partly due to the greater hybridity seen in governance.

The first thing that comes to my mind when we talk about collegiality is the fact that it's about teachers essentially getting along with each other and agreeing on rules, but not just rules, disciplinary content also. Collegiality to me is primarily in a discipline or in a disciplinary field where professors have authority. They are deemed to be the best experts, the greatest specialists in their field. They have the authority to develop the programmes that will train students and then guide research in that field. This is the level of collegiality that I think we are most familiar with. It is the first level of collegiality. (President's office)

However, in both cases, leaders of faculty unions appear more critical, suggesting that collegiality, even in these areas where it is protected by structure and formal rules, is at risk of being eroded by managerial discretion and decisions. They point out that the mechanism for distributing resources among faculties and departments excludes faculty participation and see this as a threat to their ability to protect the equality of domains of knowledge. The identification of institutional priorities in terms of staffing is not subject to collegial governance despite its determining impact on the development of universities, which may in the long run limit the ability to maintain the model of a comprehensive university.

In the hiring of faculty, specifically in the determination of the resources that are allocated by the university to ensure that the priorities [for each department] can be preserved. It's in those instances, the assemblies, the university forums that I think this collegiality in decision-making needs to be protected, and that's where we see it disappearing little by little, piece by piece. (Leader of faculty union)

In both cases, the revision of by-laws is a contested terrain where two views of the domains in which collegiality (vertical and horizontal) should be enacted confront one another. The revision of the university charter and statutes illustrates these tensions.

The purpose of revising the bylaws is really to see if we can simplify things, processes, without making them less transparent or less collegial. So are there processes, are there elements that are too cumbersome, do we need to consult for so long? (President's office)

Teachers are not the only members of the community who have a say. But their opinion, their views, their intentions, their will, is paramount, and must take precedence, but it must not overwhelm the will of others. (President's Office)

For unions, charter revision inevitably leads to a significant weakening of collegial governance by reducing the weight of faculty in core decision-making processes.

Decision-making powers are taken out of the hands of the very bodies where professors and other members of the university community are represented, and so decisions are now made by management, who are appointed without any real consultation of the university's members. And collegiality is reduced to a trickle. […] (Leader of faculty union)

Somewhat paradoxically, the growing importance of the executive team in the determination of priorities and orientations leads some respondents to perceive senior leadership (presidency office) as a key determinant in the protection and revitalisation of collegiality. They are conceived in some cases as actors of collegiality for the protection of the diversity of domains of knowledge and inquiry. The two cases are not identical on this point; in one, university leadership is perceived less as a protector of a comprehensive model of the university. Moreover, universities are not equally equipped to face such challenges and smaller institutions appear more at risk of losing ground in relation to the self-governance of knowledge and collegiality.

When you have a leading sector, a strong area, you must make sure you don't siphon off funding or resources from another sector and put them into this strong sector. And this is extremely delicate. It's very tempting to add jobs in the strong sector and neglect the others. […] This is always a delicate matter. A large institution with depth can resist the temptation to put all its eggs in one basket. Smaller institutions will find it much more difficult to do so, as pressure will come from everywhere to put all resources in the same place, i.e., what is most profitable in terms of academic development and the university's reputation. (President's office)

Two opposing views are expressed on the so-called modernisation of universities within our two cases. At first, the modernisation of the university is seen as a desire to carve out a place for itself among the great universities.

I would say that we prefer to see ourselves as a great university that wants to take its place among the great universities, and we do not want to cling to the definition of a complete university. The desire to remain a top university, to become an even more renowned leading university, implies that we are in a dynamic system, a dynamic system that evolves, that responds to new social constraints and that does not remain rigidly attached to all areas, things may evolve in life and we must remain aware of that. (President's Office)

A second view sees this modernisation as an attempt to reconcile pressure for change with the valuation of all fields and domains:

If the disciplines are in decline, well, faculty recruitment will eventually suffer. It is, I think, more or less inevitable. So that's a concern for me because I can't imagine a university where there isn't this balance between the humanities and the social sciences; it's part of the university's DNA to maintain that. (President's office)

Interviews reveal competing views on the role of university leadership in nurturing or supporting collegiality. Some consider that senior leadership should intensify its strategic role and arbitrate on the significance of different domains of knowledge or disciplines. For others, senior leadership should act as a guardian of the diversity of knowledge domains and disciplines with a positive impact on collegiality as the self-governance of knowledge.

#### *Barriers To and Forms of Collegial Participation*

Many respondents in both cases emphasise that the centralisation of decisions or managerialisation of universities is far from being the main threat to the maintenance of collegiality. Several elements are raised. First, the increasingly targeted nature of funding limits the power zone of professors, and in this sense, collegiality is also affected. External policies and pressures are important factors that limit the activation of collegiality in governance.

The decision is no longer up to the institution. Let's say we have \$100 to share in the free research model, the \$100 we decide how to share among ourselves, internally. From the moment we are told that we now have \$50 to share and are told where the other \$50 goes, that's when collegiality is diminished, because it has a decision-making input on a smaller part of the pie but it's not an intra-institutional decision, it's from external pressure. (President's Office)

Second, in both cases, there is a sense that the participation of faculty in debates and decisions around the broad orientations of universities is less tangible than before or tends to be eroding. This may be due partly to changes in high-level governance that we discussed previously. This level of governance seems to attract much less interest from faculty and many note difficulties in recruiting faculty to participate in formal governance entities. While structures and rules associated with vertical collegiality still leave a place for a faculty role, research intensification pushes towards self-achievement with a risk of retrenchment from the collective life of the institution:

[…] We have higher levels of expectation in terms of publishing and teaching. The workload is heavier. And the trend towards individualisation […] is the result of several pressures and can indeed undermine collegiality. (President's Office)

Faculty are perceived to be changing in the context of external pressures and research intensification. On the one hand, increased expectations with regard to research and publication are seen in both cases as leaving less space for faculty involvement in the governance of their institution. On the other hand, the growing internationalisation of science and the organisation of research in broad networks are perceived as displacing or delocalising collegiality. Increasingly, collegiality appears to be enacted within scientific or disciplinary communities that transcend university boundaries. This can be observed in the increasing differentiation between professors, often based on their research performance and intensity. University and research funding policies tend to create a certain hierarchy that values some profiles more than others within departments and universities. In both our cases, this differentiation affects faculty participation in collegial bodies while at the same time creating a category of more influential faculty that might have a greater say in the university's orientation.

Yes, it creates different profiles where research is indeed put forward a lot. […] The problem, we know very well, is that there is a kind of symbolism associated with it, we value research, the great researchers. It's true that there is a kind of prestige that comes with the grants. (Dean)

That is, with the acceleration of digitisation brought about by the pandemic, but which was already there and has accelerated over the last two years, and the forms of delocalisation and extension of networks which are no longer formed by physical anchorage in a place, this ought to have an impact on the ways of getting involved, of conceiving of one's presence in one's own university …. (Dean)

Professors and researchers are above all individualists. We all have our own workload, we all have our own goals, we all have our own areas of research, we all have our own grants to go after. For me, the premise is that these are individuals, and consider their needs first. And that's not a pejorative thing I'm saying. […] We work more and more in a network now, because the way the granting agencies are structured now. (President's Office)

Faced with this situation of relative demobilisation, faculty unions have come to assume a role as guardians of collegiality that members recognise as important while not being part of its formal mandate. The union advocates for a more predominant place for collegial governance in a variety of decision-making areas in both cases.

The union should not have to play the role that we are currently playing, that is, of collegiality watchdog. But where we are now, we have the impression that we are not acting as bellwethers but are trying to be a catalyst for mobilisation to ensure that these various bodies [of collegiality] are reinvested. (Union)

In both cases, there is a recognition that collegiality should play a role in the governance of universities. However, the transformation of universities' social role and external pressures, mainly from government and labour market demands, raise concerns among many respondents about the ability to self-govern knowledge and maintain active and impactful faculty participation in governance. Research intensification is perceived to foster growing individualisation of academic careers within the university while also encouraging a delocalisation of collegiality; many faculties find their sense of belonging split between external networks and scientific communities and their own university. As well, the movement by high-level governance entities to instil greater hybridity with an increasing place for social demands and managerialism is seen by faculty unions as eroding collegial governance.

In summary, in both cases, respondents perceive that collegiality as a mode of governance is in flux. The challenge is to regenerate collegiality within a new institutional context where social demands, government intervention, and the internationalisation and intensification of research impact on faculty investment in their own institution and on the definition of areas where collegiality is considered legitimate.

#### *Analysis of the Two Cases: Collegiality and Academic Citizenship*

Our two cases show that structures and formal rules are in place to enable the enactment of collegiality within these universities. Arrangements for vertical collegiality in line with teaching, recruitment, and promotion appear relatively stable over time, but changes made or contemplated in high-level governing entities may eventually impact on the configuration of universities as organisations. These changes reveal competing views of collegiality. One incorporates greater faculty participation in all university affairs while another clearly demarcates areas belonging to management alone from areas where faculty participation is legitimate. In both cases, executive or senior leadership teams are increasingly active in crafting the future of their university. This seems to remove some fundamental decisions from faculty regarding the internal allocation of resources and the setting of priorities. Changes are incomplete as competing views of collegiality still co-exist in both cases and influence the manifestation of this form of governance. The multiple views of what collegiality should be stimulate the involvement of faculty unions as stewards and promoters of collegiality. Unions in both universities seek to secure and expand the space in which collegiality as an institution of self-governance is considered legitimate and blur boundaries between collegiality, internal democracy, and co-management. Transformation of governance in line with greater hybridity induced a progressive polarisation of the internal university community.

While governance in both organisations takes a corporatist turn, external pressures and policies shape their evolution and create a set of dilemmas around reconciling pressure to change with the maintenance of self-governance as a predominant modus-operandi. The need to align with external social demands pushes both universities to be more agile and adaptive. Reconciling this responsiveness with the preservation of a comprehensive model of university is difficult and has implications for collegiality. Without active commitment by university leadership to preserve the equality of knowledge domains, the faculty's ability to self-govern knowledge in all areas is at risk. This risk appears stronger in Case II, suggesting that a university's strategy and leadership have an impact on this process.

Policies and incentives for research intensification appear in both cases to have a strong differentiation effect, segmenting faculty into research-intensive profiles and other profiles. This affects the notion of equality among colleagues and impacts on the investment faculty can realistically make to support collegiality within their own institutions. Significantly increased workloads further limit faculty participation in governance. These developments, coupled with the delocalisation of collegiality that may accompany research intensification, can seriously constrain the ability to inhabit governance structures and enact the collegial ethos. In both cases, we find a disjunction between the preservation of many of the structures and formal rules associated with vertical collegiality, and the capacity for faculty to participate in horizontal collegiality intensely enough to nurture and protect academic citizenship and the institution of self-governance in universities.

## **DISCUSSION**

### *Hybridisation of Mode of Governance: Collegiality, Social Pluralism, and Corporatism*

Looking at our two cases, both publicly funded universities have evolved towards a similar configuration of the university as an organisation. They have implemented or contemplated changes within their core governance entities. These changes favour hybrid forms of governance where plural interests from within and outside universities have more say in the future of the institution (Sahlin & Eriksson-Zetterquist, 2016). For faculty unions, these changes depart from the notion of the collegium as the fundamental governing entity of the university. The governance of universities tends to evolve towards a mix of social pluralism and corporatism where the organisation as an autonomous and accountable entity coexists with the organisation as the mirror of broad societal trends (MacFarlane, 2019). External demands and a more corporate form of governance raise the issue of how universities, as organisations, can adapt to change while maintaining and protecting a critical role for collegiality in shaping these responses. Hybridity in governance risks diluting collegiality as the institutionalisation of self-governance. Our empirical cases suggest that reconciliation between the university as socially responsive and accountable, and the university as a republic of scholars must be further developed. In both our cases, competing views of the domains in which collegial governance should be exercised and is considered legitimate co-exist and need to be better articulated.

One hypothesis on the recent evolution of universities sees increased managerialism in tension with the self-governance of academic work and the participation of faculty in the university's strategic decisions (see Sahlin & Eriksson-Zetterquist, 2023b). Political forces within universities, such as unions, conceive collegiality as inseparable from co-management and internal democracy in the governance of universities. Political work as a collective effort to protect and develop collegiality in universities appears to be needed (Denis et al., 2019). Collegiality cannot be nurtured only by individual faculty investment in academic citizenship. Recognition of the political substrate of collegiality is coherent with the growing role of organised entities such as faculty unions in some universities.

University administrators, who often also identify as academics (professors, researchers) privilege a more confined role for collegiality, that is the traditional role related to knowledge production and the management of academic units (recruitment, promotion, etc.). Two views of collegiality are in tension, a more confined view where collegiality is perceived as legitimate in a limited set of domains and an extended view based on the co-management between faculty and senior leadership of strategic domains within the university. Current labour conflicts and tensions in many Canadian universities are symptomatic of a need to reinvigorate collegiality (see Crace et al., 2023, this volume) and find a productive response to these tensions. Collegiality as an ideal form of self-governance is in practice framed by a complex set of changes and representations that inhabit contemporary universities.

These changes, as we observed, go beyond managerialism and also relate to the growing demand from funders and governments to become more involved in universities' efforts to face national and international societal challenges. The dynamic relationship between university and society puts pressure on certain dimensions of collegial governance by creating a strategic space that senior leadership tends to occupy (Raaper & Olssen, 2015). While empirical analysis suggests that members of the senior leadership of both universities attempt to reconcile the more immediate needs for applied or strategic knowledge production to address major societal issues with the maintenance of a comprehensive model of the university, some fields and faculty associated with less applied or vocational domains may nevertheless lose influence. This dynamic has implications for collegiality and university leaders have a vigilance role to protect all forms of knowledge, but may currently have fewer levers available, particularly given the role of government policies in shaping publicly funded universities (Marginson & Considine, 2000). Hybridity in governance will probably endure, underlining the importance of considering collegiality in the process of renewal and of aligning it with other governance ideals that are progressively taking root in universities.

#### *Stratification of Faculty and Delocalisation of Collegiality*

Our empirical cases suggest that through large research grants and competitive research chair, university's professors become segmented into various categories differentiated by status. Research policies may act as important forces of differentiation and dilution of social cohesion among colleagues, with consequences for the enactment of collegiality (Mignot-Gérard, Sponem, et al., 2022b). Not all faculty appear equal in an environment where research and scientific performance become the predominant criteria to demonstrate excellence (Musselin, 2013). With the expansion of research networks and the internationalisation of science, the experience of academic work is changing (see also Kosmütsky & Krücken, 2023, Vol. 86). The individualisation of academic careers coupled with the collective structuration of research in networks and scientific communities contribute to what we have labelled the delocalisation of collegiality. The internalisation by faculty of competitive standards and metrics in science and research policies contributes to the expansion of an audit culture in universities that presents challenges to the development and affirmation of collegial governance understood as a community of equals (Power, 2000). In addition*,* the possibilities offered by technology for high-performance remote teaching may accelerate faculty retreat from their institution (Mignot-Gérard, Musselin, et al., 2022a). More research is needed to understand the linkages between the ideal of vibrant collegial governance within universities and the performance ideals of research-driven faculty. Universities may have to develop strategies to value a variety of academic profiles and contributions and create a more favourable climate within the institution for collegial governance. Again, this may imply the mobilisation by faculty of political entities such as unions to assert their own vision of universities (Denis et al., 2019).

These considerations emphasise the importance of a subjective enactment of collegiality beyond what is guaranteed by formal decision-making bodies. A better understanding of the relational work and investments involved in horizontal collegiality appears crucial. Academic citizenship relies on the subjective enactment of collegiality. Somewhat paradoxically, in a context where faculty unions and labour agreements resolve most of the issues related to individual career management, individual faculty may feel less compelled to invest in the governance of their institution. If faculty members feel that the organisation does not align with their ideals or views, they may choose to retreat (Bristow et al., 2017). While governing by and through scientific expertise is a fundamental ingredient of collegiality, its actualisation depends on demanding subjective investments. This is why we insist in our analysis on the importance of regarding collegiality as political work and as a subjective form of engagement for faculty based on both resistance to some external pressures and the formulation of counterpropositions to reinvigorate collegiality (Denis et al., 2019). Increased faculty workload, research intensification and externalisation, and growing hybridity in governance may represent disincentives for faculty to make the subjective investment essential to the enactment of collegiality as a governance mode in universities.

## **CONCLUSION**

In summary, looking at the interface of collegiality and governance, we observe an evolution towards a more hybrid form of governance that is marked by two parallel trends. One is the relative conservatism and stability of the participation of professors in recruitment, promotion, and programme decisions and more broadly in the management of their own academic unit. This is significant because these decisions shape the future of a given institution. Such participation appears to be associated with the preservation of a collegial form of governance despite recent changes. A second trend is growing corporatisation and pluralism within high-level university governance entities. This evolution introduces a more hierarchical form of governance. This high-level governance orientation is much less stable and is often contested by faculty and unions. These changes in governance entities may have a negative impact on collegiality conceived as active participation by professors in determining the broad orientation of their institution. Reconciling these two divergent views on the evolution of university governance will require political investments by faculty and dialogue between university leaders and faculty. The pressure to achieve higher intensity in research tends to reformulate collegiality as an external practice in networks and communities that transcend a university's boundaries. We label this emerging phenomenon as a delocalisation of collegiality. The long-term impact of this delocalisation on the enactment of collegiality within universities is an important question. Devotion to scientific achievement, a fundamental ingredient in governance by expertise, may be associated with disinvestments by individual faculty in the collegial governance of universities. More hybrid forms of governance, coupled with the expansion of research in networks, may create less engaging conditions for institutional life within the university and contribute to a redefinition of academic citizenship.

## **ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS**

We would like to thank the following funding agencies for their support: Canada Research Chair (Jean-Louis Denis) and Research Scholar FRQS (Nancy Côté). We would also like to thank Hubert Doyon, a research professional at the Centre Vitam, a sustainable health research centre, for his support at various stages of the project. We also like to thank participants from both organisations for their collaboration in this research.

## **REFERENCES**


*[Facing COVID-19. Higher education and research institutions facing the health crisis. Late 2019 to February 2021]*. Centre de sociologie des organizations et Agence nationale de la recherche, SciencesPo, Paris. https://www.sciencespo.fr/cso/sites/sciencespo.fr.cso/files/Rapport%20Face% 20au%20Covid-19\_0.pdf


# COLLEGIALITY WASHING? NEW TRANSLATIONS OF COLLEGIAL PRACTICES

#### Kerstin Sahlina and Ulla Eriksson-Zetterquistb

*a Uppsala University, Sweden b University of Gothenburg, Sweden*

## **ABSTRACT**

*Over the past few decades, university reforms in line with management and enterprise ideals have been well documented. Changes in the ideals underlying the missions of universities have led to changes in their modes of governing and organizing, which in turn drive further transformation of their missions. One set of reforms in Swedish higher education has been the dissolution of collegial bodies and procedures. At the same time, in recent years, we have witnessed an increased interest in collegiality and a reintroduction of collegial bodies and procedures. New translations of collegiality appear not only in how universities are organized, but also in other core aspects of research and higher education. We review examples of peer reviewing, research assessment, and direct recruitment of professors and ask: Can these new translations of collegiality be understood as a revitalization of collegiality, or is it – to draw a parallel with greenwashing – rather a matter of collegiality-washing?*

**Keywords:** Greenwashing; translation; collegiality revitalization; collegiality-washing; collegiality drift; hypocrisy

**Revitalizing Collegiality: Restoring Faculty Authority in Universities**

**Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Volume 87, 157–180**

**Copyright © 2024 by Kerstin Sahlin and Ulla Eriksson-Zetterquist. Published under exclusive** 

**licence by Emerald Publishing Limited. These works are published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of these works (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/ licences/by/4.0/legalcode**

**ISSN: 0733-558X/doi:10.1108/S0733-558X20230000087007**

## **IS COLLEGIALITY DISAPPEARING OR REAPPEARING IN REVISED FORMS?**

Universities have always been subject to mixed forms of governance. Historically, many universities have been founded and controlled by the church, the state, and more recently, corporations and special interest groups. At the same time, university faculty largely have been granted a certain amount of autonomy to organize and control their activities through collegial governance. Over the years, collegial governance has been both at the core of academic work and a challenged mode of governance (see the Introduction to Vols. 86 and 87; and Östh Gustafsson, 2023, Vol. 86).

Hybrid forms of governance continue to develop (see for instance Denis et al., 2023, Vol. 87) with new missions applied to universities (Krücken et al., 2007), reforms inspired by enterprise ideals (see the Introduction to Vol. 86) and universities increasingly being transformed into organizational actors (Lee & Ramirez, 2023, Vol. 86). Collegiality has not disappeared but tends to be pushed to the background by new and more pronounced ways of governing. This development is related to a feature of contemporary collegiality that is referred to in the two introductions to the volumes of this special issue (Sahlin & Eriksson-Zetterquist, Vol. 86; Eriksson-Zetterquist & Sahlin, Vol. 87) – namely, that collegiality often remains vague and taken for granted. However, examples show that dramatic reforms in university settings have raised institutional awareness of collegiality (Crace et al., 2023, Vol. 87; see also Denis et al., 2023, Vol. 87). Such institutional awareness may exacerbate the erosion of collegiality, or revitalize and revise collegial practices. To shed more light on these dynamics, we explore what happens when collegiality is framed and translated in reformed academic contexts.

We begin by focusing on a series of university reforms in Sweden, which have weakened and eliminated collegial bodies and procedures over several decades. Following this stepwise reduction of collegiality, a 2011 reform eliminated national legal requirements for universities to have collegial bodies (i.e., faculty boards) responsible for the quality and content of research and higher education. In the same reform, peer review procedures for recruiting academic staff were deregulated. Exercising their new decision-making power, individual universities, particularly new universities and university colleges, modified their organizational practices and removed collegial structures (Ahlbäck Öberg & Boberg, 2023). At the same time, these reforms awakened interest in collegiality, leading to a reintroduction of collegial bodies and procedures at some institutions in recent years (Ahlbäck Öberg & Boberg, 2023). We review examples of new procedures for peer reviewing, research assessment, and direct recruitment of professors and ask: Can these new translations of collegiality be understood as a revitalization of collegiality or is it – to draw a parallel with greenwashing – rather a matter of collegiality-washing?

After a brief review of two main elements of collegial governance – peer review and faculty control of recruitment of academic staff – we define the concept of "collegiality-washing" with reference to common uses of other types of "washing." We base our reading of the "washing" literature on the concepts of decoupling and translation from organization theory. We then provide a short empirical background on the stepwise reduction of collegiality in the Swedish university system before exploring how these changes have affected peer review, research assessment, and faculty recruitment processes.

After reviewing the Swedish examples, we turn to the increasingly debated world of journal publishing. We analyze two recent cases of renowned journals that have been reclassified as predatory, and focus on their peer review procedures, or rather lack thereof. In the concluding discussion, we revisit our questions regarding whether the reviewed examples indicate a revitalization of collegiality, or amount to nothing more than collegiality-washing.

### *Two Central Elements of Collegiality: Peer Review and Faculty-controlled Recruitment*

Collegially governed operations are run by autonomous interrelated academic communities (Eriksson-Zetterquist & Sahlin, 2023, Vol. 87; Waters, 1989; Weber, 1922/1983). This form of governance emphasizes the independence and integrity of higher education and research. It is a meritocratic system wherein leaders and decision-makers represent science and the scholarly community. Vertical collegiality is built on formal decision-making, where academic staff carry the main responsibility for the content and quality of teaching and research. Through horizontal collegiality, peers subject academic work to review and scrutiny, and provide advice that forms the basis for academic and administrative decisions (e.g., publications, tenure and promotion, recruitment, etc.). In this way, vertical and horizontal collegiality constitute a system of governance that emphasizes faculty authority, independence, and self-policing.

For the academic community to have control over scientific developments, decisions about recruitment, promotion, assessment, and the publication of research results must be in the hands of faculty. A major component that enables this control is a reliance on peers with the scientific knowledge to assess research quality, progress, and rigor. Peer review processes involve critical scrutiny and contribute to a shared identity and understanding of a particular field. Merton (1942) emphasized these combined aims in his norms of science. The first norm, "communism," refers to the process whereby methods, new findings, and knowledge are scrutinized by colleagues who are experts in the field. According to this norm, scientific findings should be openly published. The second and third norms are "universalism" (i.e., "knowledge claims must be subjected to impersonal criteria of evaluation"), and "disinterestedness" (i.e., "personal interests must be excluded from proper scientific procedures") (Knorr Cetina, 1991, p. 523). The fourth Mertonian norm that guides peer review is "organized skepticism," including the methodological approach of suspending judgment until all facts are known, and the institutional mandate that criticism is permitted as well as encouraged.

In the introduction to this special issue (Sahlin & Eriksson-Zetterquist, Vol. 86), we defined collegiality as an institution. Such a definition implies: first, that collegiality is a structure as well as shared practices underpinned by common norms; and second, for the institution to persist, newcomers are socialized into the community such that they come to share and uphold norms and practices. Again, this points to peer review, research assessment, and faculty recruitment as central practices whereby collegiality and faculty authority are maintained.

The collegial ideals of peer review and faculty recruitment have been discussed extensively over the years. Studies show that the translation of these principles of governance into practice often leads to both conservatism and the exclusion of "daring and innovative research" (Lamont, 2009, p. 243). Even so, both peer review and faculty-controlled recruitment remain fundamental collegial ideals, as no alternatives can support both innovation and rigor (Lazega, 2020).

## **GREENWASHING, DECOUPLING, AND TRANSLATION**

In recent years, the suffix "-washing" has been added to words to refer to activities that are presented in a certain way but practiced in another. Perhaps the most recognizable is "greenwashing," often defined as a marketing practice to make companies or organizations appear environmentally friendly or in some dimension ecological, regardless of the circumstance that these companies or organizations include operating activities that contribute to environmental pollution (Laufer, 2003). "Bluewashing" has been used as a label for businesses to sign up for the UN global compact and use their association with the United Nations to enhance their image and shift attention from their controversial business practices (Jacobsson & Sahlin-Andersson, 2006, p. 257; see also Laufer, 2003).

It can be noted that although the use of the word "greenwashing" has grown since the 1990s, it has never been given a clear definition (Lyon & Maxwell, 2011). It is commonly used to refer to the practice of making misleading claims about environmental friendliness to benefit from the expanding market for "green products" (Delmas & Burbano, 2011). For example, when companies face pressure to assess and report their environmental impacts, some choose to disclose relatively benign ones, thereby creating the impression of transparency. Electing to disclose only minor or positive impacts provides an incomplete picture of ongoing environmental performance, as certain activities remain hidden. Thus, selected reports about environmentally friendly impacts become part of a "washed" public narrative (Marquis et al., 2016). Simultaneously, less impressive activities become obscured in the process of disproportionately revealing positive performance indicators. It can be noted that the practice of revealing only good news is influenced by financial reporting practices (Marquis et al., 2016), which can be skewed to match stakeholders' expectations.

Another approach to washing has been found to involve "strategic hypocrisy avoidance" (Carlos & Lewis, 2018, p. 134). This refers to companies that choose not to report progress within the field of sustainability, as it can lead to a public discussion of hypocritical behavior. Furthermore, there have been reports of companies deciding against progressive environmental measures because they knew that even if such measures were successful, public opinion could deem them hypocrites (Carlos & Lewis, 2018). It has also been found that some organizations may avoid promoting their work under certain labels or categories because they want to distance themselves from others in the same category (Gehman & Grimes, 2017). In either case, reports of progress are hampered, resulting in washing. Each of these situations can be seen as attempts to translate practices into narrative accounts that align with widely held expectations and demands, a theme that we will revisit.

Companies engage in greenwashing for a variety of reasons, including pressure from stakeholders who want to see statements of environmental policies, but cannot control how the intentions of such policies are implemented (Ramus & Montiel, 2005). Other external pressures include legislative demands and regulations, or demands from consumers and investors. Greenwashing may also be driven by internal dynamics, such as optimism ("we will solve this"), organizational inertia hampering change, ineffective internal communication, and imitation of other companies within the industry that appear to be successful (Delmas & Burbano, 2011).

These "washing" examples show various instances of deviations between practices and public narratives, commonly understood to be motivated by companies seeking to foster perceptions that they perform better than they actually do relative to sets of widely held norms and demands. The complicated relationships between norms and practices have been explored extensively in organization studies. Formal organization structures have been built to reflect rationalized myths about proper organizations, yet these structures have been decoupled from daily activities (Meyer & Rowan, 1977). As they strive for legitimacy, organizations seek to align with widely embraced structures and notions "considered proper, adequate, rational, and necessary" (Meyer & Rowan, 1977, p. 345). Subsequent studies have also shown common instances of decoupling between policy and practice and between means and ends (Bromley & Powell, 2012). Such decoupling has largely been analyzed as strategic attempts by actors who seek legitimacy and is described as an outcome of window dressing or hypocrisy (Brunsson, 1989/2002). The above-reviewed notions of greenwashing fit this conceptual framework.

Gaps between norms and practices and means and ends not only follow strategic moves. Translation studies show that ideas (Czarniawska & Joerges, 1996) and models (Drori et al., 2014) change as they are transferred from one context to another. The term translation is thus used to denote the combined processes of movement and change (Czarniawska & Sevón, 1996), individual ideas, experiences, or models are actively transferred from one setting to another, and such movement invariably involves change, intentional or unintentional, as ideas are adapted in new contexts and settings. Many studies of translation processes have concentrated on how ideas travel from one setting to another, such as the translation of American management practices to organizations around the world (Boxenbaum, 2006; Sahlin-Andersson & Engwall, 2002) or the translation of Japanese management practices in multinational firms (Westney et al., 2022).

Translation studies also focus on intra- as well as inter-organizational processes, such as when policies, norms, and requirements are translated into practices or when practices are translated into narrative accounts (see Sahlin & Wedlin, 2008). As models, ideas, or policies are translated into practice, or as practices are translated into narrative accounts, they are edited to fit the specific context (Sahlin-Andersson, 1996), often in relation to other models, ideas, policies, and practices in what has been conceptualized as ecologies of translation (Wedlin & Sahlin, 2017). Through these editing processes, policies and principles may be translated differently in different settings, resulting in gaps between ideals or norms, and practices. The ensuing changes are not necessarily strategic, but follow from how ideas and ideals are understood, adjusted to, and combined with local practices (see also Westney, 1987).

Broadly circulated ideas tend to be theorized (Strang & Meyer, 1993), globalized or generalized (Czarniawska & Sevón, 2005), and are applied differently in different settings through processes of glocalization (Drori et al., 2014). Above, we characterized collegiality as a vague idea. Moreover, we described how universities are subject to hybrid forms of governance. Together, these insights lead us to expect differences in how collegial procedures are being translated into practice as a result of both strategic moves and unintended editing processes.

Even though notions of washing are pejorative, when viewing the examples of greenwashing through the lenses of decoupling and translation, we find that even greenwashing is not always a matter of strategic decoupling, but involves various forms of decoupling and translation, ranging from corporations' strict control of the information provided (which is, strictly speaking, disinformation), to "public disclosure of hard information targeted to influence shareholder value" (Lyon & Maxwell, 2011, p. 7, footnote 9). As Ramus and Montiel (2005, p. 377) put it, "one cannot assume that public commitment to a policy necessarily translates into corporate greening activities and the implementation of the policy" (referring to Winn & Angell, 2000).

In summary, studies of greenwashing have inspired us to ask whether recently introduced procedures for peer reviewing, research assessment, and direct recruitment of professors can be understood as restored collegiality or rather a matter of collegiality-washing. Are these measures revitalizing faculty authority or merely enabling symbolic compliance with broadly held ideals on the integrity of scientific development? As we assess whether these practices amount to collegiality-washing, we also explore the potential consequences of revised forms of collegiality. Do these translations of collegiality further water down collegiality, and in turn, research integrity and trust in science? Our analyses and conclusions are informed by studies of widespread challenges of collegiality. In the next section, we describe such challenges in the Swedish system of higher education and research.

## **A STEPWISE REDUCTION OF COLLEGIALITY AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF SWEDISH UNIVERSITIES AS ORGANIZATIONAL ACTORS**

The first Swedish university, Uppsala University, was founded in 1477 as a Catholic institution. Pope Sixtus IV issued a decree permitting its establishment and placed it completely under the control of the Catholic Church and the Swedish archbishop, who had been the main person advocating for a university in Sweden. Because the university was controlled by the Catholic Church, it entered a period of crisis and decline during the reformation in the 1500s. When the university was re-established in 1595, it was funded and controlled by the state (Lindroth, 1976). This model remained in place for several centuries. Carl Gustaf Andrén (2013), former vice chancellor of Lund University and former university chancellor of Sweden, described the budget for Uppsala University in 1940. This very detailed budget was set by the government and not only regulated the establishment of new professorships and faculty appointments but also specified positions such as building caretakers, administrative assistants, and resources to support university operations.

The organization of the university was also subject to detailed regulations, even though collegial bodies were responsible for decisions and control within the tight boundaries set by the state. Until the mid-1800s, faculty formed the university's board – the *konsistorium* – and professors took turns holding the position of vice chancellor for one semester at a time, and later, one year at a time. The first elected vice-chancellor of Uppsala University, Carl Yngve Sahlin, was appointed in 1876 and held that position for 13 years. He was elected to threeyear terms by university professors comprising the academic collegium (the same year, specific peer review procedures for assessing and advising on the recruitment of new professors were implemented). However, the government retained responsibility for faculty appointment decisions. In the early 1900s, the *konsistorium* was transformed into a representative body as the number of professors increased; from that point forward, not all professors were members of the *konsistorium* (Frängsmyr, 2017). Toward the end of the 19th century, a reform was proposed that the university organization should be divided into academic matters and administrative matters. After much discussion, this suggestion was turned down (Frängsmyr, 2017). However, new challenges to the collegial governance of the university followed.

Frängsmyr (2017) described how academic collegiality was reduced step by step, especially from the 1960s onwards. Universities were formed as public agencies under the government, and thus reforms of the public sector impacted how universities were organized and controlled. Ahlbäck Öberg and Boberg (2023) found that this decision on the organizational form of universities was not the result of strategic considerations, but rather just thought of as a "convenient arrangement." Moreover, in 1969, the composition of the *konsistorium* was expanded to include representatives of the student body as well as the university administration. Even though the traditional name *konsistorium* was retained at Uppsala University, it increasingly began to resemble a corporate executive board. In 1977, the *konsistorium* was expanded once again to include representatives of broader society – initially, local politicians, followed by people affiliated with the business sector, national labor unions, cultural organizations, and civil society. Societal representatives comprised the majority of the *konsistorium* in 1988. A decade later, with a new state reform, the vice chancellor was no longer the chair; instead, the government assumed responsibility for appointing chairs of university boards – typically, former politicians, business leaders, or public agency leaders.

The stepwise reduction of collegiality continued, with new groups gaining control over universities as more decisions about budgets, personnel, and academic content were being decentralized from the government. Decisions about new professorships and faculty appointments were delegated to the universities in 1993. In addition, universities were subject to the same organizational reforms as other public bodies according to widely circulated popular enterprise models (Brunsson & Sahlin-Andersson, 2000; Sahlin, 2013). With these developments, universities increasingly became organized as organizational actors (Sahlin & Eriksson-Zetterquist, 2016) and in 2011, legal requirements for universities to have collegial bodies (i.e., faculty boards) responsible for the quality and content of research and higher education were eliminated. Ahlbäck Öberg and Boberg (2022, p. 157) summarized the consequences of the 2011 reform as follows: "Our findings show escalating line management in the appointment of academic leaders, a diluted role for collegial expertise, and a loss of decision-making authority for collegial bodies."

## **DECOLLEGIALIZATION – RECOLLEGIALIZATION**

Since 2011, Swedish universities have not only experienced a continued weakening of collegial structures and practices but also a growing interest in collegiality. As described above, faculty boards were eliminated at several institutions, but later were reintroduced as advisory bodies (Ahlbäck Öberg & Boberg, 2023). A personal experience of ours is that while collegiality was seldom taught in academic leadership courses before 2011, the topic is now a standard component of such courses. The last few decades have also included what could be described as a "boom" of assessments of research and educational programs. These assessments have been developed with reference to collegial principles and have involved peer reviews in various forms. Moreover, in the early 2000s, direct recruitment1 of professors partly based on collegial principles and faculty authority was reintroduced in the Swedish university landscape.

Even though it is clear that reforms of Swedish higher education and research have strengthened bureaucratic and enterprise-like governance at the expense of collegiality (Eriksson-Zetterquist & Sahlin, 2023, Vol. 87), we also see that collegiality remains an ideal. Elements of collegial governance are often referred to, even if these tend to be contextualized, mixed, and often subordinated to the more dominating enterprise and bureaucratic forms of governance. Below, we present two examples of revised peer review procedures (as practiced by the Swedish Research Council and used in research assessment at Uppsala University) and describe the reintroduction and practice of direct faculty recruitment. We continue by asking: To what extent, if at all, can these procedures be understood as a revitalized form of collegiality?

## **REVISED PEER REVIEW IN THE SWEDISH HIGHER EDUCATION LANDSCAPE**

The Swedish Research Council is the main governmental research funding body in Sweden. The council aims to support research of the highest quality within all scientific fields and this is accomplished primarily by issuing open calls for research proposals and evaluating them based on peer reviews. On their website,2 the main process of allocating funding is presented as follows:

The Swedish Research Council uses peer review to assess the scientific quality of the applications and the potential of the research. Peer review involves well-qualified researchers within the same or nearby subject areas scrutinising the applications. Peer review is used all around the world, is greatly trusted by researchers, and is considered to be the best way of ensuring applications receive a balanced and fair assessment.

A main instrument for research funding by the council is an annual open call for grant applications which can be submitted by individual researchers in any scientific field. Applications are typically reviewed by panels of national and international scientific experts (i.e., active researchers) in a given field. However, the Swedish Research Council also issues specific calls for research proposals, either after the council makes its decisions or by order of the government. In those cases, peer review procedures tend to vary. We describe such a governmental assignment below that resulted in a suggested procedure that has not (yet) been realized. The assignment concerned a proposed model for quality-based allocation of increased direct governmental research funding to Swedish universities. We first provide background for the proposed procedure.

Every fourth year, the Swedish government presents a bill to direct the governmental research policy for the next four years. One such bill titled "Research, freedom, future: knowledge and innovation for Sweden" was presented by the social democratic government in December 2020. Among other suggestions, the bill proposed a new scheme for quality-based direct funding of universities and university colleges. The proposed new model was presented as one of several efforts aimed at protecting and promoting free research and was intended to replace an indicator-based resource allocation model that had been in place for a number of years. The indicator-based model included measures of publications and external funding. The intention was that at least 500 million SEK (approximately 50 million euros) should be allocated using the new model in 2023 and 2024 and that this amount would increase over time. Thus, the four Swedish governmental research councils (The Swedish Research Council, Formas, Forte, and Vinnova) were tasked with designing a model for "quality-based distribution of research funding" to "reward high quality in research but also to increasingly reward strategic profiling and prioritization of research in such environments, where the conditions are deemed best for research of the highest international quality in universities and colleges" (Prop. 2020/21:60, p. 47).

The assignment resulted in a report published in 2021 and another report in 2022 in which the proposal was further developed. In the first report, the research councils suggested how universities and university colleges could work with such strategic profiling. First, each higher education institution should define its own profile areas, and how these will contribute to increased research quality. The authors of the report described strategic profiling as a "bottomup" process that could vary in terms of "theme, width, direction, interdisciplinarity, disciplinary profile" and "include both basic as applied research and innovation." The only guiding principle was "high scientific quality," which was defined to also include collaboration with society at large. Furthermore, the universities and colleges were free to decide if they would like to collaborate with each other. The report also contained a detailed suggestion for how to present the profile – that is, to focus on the work's potential to support the universities' strategic profiles, renewal, and quality development. Among other aspects, a brief SWOT analysis was requested to justify the area chosen for the strategic profile that would become the basis for expanding the quality of scientific research and collaboration.

A major part of the two reports then proposed how applications for strategic profile areas should be assessed. Three conditions were established: strategic profile, scientific quality, and quality of collaboration. In the second report, the proposed procedure was summarized as follows:

We suggest that all applications are assessed by an international panel consisting of around ten persons in leading positions and with backgrounds in different fields. The panel members shall together represent a broad range of competencies with solid experience in research in different scientific fields, research strategy work, quality development work, organizational and leadership issues, evaluation of scientific quality in various scientific fields, and collaboration between research in academia and the surrounding society. The gender distribution shall be equal, and the members shall represent a wide range of geographical locations. (Swedish Research Council, 2022, p. 17)

In addition, it was proposed that "For the scientific quality component, the panel may obtain statements from 2 to 3 subject experts for each profile area."

While "external review committees" and the emphasis on scientific quality relate to the collegial practice of peer review, this was largely subordinated to other kinds of expertise and other assessment criteria. Rather than peers with scientific knowledge in the same discipline, the report proposed reviewers with competence in "research strategy work, quality development work, organizational and leadership issues, evaluation of scientific quality in various scientific fields, and collaboration between research in academia and the surrounding society." Even though the proposal mentions scientific quality (a task for collegial peer review) the prioritized competence of reviewers is strongly connected to enterprise experiences of strategic work.

It should be noted that the proposed scheme was not implemented by the government. This is partly due to heavy critique of the proposed model, but also because a new government took office in the fall of 2022. Nevertheless, we find similar revisions of expert assessments, both in other assessments controlled by the Swedish Research Council and in other contexts. A recent call for grants to establish centers of excellence shows this increased emphasis on organizational issues in the assessment of applications and the expertise used. This call followed an item in the research policy bill from 2020 and was thus tasked by the government. The issued grants were 4–6 million SEK annually for up to 10 years. The call was presented on the website3 as follows:

The purpose of the grant is to support the build-up and development of environments that promote research collaboration on a joint theme and contribute to higher education. The call is open for applications relating to pioneering and multi-disciplinary issues in all scientific disciplines.

Similar to the proposal for quality-based research funding of universities, organizational issues were emphasized in the proposed review procedure which stipulated that panel experts should have both organizational and research expertise. The assessment is described as follows on the Swedish Research Council's website3 :

Scientific quality is the fundamental criterion when the Swedish Research Council allocates grants to research. Your application is assessed in competition with the other applications on the basis of the following assessment criteria.

#### **Evaluation Process**

Your application for a grant for the Centre of Excellence is assessed by a review panel, where the members are international researchers with experience in both managerial and organizational work and also program activities.

#### *Review Panel*

The assessment of the application is done in two stages. In the first stage, the review panel will assess Part 1 of the application, which consists of the organizational proposal, focusing on the design of the program activities, recruitment processes, management, and organization. The applications assessed as being of the highest quality in Stage 1 will go on to Stage 2. In Stage 2, external reviewers with subject expertise will be appointed to assess the remaining applications. The external reviewers assess Part 2 of the application, focusing on the scientific description of the central theme/central question. Finally, the review panel will read the scientific assessments from the external reviewers and make an overall weighted assessment of each application, and then submit a proposal for a decision to the Board.

These examples suggest that how research is organized and led is increasingly seen as an important aspect of research assessment. This is true, even when it is explicitly said that research quality is the main aim and assessment criterion. Moreover, organizational leadership experience is defined as an area of expertise, along with research expertise. Contributions to and collaboration with broader society is yet another competence included in the research assessment criteria.

## **RESEARCH ASSESSMENTS AT UPPSALA UNIVERSITY**

The broadening of what is seen as expertise in reviewing research is not restricted to the Swedish Research Council but appears to be a more widespread development. Here, we present an example from a comprehensive assessment of research at Uppsala University. The first university-wide research assessment exercise was initiated in 2007. The initiative was partly taken in reaction to discussions in Sweden about a need for national assessments of research comparable to the British REF/RAE. With this initiative, Uppsala University demonstrated to the government that research assessment could be best performed by universities. The assessment was labeled "Quality and Renewal 2007" and aimed to identify research with the potential to develop into strong future areas of research. In the 578-page final report from the assessment, the process was described as follows:

The evaluation was conducted in a peer-review process, where distinguished scholars of the international research community were engaged in reviewing the research. As a separate exercise, a bibliometric study of research publications for the period 2002–2006 was carried out by external expertise. The peer review was based on written background material containing self-assessments, documents presenting facts and figures of department activities, and lists of publications. In order to acquire an in-depth opinion about the status and future plans of the various departments, all panels spent a week at Uppsala University conducting site visits, during which they met and interviewed faculty members and Ph.D. students. The review work was distributed on 24 different expert panels with an average of 7 panelists per panel, in total 176 panelists. 11 panels were assigned to Humanities and Social Sciences, 7 panels to Science and Technology, and 6 panels to Medicine and Pharmacy. (Nordgren et al., 2007, p. 11)

After this assessment, and partly guided by it, the university allocated extra resources to specific research areas and research units at the university. However, it should be noted that the conditions for resource allocation were not set beforehand, and among areas receiving extra resources, there were both areas that came out as very strong and areas that came out as weak. In other words, there was not a direct link between the assessment and resource allocation; rather, the assessment was intended to aid research groups and leaders on all levels of the university in their continuous strategic decision-making. Uppsala's initiative was followed by similar initiatives in several Swedish universities. It was also followed up with a new assessment at Uppsala in 2011.

A third assessment, Quality and Renewal 2017, was carried out at Uppsala University, but in a different format. This time, the preparatory self-evaluations, the composition of the international panel, and the primary aim of the assessment were different, with less emphasis on research and research outputs, and more emphasis on leadership and organizational issues. In the executive summary of the assessment report for Quality and Renewal 2017, these differences were described as follows:

[…] an internet-based survey was carried out, in which around 3,700 active researchers at Uppsala University shared their perceptions of and opinions on their local research environments at the University. Together with some bibliometric analyses, the survey results served as background material for departmental self-evaluations, which in turn were subjected to external peer review. In this process, more than 130 "critical friends," most of them from outside Sweden, evaluated 54 evaluation units to assess strengths and weaknesses and make recommendations.

Q&R17 is the third major research evaluation at Uppsala University …. In contrast to those two evaluations, Q&R17 has not resulted in any sort of grading of the research carried out at Uppsala University, either in its totality or in its parts. Nevertheless, the panel reports include numerous testimonies of the perceived strength and excellence of research at Uppsala University.

More importantly, given the purpose of Q&R17, a number of areas have been identified where action is needed if Uppsala University is to take steps toward reaching its full potential. These relate to quality culture and control; leadership and strategic renewal; talent attraction and retention; international milieu; external collaboration and outreach; research-teaching linkages; and organization and infrastructure …. [The conclusions and recommendations coming out of Q&R17] will form the basis for a number of prioritized actions throughout the University aiming to further strengthen the international standing of Uppsala University. (Malmberg et al., 2017, pp. 11–12)

We see a change over time where assessment came to focus less on research results and research quality, and instead focused primarily on organizational and leadership issues. Second, instead of focusing on individual researchers and their scientific performance, assessments focused on research environments and proposed actions to be taken by university leaders. Notably, the change in focus is also emphasized in the final report from the assessment. For example, they described the panel as composed not of peers, but of "critical friends."

The transformed focus also meant that individuals with other types of expertise were recruited to the panel, and thus assessments were no longer controlled by autonomous interrelated academic communities. These additional experts did not represent science and the scholarly community, but rather the organized system of higher education and research. They were recruited based on their experience as leaders of such organizations. This also meant that experts were not specialized, but were largely expected to have generic experiences and expertise on how to lead, organize and assess science.

## **TRANSLATIONS OF DIRECT RECRUITMENT OF PROFESSORS**

The examples above show how organizational aspects became integrated into assessments of scientific quality. This also meant that to a lesser extent, such assessments were controlled by the academic community – by peers. Two central features of a collegial system are, as emphasized above and in the introduction to Vol. 86 (Sahlin & Eriksson-Zetterquist, 2023, Vol. 86) that faculty control peer review and faculty recruitment as ways to control scientific developments. We now turn to a case of revised procedures for specific faculty recruitments.

As described above, practices associated with the recruitment of academic staff have been reformed in the Swedish system. If we take a longer historical perspective, it is clear that faculty have never had full control over recruitment. Tight state control of universities meant that recruitment decisions were made by the government. However, if we concentrate on more modern times, as recruitment was delegated to universities, the law prescribed a careful peer review process with external reviewers, meaning that recruitment was primarily controlled by the academic community at large. The 2011 reform deregulated faculty recruitment and several universities chose to transform their recruitment processes, for example, by weakening external reviewers' control over the process.

An interesting case concerns the specific regulations regarding universities' right to directly recruit professors. The right to appoint a specific person to a professor position without a prior open announcement was reintroduced in the Higher Education Ordinance in the early 2000s. The first attempt to reintroduce this right was a way to support gender equality: a qualified woman could be recruited to a position without an open announcement and competition. A system with peer review of external reviewers would be used in cases when it was not obvious that the person was competent for the position (e.g., when the recruited person had not held a similar position at another university). The right to direct recruitment as a way to support gender equality was soon abolished, but direct recruitment was reintroduced in the early 2020s, primarily as part of an effort to internationalize Swedish research. The reason for including this exception in the higher education ordinance was that the ordinary procedures with open calls and peer review procedures were usually quite time-consuming which meant that opportunities to recruit leading international scholars were often missed.

The rule about direct recruitment of professors was an exception not only to the regulated process for recruiting academic staff at universities but also to regulations regarding how staff should be recruited in the public sector in general. The law stipulates that open calls should be made for positions in the public sector and the most qualified person should be recruited (RF, c. 12, § 5; LOA, § 4).4

The rule in the Higher Education Ordinance (1993:100, c. 4, § 7) reads:

A higher education institution may nominate an individual for an appointment as a professor if the appointment of the individual is of exceptional importance for a specific activity at the institution. If a higher education institution nominates an individual for a post, the grounds on which the appointment is of exceptional importance for the institution must be placed on record.

Even though the work preceding the legal change stipulated that this procedure was intended to be used primarily to recruit leading international scholars, this was not explicitly part of the legal rule. Swedish universities translated the new regulations into their own policies in different ways:

Gothenburg University5

The procedure will be used restrictively and aims primarily to facilitate the recruitment of prominent international researchers. The procedure can also in exceptional cases be used as a strategic instrument to achieve a more even gender distribution within the category of professors. (our translation)

#### Uppsala University6

Notice of employment as a professor means that a person without prior information about a vacancy is newly hired as a professor. The summons procedure will only be used in the case of both the subject area and the one that is referred to be deemed to be of special strategic importance for a certain activity at the university. The summons procedure shall be used restrictively.

#### Lund University7

The procedure will be used restrictively and aims to facilitate and accelerate the recruitment of internationally renowned researchers. The procedure will be used as a tool for strategic recruitment. The procedure must be used so that Swedish universities can compete with international higher education institutions for very prominent people that the university would otherwise risk losing in an overly protracted recruitment procedure. (our translation)

Although these rule changes were intended to strengthen faculty, in several cases across Sweden this process has not been used to recruit internationally renowned researchers. Rather, it has been used to give permanent professor positions to local scholars who are serving in university leadership roles (which, according to normal collegial principles, should not be permanent). Moreover, these direct recruitments have not been initiated by faculty, but by vice-chancellors or vice-rectors – that is, by university leaders.

The Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in particular has used direct recruitment for this purpose, appointing 14 professors via this process since 2011. Seven of these persons already had appointments at KTH, one was recruited from another Swedish university and six were internationally recruited (Rönnmar, 2022). The documented motives were outstanding excellence in research (six cases), high-quality research funding (three cases), important work performed at KTH within research, teaching or leadership (two cases), and work upholding tasks as head of school or head of department (three cases), other motivations (two cases), and gender equality (four cases), with more than one motivation possible for each case (Rönnmar, 2022). Direct recruitment of a person holding the position of head of school led to much criticism and was subject to an external investigation. The person was not a professor at the time of the direct recruitment, yet no peer review of merits was performed. Investigators found that extensive criticism of the appointment was warranted and recommended that the university review its appointment procedures (Rönnmar, 2022).

Our review revealed that a central feature of academic collegiality is faculty control over recruitment, which is based on academic merit in research and higher education. The reintroduction of direct recruitment of professors in the Swedish system was motivated by the ambition to increase the internationalization of Swedish research with an emphasis on scientific merits. However, when translated into policies at the university level and enacted in practice, organizational and leadership issues and competencies became integrated into and even dominated scientific quality. Moreover, the processes were not controlled by faculty in the scientific areas of the directly recruited professors, but by persons in management positions.

## **PREDATORY PEER REVIEW PROCESSES**

Our cases show how the unique competencies and boundaries of faculty in Sweden have been weakened as universities have been reformed, and thus constructed as organizational actors. International examples show that this phenomenon is not unique to Sweden (Bromley & Meyer, 2015; Krücken & Meier, 2006; Musselin, 2018; Ramirez, 2010). Notably, changes in collegial practices may also be linked to a watering down of collegiality in the peer review process for academic journals. Two recent examples from the journals *Sustainability* and *Frontiers* illustrate how collegial work is undermined in this context.

On Wikipedia in December 2022, the journal *Sustainability* was described as follows:

*Sustainability* is a peer-reviewed open-access academic journal published by MDPI. It covers all aspects of sustainability studies. The journal has faced criticism over its quality. In September 2021 the journal was among the initial 13 journals included in the official Norwegian list of possibly predatory journals, known as level X. In 2022 the Norwegian national publication committee determined that *Sustainability* is not an academic journal and removed it from the register of approved journals starting from 2023. The journal is listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals.8

Since its first issue in 2009, the open-access journal *Sustainability* has followed a remarkable development trajectory. In 2021, its impact factor was 3.889 and that year, 14,000 papers were published, making it the fourth largest journal in the world.9 Over the period from 2016 to 2021, the annual volume of published papers increased six-fold. However, in a newspaper article published in the Norweigan higher education journal *Khrono* in May 2022, Espen Løkeland-Stai reported that the journal had not followed widely accepted procedures for peer review.10 Additionally, papers were reported to have been published despite the need for language editing, and the volume of published manuscripts has increased tremendously.11 Accordingly, Anne Kristine Børresen, head of "CRIStin,"12 the Norwegian Scientific Index, decided to remove *Sustainability* from the index, meaning that manuscripts published in the journal would neither be counted as performance outcomes for academic careers nor be acknowledged in other academic contexts, such as applications for research funding.

Behind the increase in volume is the journal's owner, MDPI (Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute), which has been assumed to make great financial gains by capitalizing on scholars' desires to add "special issue editor" to their CVs. Instead of attempting to identify new fields in need of special issues, the incentive for special issues is claimed to be scholars' vanity and career ambitions.13

Another publication platform that has attracted criticism is *Frontiers*, established in 2007 by neuroscientists Henry Markram and Kamila Markram.14 In December 2022, the journal's webpage reported that *Frontiers* was the "3rd mostcited publisher, 6th largest publisher, with 1.9 billion article views and downloads."15 This open science platform stated its mission as follows:

Our research journals are community-driven and peer-reviewed by editorial boards of over 202,000 top researchers. Featuring pioneering technology, artificial intelligence, and rigorous quality standards, our research articles have been viewed more than 1.9 billion times, reflecting the power of open research.11

#### The publisher also listed its innovations, three of which we highlight here:

Community-driven journals: Leading researchers serve as independent editors and reviewers on our editorial boards.

Research topics: Article collections showcasing emerging and important areas of research.

Collaborative peer review: Our unique online forum with real-time interactions ensures rigorous, constructive, and transparent peer review. Source: Frontiers | Mission (frontiersin.org).

In 2015, a discussion developed in the medical section of *Frontiers*, when the chief editors published a manifesto that eliminated the ability to submit rebuttals, a principle that previously had been considered foundational for the journal. Moreover, the executive editor had fired all signatory chief editors, leaving the journal with no editor-in-chief, and just a few chief specialty editors. Some associate editors were embroiled in controversies, as they were being investigated for data manipulation and their papers had been retracted. Leonid Schneider, who discussed whether *Frontiers* was a predatory journal, noted that the two cofounders, Henry Markram (Editor-in-Chief) and Kamila Markram (CEO), were a couple with ownership interests in the journal. While some scholars reported great peer review and publishing experiences with *Frontiers*, others were more negative. There were also ethical concerns, as rules for anonymity (human patient identity) were not followed. Peer reviewers had no option to reject a submitted manuscript16; instead, the journal advocated "interactive review," an ongoing discussion between the authors and reviewers as a paper is being developed. Taken together, it appeared as though editorial independence had been compromised, with the owners and publisher being highly involved in publishing practices.17

Another controversy emerged in the fall of 2022 when scholars involved in a special issue about "Change and Innovation in Manuscript Review" published in *Frontiers in Research Metrics and Analytics* discussed their experiences. Even though they were aware of previous criticism, the journals' explicit ambition to innovate the peer review process (as described above), led them to conclude that they should continue with the project. *Frontiers,* however, did not let them publish their reflections on the journal's peer review procedure. Instead, the scholars presented this content as a blog post. In brief, the algorithm-based system for reviewer selection, which contacted numerous potential reviewers (including those who were not qualified for the task) with preformulated invitations turned out to be very rigid, leading to significant extra work to correct errors made by the system. The time allocated for reviews was seven days. Overall, the journal's practices of not allocating space for editorials, not allowing the editors to reflect on their experiences, and not extending review periods led the guest editors to question, the integrity and quality of papers accepted by the journal.18

These examples show that shortcuts have been taken in peer reviewing in the wake of the rapid expansion of publications following the expansion of universities across the globe, the expansion of English-language journal publications, and the implementation of performance measurement systems that emphasize quantity (i.e., requiring scholars to amass an increased number of journal publications). This also has been shown to lead to negative outcomes in the form of declining quality of published papers and less innovation in research (Fleming, 2020; Gerdin & Englund, 2021).

The examples of *Frontiers* and *Sustainability* demonstrate yet another dimension of setting aside collegial principles for peer review – namely, the potential to benefit financially from publishing journals that claim to follow the principles of scientific work. The promotion of open access has put yet other pressures on the publication market. In the open-access model, scholars pay for publication upfront, and in return, their research is accessible to anyone on the Internet. Given that several distinguished journals have been recategorized as predatory, there appears to be a risk of peer review standards being sacrificed for the sake of ownership interests and financial benefits.

Taken together, a weakening of the peer review process for scientific work, the establishment of performance measurement systems, and the marketization of publishing channels challenge collegiality. Journals that claim to operate according to foundational principles for scholarly work but actually set them aside appear to be watering down the critical principles of collegiality.

## **COLLEGIALITY-WASHING AND WATERING DOWN COLLEGIALITY?**

Assessments of scientific quality have been discussed extensively over the years, and the importance of distinguishing scientific knowledge from pseudo-scientific claims has become a subject of much debate. Influential research has revealed the processes of boundary work in science (e.g., Gieryn, 1999). These attempts are in line with the organizational requirements of collegiality which have been summarized by Waters (1989) (see also Sahlin & Eriksson-Zetterquist, 2023, Vol. 86), who emphasized that collegial principles support self-governance built on scientific principles. This self-governance includes self-controlling and selfpolicing. As we stated in the introduction to this paper and as emphasized by Waters (1989, p. 958), peer review and faculty recruitment are the main vehicles for this self-governance: "There must be maximum stress on peer evaluation and informal control. The products of the work done by colleagues must be available for peer review."

Our analyses of several examples of recent peer review and recruitment policies in Sweden show that even when scientific quality and peer review are emphasized as important aspects of these assessments, specialized scientific expertise is blended with organization and leadership experience. The cases from Sweden show that research assessment is not exclusively in the hands of faculty. Organizational aspects have increasingly been incorporated into assessment criteria, even when such criteria are said to explicitly focus on scientific quality. While the historical review shows that assessment and recruitment have never been completely controlled by faculty, the cases suggest that organizational assessment criteria and motivations have become increasingly important and are increasingly being defined as part of the assessment of scientific quality. This has also meant a broadening of what is meant by expertise and who is seen as an expert. Whereas scientific expertise is documented, specialized, and subject to continuous scrutiny, organizational and leadership expertise is much less so and is dealt with in much more generic terms. Assessments have largely come to focus on how research is organized, rather than on research per se.

The cases about peer reviews and predatory journals show that challenges to collegiality not only come from external pressures and new demands but also a watering down of collegiality that follows from shortcuts taken in these processes due to the expansion of both research publications and commercial interests in them.

The examples presented here followed different developmental trajectories. Predatory journals set aside the prescribed model for academic peer review while symbolically claiming that their processes follow its principles and practices. This decoupling of presentation and practice amounts to window dressing that resembles cases of greenwashing described above.

At the Swedish Research Council and Uppsala University, collegiality was reduced when other groups began to participate in research assessments. These ways of organizing assessments had evolved gradually over time, limiting the influence of collegial principles in, for example, the appointment of academic leaders and practices within decision-making bodies (Ahlbäck Öberg & Boberg, 2023). In these cases, we see a stepwise translation rather than a clear decoupling. These can be described as examples of collegiality drift rather than collegiality-washing.19 Collegiality is translated in hybrid settings, governed by a mix of enterprise, bureaucratic and collegial ideals. This hybridity eventually infiltrates assessments, too. Moreover, as universities are reformed and constructed as organizational actors, organizational aspects of research come to be seen as a quality criterion on par with scientific principles. With this development, the definition of who is a peer – or an expert – and what knowledge counts as relevant, becomes much less clear.

Another example is the direct recruitment of professors at KTH. Instead of applying the system of faculty-controlled recruitment according to the principles of collegial governance, those in management positions appear to have translated direct recruitment to prioritize organizational and managerial concerns. Thus, it is a story of a drift away from collegiality, leading to a more deceitful, perverted practice aimed at controlling faculty recruitment.

The examples of edited hybrid practices of peer review and research assessments (i.e., collegiality drift) and management shortcuts in faculty recruitment (i.e., perverted collegiality) can be understood as translations of the ideas and models provided by the institution of collegiality into something else. The ideal type of collegiality is edited in settings informed by enterprise ideals. For example, faculty-controlled recruitment was formulated as a collegiate process, but subsequent translations have become unrecognizable in relation to the template.

Regardless of whether deviations from collegial ideals follow from strategic uses of hypocrisy and window dressing, or stem from editing in university settings increasingly constructed as organizational actors dominated by enterprise ideals, collegiality is being eroded or watered down. Collegiality also erodes over time due to a lack of maintenance, and new, edited versions of "re-collegialization" no longer resemble the original ideas and practices. In the introduction to Vol. 86 (Sahlin & Eriksson-Zetterquist, 2023, Vol. 86) we defined collegiality as an institution of selfgovernance. An institution includes – and is upheld by – structures, shared meanings, and identities (March & Olsen, 1995; see also Sahlin & Eriksson-Zetterquist, 2023, Vol. 86). Hence, institutions are enacted in formal structures, shared meanings, and myriad supporting and reproducing practices, and in turn, these reinforce institutions. With a lack of maintenance, collegiality appears to be less resistant to the washing and drift we have described above, and the aims, as well as procedures or practices of collegiality as an institution of self-governance, are watered down.

Before we draw a few final conclusions on the consequences for the integrity and trust in the science of this watering down of collegiality, we will briefly return to the parallels drawn above to the green- and blue-washing literature. As described above, "washing" is normally used pejoratively and refers to instances of decoupling, where organizations claim to do one thing but hypocritically do something else in practice (Brunsson, 1989/2002). Such hypocrisy is also obvious when journals claim to follow collegial principles for scrutiny, yet publish articles without legitimately conducting such examinations. This type of washing assumes intentionality and strategy: washing is thought to be a premeditated handling of contradictory demands or preconditions whereby results and activities are selectively presented or hidden. When we revisit the green-, and blue-washing literature in light of our own analysis, we find that the very ambiguity of "green" or "blue" norms and demands may lead organizations to translate such demands differently and not always guided by strategic intentions. We find instances of mission drift and perverted missions also in the green- and blue-washing literature.

#### *Consequences for Collegiality and the Integrity of and Trust in Science*

The cases we have presented and analyzed in this paper demonstrate the watering down of collegiality in the wake of collegiality-washing, collegiality perversion, and collegiality drift. We have noted how core elements of collegiality as a mode of self-governance and scientific knowledge inquiry are set aside. Organizational and leadership criteria, which have a much less specified knowledge base than science, are being integrated into research assessments and sometimes seem to become dominant. Criteria for assessments and prioritization are being blurred, and guiding principles for decisions are becoming less clear. Rather than being a matter of upholding the integrity of science, relations with society at large and with external interests are strongly emphasized. This may lead to a questioning of what science is, which decision criteria are used for awards and resource allocation, and what interests scientific developments and universities serve. These changes are also being driven by the tremendous expansion of universities, scientific research efforts, and publications. Collegial governance is perceived as taking too much time, introducing the risk that taking shortcuts may appear to be more efficient (see Östh Gustafsson, 2023, Vol. 86).

However, we also find that several of these washing attempts have surfaced in extensive criticism and debate. Too much deviation from collegial principles appears controversial and does meet resistance and reactions (see also Crace et al., 2023, Vol. 87; Dénis et al., 2023, Vol. 87). The reason why such washing attempts appear controversial also is clearly demonstrated in our examples of collegiality washing. Even if these attempts at collegiality-washing may be understood as translations of ideals and norms that appear unclear or ambiguous, we note that they have sparked debates and controversies because the norms of collegiality (i.e., faculty control, research integrity, and science-based knowledge development) are seen as crucial for scientific work and advancement. In this way, collegiality-washing reveals both the weaknesses of and challenges to collegiality, as well as the strengths of collegial norms.

## **NOTES**

<sup>1.</sup> The procedure to recruit individual professors without a prior open announcement is translated differently from the Swedish expression *kallelse av professor* by different universities. Here we use the term *direct recruitment*.

2. Retrieved on December 26, 2022, from https://www.vr.se/english/applying-for-funding/ how-applications-are-assessed.html.

3. Retrieved on April 20, 2023, from https://www.vr.se/english/applying-for-funding/ calls/2022-06-21-grant-for-centre-of-excellence.html.

4. *Regeringsformen* (RF) refers to the Instrument of Government of 1974, one of Sweden's four constitutional documents. *Lagen om offentlig anställning* (LOA) refers to The Public Employment Act (1994, p. 260).

5. Our translation: Retrieved on April 25, 2023, from https://medarbetarportalen. gu.se/handels-internt/berednings-\_och\_arbetsgrupper/lararforslagsnamnden/rekrytering/ rekrytering-professor/kallelse-som-professor;jsessionid=node0qrt8523e79cobu9omdh4s jfr1099335.node0?skipSSOCheck=true&referer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F.

6. Our translation: Retrieved on April 25, 2023, from https://www.regler.uu.se/ digitalAssets/237/c\_237393-l\_3-k\_kallelse-professor-130312.pdf.

7. Our translation: Retrieved on April 25, 2023, from https://www.medarbetarwebben. lu.se/sites/medarbetarwebben.lu.se/files/foreskrifter-handlaggning-rektorsbeslut-kallaprofessor.pdf.

8. Retrieved on December 14, 2022, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainability\_ (journal).

9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainability\_(journal).

10. This news article was a follow-up on an editorial written by four representatives (among them Børresen) from the Norwegian Scientific Index, in which they explained why *Sustainability* had been moved to the grey zone list in the index. Retrieved on December 15, 2022, from https://khrono.no/sustainability-er-ute-av-listen-over-godkjente-tidsskrifter/689358.

11. Retrieved on December 14, 2022, from https://khrono.no/stryker-et-av-verdensstorste-fra-listen-over-godkjente-tidsskrifter/689264.

12. CRIStin is an abbreviation of "Current Research Information System in Norway." It is used by different countries (e.g., South Africa, since 2016). Retrieved on December 15, 2022, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRIStin.

13. Retrieved on December 14, 2022, from https://khrono.no/stryker-et-av-verdensstorste-fra-listen-over-godkjente-tidsskrifter/689264.

14. Retrieved on December 15, 2022, from https://www.frontiersin.org/about/history.

15. Retrieved on December 15, 2022, from https://www.frontiersin.org/about/mission.

16. According to "The Netherlands Code of Conduct for Academic Practice," Klaas Van Dijk stated that peer reviewers should be given opportunities to withdraw, for instance in cases of impartiality. Retrieved on December 15, 2022, from https://www.leidenmadtrics. nl/articles/reflections-on-guest-editing-a-frontiers-journal.

17. Retrieved on December 15, 2022, from https://forbetterscience.com/2015/10/28/ is-frontiers-a-potential-predatory-publisher/.

18. Retrieved on December 15, 2022, from https://www.leidenmadtrics.nl/articles/ reflections-on-guest-editing-a-frontiers-journal.

19. We would like to thank Logan Crace for suggesting that the cases presented in this paper are examples of collegiality-washing, collegiality drift, and perverted collegiality, respectively.

## **REFERENCES**

Ahlbäck Öberg, S., & Boberg, J. (2022). Avkollegialiseringen av svenska lärosäten. En analys av statliga universitet och högskolor. *Statsvetenskaplig tidskrift*, *124*(1), 157–210.

Ahlbäck Öberg, S., & Boberg, J. (2023). The decollegialization of higher education institutions in Sweden. *Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy*, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/20020317. 2023.2192317

Andrén, C.-G. (2013). *Visioner, vägval och verkligheter: Svenska universitet och högskolor i utveckling efter 1940*. Nordic Academic Press.

Boxenbaum, E. (2006). Lost in translation: The making of Danish diversity management. *American Behavioral Scientist*, *49*(7), 939–948.


# "OUTRODUCTION": A RESEARCH AGENDA ON COLLEGIALITY IN UNIVERSITY SETTINGS\*

Nico Cloetea , Nancy Côtéb , Logan Cracec , Rick Delbridged , Jean-Louis Denise , Gili S. Drorif , Ulla Eriksson-Zetterquistg , Joel Gehmanh , Lisa-Maria Gerhardti , Jan Goldensteini , Audrey Harrochej , Jakov Jandrić<sup>k</sup> , Anna Kosmützkyl , Georg Krückenm, Seungah S. Leen , Michael Lounsburyc , Ravit Mizrahi-Shtelmano , Christine Musselinp , Hampus Östh Gustafssonq , Pedro Pinedar , Paolo Quattrones , Francisco O. Ramirezt , Kerstin Sahlinq , Francois van Schalkwyka and Peter Walgenbachi

*a Stellenbosch University, South Africa b Université Laval, Canada*

**Revitalizing Collegiality: Restoring Faculty Authority in Universities Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Volume 87, 181–211**

**Copyright © 2024 by Nico Cloete, Nancy Côté, Logan Crace, Rick Delbridge, Jean-Louis Denis, Gili S. Drori, Ulla Eriksson-Zetterquist, Joel Gehman, Lisa-Maria Gerhardt, Jan Goldenstein, Audrey Harroche, Jakov Jandrić, Anna Kosmützky, Georg Krücken, Seungah S. Lee, Michael Lounsbury, Ravit Mizrahi-Shtelman, Christine Musselin, Hampus Östh Gustafsson, Pedro Pineda, Paolo Quattrone, Francisco O. Ramirez, Kerstin Sahlin, Francois van Schalkwyk and Peter Walgenbach. Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited. These works are published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of these works (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode ISSN: 0733-558X/doi:10.1108/S0733-558X20230000087008**

<sup>\*</sup>The authors of this final paper of the special issue on collegiality are listed alphabetically. All participated in the final project workshop in Stellenbosch, South Africa, from January 30 to February 1, 2023. The authors also have contributed papers to the two volumes on collegiality.

*c University of Alberta, Canada d Cardiff University, UK e Université de Montréal, Canada f The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel g University of Gothenburg, Sweden h George Washington University, USA i Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, Germany j Oxford Brookes University, UK k University of Edinburgh, UK l Leibniz University Hannover, Germany mUniversity of Kassel, Germany n New York University Abu Dhabi, UAE o Kibbutzim College, Israel p SciencesPo, France q Uppsala University, Sweden r University of Bath, UK s University of Manchester, UK t Stanford University, USA*

## **ABSTRACT**

*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.*

**Keywords:** Collegiality; challenges to collegiality; collegial resistance; collegial maintenance; varieties of collegiality; academic freedom; institutional trust; collegiality and communication

## **OPENING REMARKS**

Collegiality is the *modus operandi* of universities. It is at the core of what universities are and what their purpose is. At the same time, collegiality is being challenged as a primary form of governing higher education and research. The 17 papers in the two volumes of this special issue explore numerous examples of these challenges, which are partly a sign of our time. They follow pervasive processes of organizational rationalization with increased emphasis on planning, management, transparency, and a concomitant drive for predictability and control. Challenges also follow from political pressures, reflecting more general threats to freedom of speech, openness, and democracy. The expansion of universities also has been matched with an increased interest among politicians to control their finances and operations. In short, the papers in these volumes show how challenges to collegiality go hand in hand with challenges to universities. In doing so, they foreground collegiality as a critical resource to counter threats to universities as free spaces for knowledge inquiry.

External pressures are not the only sources of challenges, however. We have pointed out several weaknesses and limitations of collegial governance. One main weakness is the lack of clarity about what counts as collegiality, together with a lack of maintenance of collegiality as an institution. Too often, collegiality is a form of governance that is not clearly expressed, but largely associated with how things are perceived to have worked in the "good old days." From the very beginning of our research project, we have recognized a need to clarify what collegiality is, how it works and should work, and what it does. Collegiality cannot be taken for granted; it needs to be made explicit, both in practice and for analytical purposes. In this regard, the papers not only point to challenges to collegiality but also show that collegiality remains an important ideal for how to govern higher education and research. Collegiality is practiced to various extents and in various forms worldwide. Research thus, should not only concentrate on challenges and the introduction of new modes of governance in universities but also highlight ways in which collegiality operates, transforms, and is maintained.

In this concluding paper of the special issue on collegiality, we summarize the main findings and takeaways from our collective studies. We report on the main challenges to collegiality, as well as resistance and activation. We draw together some of the main conceptual developments of these two volumes and present implications for practice and policy. Our findings open multiple pathways for future research. Synthesizing these insights, we develop an agenda for research on collegiality.

This outroduction is a result of our collective work. The outline and key themes were developed interactively during our final session at the Stellenbosch workshop, following which different parts of the paper were written by different authors before being jointly edited. The research agenda is based on the conviction that collegiality manifests in many different forms and settings and that future research needs to acknowledge these many variations of collegiality. In this way, this paper also reflects the many facets of collegiality, both as a concept and in practice.

In the next section, we discuss collegiality as the *modus operandi* of universities. We address why studies of collegiality are important (i.e., why we care). 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. Next, 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 the methodological and theoretical implications of this research and conclude by summarizing our research agenda in a list of themes.

## **COLLEGIALITY IS THE** *MODUS OPERANDI* **OF UNIVERSITIES**

Since the founding of universities in Europe around a millennium ago, universities have thrived as the established social institution for study and knowledge. In the wake of European imperialism and subsequent globalization, this model of the university has expanded in both domain and reach. Changes to the university during this long period have not erased the imprint of its Medieval European roots, among them the commitment to guild-like collegial governance. Nevertheless, collegiality and collegial governance are rapidly changing due to mounting challenges to the global institution of the university.

Recent pressures on universities, which have already reoriented their missions and led to structural and behavioral changes, come from a variety of sources. For-profit corporations, consultancies, think tanks and non-profit research centers encroach on the university's academic mission of research and knowledge creation. Technological advances that enable new forms of teaching and research (e.g., remote learning, online studies, MOOCs, and AI-based text production) are altering the ways universities practice their traditional academic missions. Universities also are challenged by labor market demands to justify the relevance of higher education to the acquisition of employable skills, job market placement, and work processes. Furthermore, seeing that universities were "born global" in the Middle Ages and remain faithful to norms regarding global standards and internationalization, social processes that stress social relevance force universities to become more responsive to local demands and cultural preferences. Increasingly, universities come under political pressure and in more and more countries, outright clashes with political regimes' ideological stances. A last pressure, also referred to above, is the extreme growth of universities. Overall, these worldwide social processes challenge the academic criteria for knowledge, its validity, and its acquisition. Importantly, such challenges to the institution of the university alter collegiality and collegial governance, which are at the heart of the studies in this compilation.

Collegiality as a *modus operandi*, that is, a manner of acting and taking action, has its home in the group of occupations designated as professions. Typical examples of classical professions are law and medicine and from the 19th century onwards the academic profession. To understand this *modus operandi*, one must consider the characteristics of professions. The work of professions is characterized by expertise based on abstract knowledge that members apply to particular cases and use for highly specialized activities that cannot be standardized and routinized. A prerequisite for the development of a profession is the formation and establishment of a social domain for which the profession with its specific expertise is responsible. Through autonomy and collegial selfregulation, professionals determine their tasks and control task fulfillment by themselves. Their practices are based on professional norms and ethics, and they are organized in professional associations, which play an essential role in setting standards for professional practice and the training of professionals (Abbott, 1988; Freidson, 2001).

In the sociology of science, the pursuit of science (Wissenschaft) – as an umbrella term for the entire array of fields and disciplines found in contemporary academia – is considered an academic profession (Ben-David, 1971; Whitley, 1984). Scientific communities, disciplines, and trans-local collaboration networks provide the social and intellectual context for the scientific communication process, peer review, and individual research activities. At the core of the professional activity of such "communities of professional scientists" is the ongoing production of new knowledge and the advancement of the knowledge bases in their fields (Ben-David, 1971, p. 18). Collegiality can be considered the *modus operandi* that the academic profession shares across scientific communities, from the humanities to the natural sciences. However, the *modus operandi* of the academic profession depends on how autonomous scientific pursuits and independent research are institutionalized in their respective organizational or national contexts (Gläser et al., 2021).

An important organizational context for the academic profession is universities and other organizations that produce scientific knowledge, for example, non-university research institutes or research-intensive industry laboratories. Universities, as a stronghold of scientific disciplines, are particularly important for the academic profession (Ben-David, 1977; Jacobs, 2014). In university organizations, hierarchies are traditionally flat, and much of the administrative work (admission of students, recruitment of professors, international exchange programs, etc.) is traditionally carried out by academics (Mintzberg, 1983). Here, collegiality as a *modus operandi* comes into play, at times through extensive committee work. It requires specific academic competencies (typically rooted in one's discipline), but also a sense of responsibility and service, effort, integrity, and a large measure of self-control. These underlying norms of collegiality are mostly implicit and taken-for-granted. Members of the academic profession learn them through socialization as did generations before them.

While collegiality has been the *modus operandi* of the academic profession and has been in place for centuries, recent developments challenge its central role in the production and transmission of scientific knowledge. Apart from the erosion of trust in the collegial self-organization of the academic profession at the broader level of society and related contestations, we have identified a number of challenges from within academia and the university as its preeminent organizational form, including universities as organizational actors, the increasing strategic and competitive orientation of scholars, the overall trend toward metricization, and the professionalization of academic leadership.

## **CHALLENGES TO COLLEGIALITY**

Collegiality has many facets; it is multi-dimensional and includes decision-making structures as well as procedures and inbuilt aims, identities, and practices (Mignot-Gérard et al., 2022). In short, we understand collegiality as an institution of self-governance. Practices are essential for maintaining institutions, and institutions may change with changes in practices as well as changes in structures, procedures, identities, and aims. With this definition as a foundation, we can also see the many diverse challenges to collegiality. We have elaborated the definition further by distinguishing between vertical and horizontal collegiality. Vertical collegiality concerns decision-making structures within a formal organization and rules. This can include the composition of university boards, senates, and committees, and the selection of *primus/prima inter pares* as academic leaders. Horizontal collegiality encompasses the communities of peers in departments, universities, among reviewers, at conferences, or in scholarly networks. Vertical and horizontal collegiality presuppose and balance each other. Formal collegial decision-making in universities draws on the existence and activities of the broader scientific community. Both dimensions rely on faculty authority and are in turn essential for upholding faculty authority.

The papers in this special issue paint a picture of developments which, while varying both at the national and university levels, collectively present a variety of challenges to collegiality as the *modus operandi* in contemporary higher education. Developments such as increasing centralization and managerialism have been well-rehearsed in previous research but our findings both add some depth and detail to the nature of these challenges and offer insights into the practical ways in which actors within the higher education sector might respond.

A central element in current developments is the displacement of horizontal and vertical collegiality in universities through the globally diffusing idea that science and scientific performance can be managed by a centralized academic leadership (Denis et al., 2023, Vol. 87). The now worldwide transformation of universities into organizational actors is an important topic in several papers in these two volumes on collegiality (Gerhardt et al., 2023, Vol. 86; Hwang, 2023, Vol. 86; Kosmützky & Krücken, 2023, Vol. 86; Lee & Ramirez, 2023, Vol. 86). Aspects like the increasing relevance of university leadership and the expansion of university administration weaken the relevance of academic self-organization and related forms of governance. While these shifts alter the traditional power structure in academia, and at times, lead to conflict between leadership and administration on the one hand and academics on the other, the impact on the time-consuming administrative work of academics is less clear. However, the university as an organizational actor comes with increased reporting duties on behalf of academics and a formalization of academic activities.

This idea is underpinned by the assumption that scientific progress can be recorded and measured with the help of key performance indicators and rankings. The increasing "metricization" of society (Mau, 2019) is paramount. It is spurred by rankings, publication, and citation data banks like the Web of Science or Scopus, platforms like Google Scholar or ResearchGate, or data banks on external grants at the national or university levels. Such quantitative measures and indicators are increasingly used as the basis of comparative performance measurements and benchmarks in peer review processes across disciplines (e.g., hiring processes and funding decisions) and also enable actors outside the academic profession and its peer review-based process to evaluate the performance-based value of individuals and universities (Espeland & Sauder, 2016). Digitalization facilitates the comparative evaluation of performance via algorithms, big data, and digital infrastructures (Fourcade & Healy, 2017). Complex activities in academia are thus reduced to quantitative measures, which, again, favor some activities at the expense of others, hence weakening collegiality as the overall *modus operandi* of the academic profession. At the same time, studies in these volumes show that academic positions involve more tasks over time and hence display increased complexity (Gerhardt et al., 2023, Vol. 86).

The rise of world university rankings and global templates of excellence have contributed to universities becoming organizational actors and enacting their actorhood in the direction of isomorphism. Rankings have contributed to structuring the field of universities into stratified markets (Wedlin, 2006, 2011). With strong intentions of being "world-class universities," governments and universities have adopted different measures to enhance their research performance, one of which is the promotion of international research collaborations and exchanges (Peters, 2021). As such, governments and universities increasingly incentivize research collaboration at institutional, national, and international levels, as well as with industry and community-based partners, in the form of funding conditions, hiring, and tenure decisions (Kollasch et al., 2016; Van Rijnsoever & Hessels, 2011).

The creation of comparative metrics in turn leads to broader interrelated changes in research governance that move toward increased competition: the state uses competition as a governance mechanism and has shifted its funding instruments toward increased competitive research funding; universities have become strategic and highly competitive organizational actors, with the consequence of a further increase of competition between individual academics. Although there is broad historical evidence that competition for new knowledge and related reputation is central to science as a social system and its individual actors, there is equally strong evidence for a heightened sense of competition on individual, organizational, and national levels (Krücken, 2021; Musselin, 2018). Some dimensions of academic work – in particular, publications and external research grants – are assessed and compared in a competitive way, both by the individual academics themselves and relevant external forces such as funding agencies or appointment committees for professors. Other dimensions, which do not fit as easily into a competitive individual "portfolio" – academic committee work or anonymous peer reviewing for scientific journals – lose importance, as does the self-description of being part of an academic community (Eriksson-Zetterquist & Sahlin, 2023, Vol. 87). This trend is ubiquitous and has been shown to affect in particular junior academics who still strive for a permanent position in academia (Fochler et al., 2016; Waaijer et al., 2018). The introduction of metrics into academia goes hand in hand with the introduction of enterprise models and with this reshaped form of competition. Over time, it is clear that academics have to large extents internalized these metrics, and with this metrics have come to play a key role in reproducing and strengthening the metrication of science and knowledge production.

As papers in these volumes reporting developments in, for example, France and Germany have shown, competitive research funding has increased significantly in importance and has also become a leading performance indicator for universities as organizations (Harroche & Musselin, 2023, Vol. 86; Kosmützky & Krücken, 2023, Vol. 86). Yet, such performance indicators and rankings, when used as managerial control variables in universities, are oriented toward criteria that have supposedly led to what is called "success" in the past. There are questions over the appropriateness of this given that, at the intersection of such developments, newly formed inter-disciplinary research clusters have become a highly prestigious scarce good in the competition of universities and academic researchers for reputation and resources. Both the state and universities aim at the cluster-ability of "their" universities and "their" researchers and use contractualization to foster research clusters (Kosmützky & Krücken, 2023, Vol. 86). Contractualization further spurs the increasingly strategic and individualistic orientation of academic researchers, who have a vested interest in applying for research clusters because they come bundled with many resources and a high degree of academic prestige.

These twin developments of competition which individualizes and rationalizes actors and centralized leadership present major challenges to collegiality. Moreover, as noted above, the contemporary university faces more diverse demands than before to develop applicable knowledge and expertise to address major societal challenges. The societal role of universities is gaining importance and can, under certain conditions, benefit both the organization and its faculty in their development. However, this is a delicate balancing act between the maintenance or regeneration of collegial governance and the renewal of academic work and practices that favor the development of such innovations and partnerships in both teaching and research. Such tensions and challenges can be seen throughout this special issue and are experienced at and across the levels of the individual academic, at intrauniversity levels, and at the levels of university governance and government policy.

University leaders and government policymakers need to reflect on the implications that a short-termist and competitive model (sometimes labeled neo-liberal) is having on higher education. For example, consider a university or national system of "research excellence" based on a performance measurement system constructed on competition. While the primary task of science is to explore the world and thereby to contribute to the development of humankind, such an inclination to explore the unknown is limited by indicators that are oriented toward competition, which encourages an instrumental orientation among colleagues and weakens collegial bonds, and understandings of excellence that are founded in the past. In contrast, university governance and science policy based on the principle of collegiality open up the scope for universities, the faculties arranged within them, and the academics working in them to explore the unknown through the inherent characteristics of collegiality, including open-ended exploration and inter-disciplinary collaboration. Exploration always carries the risk of failure, but exploitation alone, informed by centrally defined criteria, makes fundamental and socially beneficial insights unlikely, maybe particularly so in the social sciences which have to deal with a fluid object of knowledge (March, 1991). It is increasingly the political and economic decisions of university leaders, politicians, and policymakers which determine the goals that are to be achieved within and across universities. In contrast to such rationalized technologies of organization, under March's notion of the technology of foolishness (March, 2006), goals are treated as hypotheses to be tested, and the "analytical rigidity of rationality is seen as limiting it to refinements on what is already known, believed, or existent and is contrasted with the imaginative wildness of various forms of creativity" (p. 203). We argue that collegiality and its inherent technology of foolishness are thus more beneficial to the advancement of the knowledge of humankind than the form of instrumental and individualized scientific endeavor reported under policies and universities which promote competitive excellence. This has implications for developments within individual universities since our evidence suggests that research clusters, often interdisciplinary in nature, foster academic exchange and understanding across fields, disciplines, and departments. As a result, horizontal collegiality might experience a renewal in such interdisciplinary contexts, though there may be the potential for its weakening in disciplinary and departmental contexts.

Research reported in this special issue also reveals a challenge to the accelerated and short-term time frames that often seem to dominate the decision-making of senior university leaders, politicians, and policymakers. Evidence presented in these volumes shows that the temporal structures in which universities are embedded certainly matter in this regard (Östh Gustafsson, 2023, Vol. 86). Recurring critique of collegiality for being slow should thus be weighed against the recent activism of so-called slow academia/science that aims to resist or revert the ongoing acceleration and culture of speed at scholarly institutions (e.g., Berg & Seeber, 2016; Kidd, 2023; Stengers, 2018). An awareness of temporal circumstances and the need to synchronize collegial practices with various scholarly and societal rhythms should even be seen as essential for the active maintenance required for collegiality to remain vital in the 21st century. Collegiality's dependence on specific temporal as well as spatial conditions on various levels should be further highlighted as current debates tend to employ rather abstract (and sometimes even stereotypical) notions and take current collegial components for granted. More nuanced knowledge of how collegiality has been challenged on previous occasions will hopefully help make universities more resilient in the future.

In part, the prospects of contemporary universities securing the stability in policy and decision-making that is likely to be central to maintaining vertical and horizontal collegiality will be informed by how well universities understand and communicate with societal stakeholders while managing internal relations. This can be highly complex from a practical perspective, particularly in increasingly politicized university contexts within a wider environment characterized by global, real-time, networked digital communication. The case study by van Schalkwyk and Cloete (2023, Vol. 86) shows that universities will need to heed cautions related to the overtly open or public communication of expert scientific matters as well as matters pertaining to the self-governance of the university. While any communication policies or procedures put in place may appear undemocratic, they are critical to protecting the academy (and collegial relations) from the disruptive effects of codeless communication in highly politicized environments. In part, such measures will be more effective if trust is restored in the mechanism of depersonalized and robust debate to reach consensus decision-making in the academy.

Various papers have shown that collegiality within any university, particularly in the face of external pressures to "modernize," requires strong and committed leadership, both individual and collective, at various levels of the hierarchy. For example, we have seen how the top leadership of the university is crucial in responding to some inescapable demands and challenges from legitimate stakeholders. However, as shown by Jandrić et al. (2023, Vol. 87), academic leaders at the school and departmental level will need to reflect on the consequences of their institution's own mode of governance and whether and how they can mitigate limitations this may place on horizontal collegiality and potential erosion of professional norms of the academy. This in turn places responsibility on individual academics, which we will turn to shortly. Advocates for collegiality as the *modus operandi* in higher education would argue that responses to external pressures by universities should be filtered and framed through the enactment of collective leadership based on the collegial participation of professors and researchers in shaping strategic directions and decisions. However, evidence reported here shows that this is not necessarily the case and provides some insights into the reasons for this in practice, including the ways in which the (informal and formal) rules of collegiality are open to attack and manipulation and the diminishing role of the academy in formal spaces of collegiality.

Findings from the study of developments in a North American university (Crace et al., 2023, Vol. 87) most clearly demonstrate the limits of relying on informal norms during a blatant attack on collegial governance. Practically speaking, the study suggests that preventing the further erosion of collegiality will require both the cognizant participation of faculty and close (re-)examination of codified rules if collegial governance supporters are to prevent its decline, specifically by protecting collegiality within formal rules and structures. Faculty members, particularly those who occupy positions on governing bodies such as academic councils or senates, are well-positioned to resist attacks on the collegial governance system. But research presented here also suggests that practitioners of collegial governance at the coalface of senates or departments need to remain vigilant. Collegiality is something that requires effort to foster and it is all too easy for a deteriorating institution such as collegial governance to remain undefended, especially when it is subject to taken-for-grantedness and multivocality. Nonetheless, the study of a UK Business School shows how local academic leaders were able to protect and maintain space for horizontal collegiality within the context of diminished vertical collegiality beyond the school.

The findings presented here problematize simple notions of the negative implications of academic leadership per se; variation in local practices and differences in the orientations and approaches of academic leaders at different levels of the university are both highly significant in understanding the specifics of collegiality in situ. These findings are in line with those reported by Deem and Johnson (2000) and Kitchener (2000), who showed that leaders in hospitals can be defenders of the medical profession or colonized by managerial norms.

Mizrahi-Shtelman and Drori (2023, Vol. 87) reveal the penetration of managerialist ideas and practices (e.g., a perceived need for leadership training in complex systems) into a national academic field that has maintained a strong collegial ethos (e.g., collegial elections for the vast majority of academic leadership posts). While professionalization in itself is not necessarily negative and may strengthen leadership in universities that are rapidly becoming more complex, the professionalization process often redefines and weakens collegial relations. For example, the institutionalization of professional training for academic leadership may transition into becoming a pre-requisite for holding leadership positions in academia, thereby overruling traditional modes of collegial elections. As another example, the expanded definition of collegiality as inclusive of both administrative staff and the professoriate (and possibly other "stakeholders" in the future) weakens the authority and autonomy of scholars as governors of academia. Therefore, the professionalization of academic leadership may be interpreted as a "slippery slope" of managerialist penetration, redefining the boundaries, scope, and orientation of the republic of scholars.

The exact nature and consequences of these developments do remain at least partly in the hands of individual scholars. Indeed, a practical implication of a number of the research projects presented here is that the academy needs to be agentic in reproducing conditions of collegiality. Findings demonstrate how collegial governance is not only embedded in structures, but very importantly, is also embedded in day-to-day experiences of work, relations among colleagues, and academic culture more broadly. As a form of governance, collegiality requires faculty to invest their time in performing relational and identity work within their institutions to constantly affirm and enact collegiality in governance. However, the perceived growing workload and intensification of research activities may compete with demands for and investments in vibrant institutional life. The vitality of collegial governance within the university depends on the ability of faculty to invest in it and the conditions that support such commitment. The academic response to the COVID-19 crisis, both specifically in the case of the UK Business School reported here (Jandrić et al., 2023, Vol. 87) and more generally, shows how horizontal collegiality is central to academic self-organizing and successfully moderating the negative impact of the crisis on students. It is precisely the mutuality of the collegiate governance system that underpins the identity and commitment of faculty and is perceived to be threatened by contemporary developments.

Such discussions cannot be divorced from consideration of the employment terms and conditions and career prospects of academics. Research reported in these volumes has shown how various patterns of change in how higher education is expanding globally are working to the disadvantage of academics, increasing precarity and diminishing conditions and career progression (Pineda, 2023, Vol. 86). For example, while a strategy to strengthen the finances or the research production of a university through hiring postdocs may be undertaken in ways that are consistent with collegiality, it may come at the expense of educational principles in supporting the career development of junior researchers. Thus, discussions about collegiality must accompany conversations about the educational preparation of the new generation of scientists, working conditions, and precarity in academia (see Hwang, 2023, Vol. 86). Disciplinary differences also are very important to consider in the planning of research training positions and career mentoring (Gibbs et al., 2015) since opportunities outside academia vary considerably by discipline (van der Weijden et al., 2015). University presidents need to reflect on whether they are balancing their goals of increasing student numbers and research outputs and offering educational opportunities and sufficient career development support to the increasing numbers of temporarily employed staff.

The breadth of research reported in these volumes allows some reflection on the complex and multi-level dynamics at play in contemporary higher education more broadly, and with regard to collegiality in particular. The findings show the importance of institutional work not least by the academy itself in curating collegial governance arrangements and relations, the potential for local academic leaders at the coalface of the senate or the department to maintain space for collegiality even when under threat from developments at institutional and sectoral levels, and indicate the implications of university systems that eschew the openness and temporal rhythms necessary for scientific exploration. These should be at the forefront of concerns of all those – from politicians and policymakers to stakeholders and citizens – who recognize the force for good that universities continue to be and the role that collegiality as *modus operandi* continues to play in this.

#### *Collegiality is a Contested Institution*

Contestations for collegiality also follow from questioning and revisions of who is considered a peer. Although the equality principle is at the core of collegiality as a mode of conduct and governance (see Sahlin & Eriksson-Zetterquist, 2023, Vol. 86), in practice some peers are more equal than others. Throughout this special issue, findings show that both the vertical and horizontal dimensions of collegiality rely on various mechanisms of inclusion, and by extension exclusion. For a wide range of issues, including academic appointments (Gerhardt et al., 2023, Vol. 86; Östh Gustafsson, 2023, Vol. 86; Pineda, 2023, Vol. 86), crisis management (Crace et al., 2023, Vol. 87; Jandrić et al., 2023, Vol. 87; van Schalkwyk & Cloete, 2023, Vol. 86), the global development of diversity offices (Lee & Ramirez, 2023, Vol. 86), the professionalization of academic leadership (Mizrahi-Shtelman & Drori, 2023, Vol. 87; Sahlin & Eriksson-Zetterquist, 2023, Vol. 87), educational planning (Hwang, 2023, Vol. 86), or new forms of funding elite research (Denis et al., 2023, Vol. 87; Harroche & Musselin, 2023, Vol. 86; Kosmützky & Krücken, 2023, Vol. 86) the production, negotiation, and evolution of boundaries among academics are involved, surfacing questions about who is included and who is excluded. In this sense, collegiality has some dark sides (Eriksson-Zetterquist & Sahlin, 2023, Vol. 87), and their implications regarding knowledge production need to be addressed.

Patronage has played a central role in the institutional development of universities and disciplines (see e.g., Clark, 1973). Yet, it has largely been based on co-optation, homophily, and agonistic relationships for the accumulation of capital (Bourdieu, 1984) that have long-lasting effects in academia resulting in the marginalization of most categories of people apart from well-educated white men. From citation practices in scientific outputs (Maliniak et al., 2013) to Nobel prize nominations (Gallotti & De Domenico, 2019) to appointment decisions (van den Brink & Benschop, 2014), gendered networks and gatekeeping practices are central. In these regard, collegiality constitutes a cog within two of the most structuring mechanisms in academia: the Matthew effect and the Matilda effect. These regulate the reward system in science as conceptualized by Robert K. Merton according to cumulative advantages. Following the saying "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer," the Matthew effect leads to the concentration of symbolic and material resources at the level of individuals and organizations in higher education (Merton, 1968). Merton's theory was revisited by Margaret W. Rossiter (1993) to address the gender bias of this mechanism. Hence, the Matilda effect refers to the observed erasure of women's scientific achievements. This may contribute to a high level of homogeneity shaping the social context for knowledge production. However, it has been demonstrated that segregation influences academics' research practices and careers, favoring boxed-in types of research (Alvesson & Sandberg, 2014; see also Eriksson-Zetterquist & Sahlin, 2023, Vol. 87). Building on these results, collegiality has been critiqued for potentially constructing barriers to innovation.

Collegiality is far from a paradise lost and can embody a form of conservatism that has detrimental effects on knowledge production. While these two volumes offer valuable insights into the evolution of collegiality under the influence of recent reforms, further research needs to be done to suggest directions for these reconfigurations and to identify which aspects can remain.

## **COLLEGIAL RESISTANCE, ACTIVATION, AND MAINTENANCE**

Given the development and evolution of governance within universities in various jurisdictions, there is no guarantee that collegiality is or will continue to be a predominant mode of governance. Collegiality cannot and should not be taken for granted, even if it plays an important role in university life. In previous work, Denis et al. (2019) considered collegiality as an act of resistance against competing ideals of governance which inherently involves political work (by faculty in the case of universities) to constantly reaffirm. Resistance is seen not only as opposition but also as the capacity to propose alternate ways of governing and organizing in order to redistribute decision-making power within universities in ways that maintain the vitality of collegiality. Political work implies both oppositional resistance and productive resistance (Courpasson et al., 2012) to rethink the institution.

This special issue provides insights on strategies and resources that can support and reactivate collegiality in challenging contexts by enabling faculty to react, resist and offer innovative responses to external changes and pressures. Somewhat surprisingly, some papers highlight how organizational assets and organizing can be leveraged to protect and sustain the principles and roles of collegiality (Denis et al., 2023, Vol. 87; Jandrić et al., 2023, Vol. 87). Managerialism and the organizational substrate of collegiality are inherently different. Managerialism favors greater centralization and is thus associated with a loss of control or self-governance. Organizing for collegiality involves a variety of resources and competencies. While there are risks associated with the emergence of a class of administrators in universities (Deem, 2010) that develops independently of professors and researchers, members of this ruling class can be allies to faculty in their quest for collegial institutions. One key resource is the notion of leadership, where the governors and administrators in charge play a mediating role to filter external pressures and allow them to cascade into the organization without threatening the institution and its collegiality (Denis et al., 2023, Vol. 87). These leaders employ and support collegial approaches to respond to these pressures. Without such support and commitment, it appears difficult for faculty to absorb and resist pressures without losing ground (Crace et al., 2023, Vol. 87). This is a sign that universities as organizations and the republic of scholars are more dependent than ever on the will and views of senior administrators and governors. If this is the case, it reinforces the importance of resistance (oppositional and productive) and political work performed by faculty to nurture and ensure that collegial governance will play a significant role in universities.

Recent governance changes, also appear to lead to clear stratification among scholars, particularly large funding programs to support academic excellence (Denis et al., 2023, Vol. 87; Harroche & Musselin, 2023, Vol. 86; Kosmützky & Krücken, 2023, Vol. 86; Sahlin & Eriksson-Zetterquist, 2023, Vol. 87). Academic winners in the new game, characterized by increased management and intensified competition may be less reactive and instead comply with the new rules of the game.

Another important aspect is how representative bodies like unions change manifestations of collegiality and how faculty conceive the role of unions in university governance. This question has been only lightly addressed in recent work, but is significant. Unions often seem to propose a reformulation of collegiality as co-management of universities. The articulation of co-management as a mechanism to arbitrate competing logics within university governance and implications for its potential to become collegiality merit further empirical inquiry. In other words, does collegiality as a mode of governance need more formal bodies to protect the principle of self-governance of academic work? Obviously, the behavior of individual faculty members will still play a role in the development of collegiality even if unions intervene in this regard.

Like all organizations, universities face pressure to evolve in an environment characterized by alternating periods of change and relative stability. Faculty, through their agency, may develop the ability to follow certain external trends or demands while becoming active players in the quest for innovative solutions. The partnership culture associated with external demands may also represent an opportunity to publicly reaffirm the roles of science and independent research as key assets in a context where disinformation is increasing. To benefit from the changing context, institutional conditions must be in place to protect the autonomy of academic work.

The analyses of collegiality as an institution of self-governance point to important dynamics of institutional maintenance and institutional change, and point at intricate relations between organizational structures, identities, and practices. The study by Crace et al. (2023, Vol. 87) shows how a reality break down raised the institutional awareness of taken-for-granted collegial practices and in this way may form a first step toward institutional change.

## **VARIETIES OF COLLEGIALITY**

Most scholars tend to hold a firm intuitive understanding of what collegiality encompasses, but upon closer scrutiny, it turns out that its various and shifting meanings are difficult to determine. In current discussions, collegiality comes across as an umbrella concept with a multitude of facets and nuances, as indicated by these volumes' analytical division into vertical and horizontal dimensions. As noted in the Introduction to Vol. 86 (Sahlin & Eriksson-Zetterquist, 2023, Vol. 86), with reference to a study by Björck (2013), collegiality clearly fulfills the criteria of what has been referred to as an essentially contested concept (Connolly, 1974; Gallie, 1956). Its meaning is never given, but discursively constructed and mobilized in specific situations – particularly when subject to pressure – and thus remains open to change. It would therefore be futile to aim at strictly defining collegiality as one, single thing. An ambition of these two volumes is therefore to unpack this evasive concept.

Discussions on collegiality in this broad international project have demonstrated that the state of collegiality depends highly on how we talk about it. Collegial discourses naturally differ around the globe as is clearly demonstrated in the paper by Wen and Marginson (2023, Vol. 86). But synchronic varieties are not the only ones to take into account; the diachronic dimension must also be considered as collegial principles have been articulated and performed in a multitude of ways over time. In that sense, studies of collegiality need to be sensitive to discursive mechanisms in order to reach a more conceptually precise discussion on what academic collegiality is, as pointed out by Sahlin and Eriksson-Zetterquist in their introductory paper to Vol. 86 of this special issue.

Here, we would welcome further comparative inquiries, not least informed by literary and media studies, of how collegiality has been articulated in specific situations and specific locations around the globe. This also calls for investigations of which communicative networks or platforms are most central to the performance of (as well as debates on) collegiality today. As noted in the Introduction to Vol. 87, collegiality is not only found in universities but rather appears to be a "displaced" or at least decentralized phenomenon (see also Denis et al., 2023, Vol. 87). The lecture hall or the university board room may no longer be the most essential arenas for manifestations of collegiality. Instead, social and future media are likely to play an increasingly important role in shaping how we understand (and hopefully stand up for) collegiality in the 2020s, as van Schalkwyk and Cloete (2023, Vol. 86) remind us. Collegiality requires legitimacy and trust, among peers as well as in broader society. Changes to the public discourse on and attitudes toward universities are therefore essential to consider if we aim to better understand the current and future conditions of collegiality.

The papers in these two volumes show varieties of collegiality but also reflect different discourses surrounding collegial practices. The international composition of the authors of these volumes enabled us to compile variants of such discourses across different geographical locations. We found that in places where the research university model dominates, the discourse about the collegiality crisis appears to be rather self-contained. However, in places where universities are more entrenched in local politics, the collegiality crisis links more directly to local debates about corruption, symbolic and physical violence (Jansen, 2023). In both contexts, collegial discourses connect well to local debates about the loss of institutional trust inside and outside higher education. Furthermore, the papers allow us to reflect on how different interpretations of the collegiality crisis depend on academic rank: scholars at the highest ranks experience and debate the deterioration of collegiality in a different way than those at the lowest levels of academia (Pineda, 2023, Vol. 86). In sum, discourses about collegiality depend on the places or academic positions of their creators, eventually framed by their own experiences with practices that safeguard or threaten collegiality.

Authors in locations where the research university is a recognized institution tend to emphasize a crisis of collegiality in relation to the integrity and quality of academic work. In places where the university may not necessarily be recognized as a research university but as a highly politicized institution, discourse about a crisis of collegiality related to the loss of practices associated with scientific knowledge production is not as present. Pineda's (2023, Vol. 86) analysis of Latin American countries shows that scholars, the majority of whom are employed in temporary positions, are more engaged in debates about the deterioration of academic work for securing their subsistence than in debates about interference with their collegial relations. Individual competition for access to research grants is almost non-existent because available research funds are comparatively sparse and barely impact higher education in toto (Pineda, 2015). Also, private universities, growing faster than their public counterparts, and in some countries constituting the major share of universities (Buckner, 2017), have rarely been collegial, at least in practice.

As emphasized above, collegiality and understandings of it may be varied and contested. There may not be shared templates for how universities should be organized or run. Nonetheless, the concept of collegiality has been a widely held faculty value, linked to a variety of positive individual and organizational outcomes (Alleman & Haviland, 2017). Collegiality has been regarded as a contributor to institutional commitment and desire to stay (Barnes et al., 1998). Additionally, it has historically been linked to academic freedom. The underlying premise has been that academics had to be "free" to be collegial, free to pursue knowledge as liberal subjects seeking their own self-development, and free to manage their own time with respect to the autonomy granted to teaching and research efforts (Downing, 2005). However, what implications do growing efforts to transform higher education systems in the image of "world-class" universities have for collegiality?

Although the academy has had a long history of being transnational, the increasing promotion and encouragement of international collaborations inevitably influence perceptions of who is considered a colleague. The answer likely influences both horizontal and vertical collegiality within the university and perhaps expands values and meanings of collegiality beyond institutional borders and boundaries. If collegiality is global, and faculty have greater affinity and interactions with their international collaborators than those within their own institutions, then what are the implications for horizontal collegiality, especially with regard to organizational commitment and contributions? Would this result in weaker horizontal collegiality, where academic staff becomes less willing to devote their time and energy to matters of their home university, leading to increased administration and management? Moreover, consider implications for vertical collegiality. Differences in commitments and identifications were identified already by Gouldner (1958) who distinguished between local and cosmopolitan academics. Subsequent studies show important variations across countries regarding academics' ties to their disciplines and institutions (Teichler et al., 2013). How do growing pressures to become "world-class universities" and rapidly globalizing network of scientists, influence the collegial relations between academic staff and university management?

Further research is needed to explore these questions. However, the commonalities and varieties of collegiality explored in this special issue suggest that these patterns may be at least partly influenced by the growing internationalization of higher education. Furthermore, it is likely that the sociocultural, institutional, and positional contexts in which universities and individuals are embedded, would influence the discourses and manifestations of collegiality.

## **THE VALUE OF COLLEGIALITY FOR ACADEMIC FREEDOM AND SCIENTIFIC QUALITY**

While these two volumes explicitly and voluntarily focus on universities, the seminal works of Waters (1989) and Lazega (2001, 2020) remind us that universities are not the only organizations with collegial governance: law firms, churches, and courts also share many or at least some collegial features. They are nevertheless different in many respects from universities. Law firms, for instance, are often organized as profit-oriented partnerships, in churches, collegiality is combined with strict hierarchical structures, courts are organized with roles that are more tightly coupled than universities, etc. We therefore need contingent, and situated conceptualizations of the very generic definition of collegiality provided by Waters (1989), along with more systematic empirical comparisons of different collegial organizations to enrich the discussion on the different dimensions of collegiality and their interactions.

Although some forms of collegiality may exist across diverse professional settings (Greenwood et al., 1990; Lazega, 2001), the specific role of collegiality in its instantiation in higher education is distinctive. This is primarily because of the emphasis on the generation of knowledge for its own sake rather than as merely a means to other ends, particularly those of other orders in the interinstitutional system. In discussing the scientist's sentiment of "pure science." Merton (1938, p. 328) wrote:

Science must not suffer itself to become the handmaiden of theology or economy or state. The function of this sentiment is likewise to preserve the autonomy of science. For if such extrascientific criteria of the value of science as presumable consonance with religious doctrines or economic utility or political appropriateness are adopted, science becomes acceptable only insofar as it meets these criteria.

Collegiality as the *modus operandi* of the academy, enacted in collegial "selfgovernance" play a key role in supporting these principles by allowing autonomous scientific communities to evaluate appropriate knowledge contributions. Collegial governance insulates science from "planning" to serve the interests of external entities such as the state (Polanyi, 1945). Academic freedom – "the right to choose one's own problem for investigation, to conduct research free from any outside control, and to teach one's subject in the light of one's own opinions" (Polanyi, 1947, p. 583) – is thus fundamentally intertwined with notions of collegiality. Academic freedom and tenure are unique elements of the academy and reinforce the disinterested pursuit of knowledge, even that which may come at the expense of other spheres of society.

One revelation of our collective research has been the aforementioned "varieties of collegiality." This insight raises questions about how different varieties affect academic freedom and knowledge creation. Manifestations of collegiality in which there are senates and boards and those in which the composition of these bodies look remarkably different are likely to have quite different impacts on academic freedom and the quality of science. Findings across many papers in this special issue also show the role of external influences, especially with regard to the state (e.g., Crace et al., 2023, Vol. 87; Harroche & Musselin, 2023, Vol. 86; Kosmützky & Krücken, 2023, Vol. 86; Sahlin & Eriksson-Zetterquist, 2023, Vol. 87; Wen & Marginson, 2023, Vol. 86). Such a seizing of the means of knowledge production is likely to be consequential for academic freedom insofar as it increases outside control. Likewise, other contributions show an increasing role of civil society in the affairs of knowledge creation (e.g., van Schalkwyk & Cloete, 2023, Vol. 86) and the inclusion of non-traditional members like students and staff members in the collegial governance system (e.g., Crace et al., 2023, Vol. 87). Some variations of collegiality and collegial governance may be beneficial in certain respects and detrimental in others for the purposes of academic freedom and the quality of science.

Even increasing managerialism has unclear implications in this regard. Like the state, the university administration is increasingly able to influence what types of research are conducted. Yet, administrators also often have PhDs and may be considered colleagues under certain forms of collegiality (e.g., Mizrahi-Shtelman & Drori, 2023, Vol. 86). Nevertheless, the increasing tendency toward centralization and the consolidation of academic units potentially threatens the autonomous communities that Humboldt envisioned. Does the installation of academic leaders from certain backgrounds privilege specific epistemic traditions over others and shape what types of knowledge are pursued? Perhaps the erosion of authority within disciplinary communities is responsible for the increasing commensuration of the quality of science via academic journal rankings. On the other hand, the dark sides of collegiality discussed in the introduction to this volume suggest a potentially different story. The rise of diversity, equality, and inclusion concerns in the strategic orientation of universities as organizations (e.g., Lee & Ramirez, 2023, Vol. 86) may actually lead to an increase in scientific quality as the "old boys'" club is displaced by more diverse perspectives that push knowledge generation in new directions.

Overall, our numerous international cases provide an opportunity for comparative reflection. They have revealed a significant amount of heterogeneity in the manifestations of collegiality. Yet, the value of these different varieties of collegiality for academic freedom and scientific quality is an open question. As part of the research agenda, we believe it is imperative to explore these questions further; otherwise, we will continue to have little understanding of which variants of collegiality are most beneficial and in what ways. This volume focuses on the restoration of collegiality, but there is still much work to be done to unpack which collegial systems are worth restoring and which should be avoided altogether.

## **EMERGING THEMES**

#### *Institutional Trust*

Above, we have emphasized that collegiality builds on trust, both among colleagues and in self-organizing arrangements. The erosion of trust in professions and in self-governance poses challenges to collegiality. Institutional trust provides an important focal point for a research agenda on many important contemporary dynamics of society and economy including collegiality (Lounsbury, 2023). In organizational sociology, Zucker (1986) emphasized the need to study the institutional production of trust, or what others have referred to as institution-based trust or more simply, institutional trust. She argued that in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, existing forms of particularistic and generalized trust underlying economic exchange were disrupted by high rates of immigration and population mobility, leading to the development of new institutional innovations (e.g., managerial hierarchy, financial intermediaries, and regulations) that created a new form of trust tied to formal social structures. Her research highlights the need to situate the study of institutional trust historically, focusing attention on how institutional trust at the macro-level shapes more situated forms of socio-economic behavior.

At a general level, institutional trust captures how formal institutions provide a target for trust such as in the development literature's focus on the perceived legitimacy of public institutions – most often, the nation-state. For instance, United Nations research has documented how institutional trust has been systemically declining in Western developed countries due to a variety of factors including growing economic insecurity and perceptions of poor or corrupt government performance (Perry, 2021). As documented in many contributions to these *Research in the Sociology of Organizations* volumes on collegiality, the university, like the nation-state, is under siege as a formal institution, facilitating changes such as the rise of corporatization and the waning of collegiality. While we believe that these changes are interpenetrated with the decline of institutional trust, more systematic research on the topic is required.

At the societal-level, evidence suggests that there is a marked decline in institutional trust in universities as public institutions. This may be proxied by a decreased willingness to use state funding to support public education, most pointedly originating in countries that have embraced neoliberal policies most strongly such as the UK and the USA, but now has spread more broadly to Australia, Canada, and elsewhere. In these countries, public universities are being hollowed out to emphasize more instrumentally oriented education, while the humanities and the social sciences have been losing support. These are profound, systemic trends that merit focused research attention. How these trends relate to the decline in institutional trust of the nation-state, democracy, and other formal institutions related to healthcare and the professions also needs to be unpacked.

Delving deeper into the functioning of higher education institutions, we also need to develop a more detailed understanding of how the decline of institutional trust at the societal level has reshaped collegiality inside and across universities. While we suspect there is a direct relationship between the decline of institutional trust at the societal-level and collegiality inside universities, there may be many mitigating factors. Since collegiality inside particular universities is importantly undergirded by interpersonal trust, such research requires unpacking how institutional trust – a form of generalized trust – relates to more particularized forms of interpersonal trust in particular settings (see Schilke et al., 2021). For instance, despite declines in institutional trust, particular universities might continue to maintain higher levels of collegiality as institutional leaders (e.g., presidents and deans) focus on maintaining and reinforcing cultures of collegiality and collegial governance despite pressures for increased corporatization. We also need research on how institutional trust might be repaired (Bachmann et al., 2015).

#### *Field Level Studies of Collegiality*

A major insight emerging from decades of institutional analysis is the concept of an institutional field as a critical level of analysis (e.g., Reay & Hinnings, 2005; Wooten & Hoffman, 2008). In his now classic treatise, Scott (1995, p. 56) defined an institutional field as: "a community of organizations that partakes of a common meaning system and whose participants interact more frequently and fatefully with one another than with actors outside the field." Essentially the field includes any actor that might impose coercive, normative, or mimetic influence on the organizations partaking in it (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983).

More recent work in this area has differentiated between exchange fields and issue fields (Zietsma et al., 2017). In exchange fields, "the shared objective of the field is to stabilize and coordinate exchange, membership in networks, and compatible practices" (Zietsma et al., 2017, p. 396). This approach, which is taken by the majority of field studies (i.e., studies of industries, professions, and social movements), conceives of organizations as competitors for resources, approval, and market share among their exchange partners. By comparison, "the purpose or focus of orchestration of issue fields is to negotiate, govern, and/or compete over meanings and practices that affect multiple fields" (Zietsma et al., 2017, p. 400).

Against this backdrop, it is interesting to think about the field of higher education and research and to ponder what might be gained by directing greater attention to collegiality at the field level. We emphasized above that higher education has become an international regime as it has expanded globally and that universities have even become global actors in their own right (Lee & Ramirez, 2023, Vol. 86). The relevance of field dynamics also is apparent in the horizontal dimension of Sahlin and Eriksson-Zetterquist's (2023, Vol. 86) collegiality framework, especially the notion of governance as a relational network as propounded by van Schalkwyk and Cloete (2023, Vol. 86).

But many questions remain to be answered. The system of higher education and research is not homogeneous, rather there are multiple systems, plural. So, while it may seem fruitful to conceptualize universities as partaking in the "same" field, there are bound to be variations, including different manifestations of collegiality at the local (Crace et al., 2023, Vol. 87; Jandrić et al., 2023, Vol. 87), provincial/state/ region (Denis et al., 2023, Vol. 87), or national level (Gerhardt et al., 2023, Vol. 86; Harroche & Musselin, 2023, Vol. 86; Hwang, 2023, Vol. 86; Kosmützky & Krücken, 2023, Vol. 86; Lee & Ramirez, 2023, Vol. 86; Wen & Marginson, 2023, Vol. 86).

This suggests opportunities to study the diffusions and translations of collegiality from one time and place to another. What are the different top-down, bottom-up, and middle-out processes that buttress and undermine collegiality at different levels and scales? Why are some arrangements more resistant to erosion than others? What agentic possibilities are afforded by different understandings of collegiality? How does the involvement of different arrays of actors within the institutional field shape these dynamics? For instance, a theme running through several of the papers in these volumes relates to the role of politics and political interference. A symmetrical account (Latour, 2005) would necessarily require attention to how such interference can be cut both ways. In addition to providing cautionary tales, such investigations might also suggest fruitful interventions that can support or restore collegiality.

#### *Collegiality and Communication*

It is a truism to say that the production and transmission of knowledge – the two most central functions of the university – depend on communication. Peers are required to share their findings and claims in order for them to be accepted by the scientific community. University lecturers share both settled and contested theories and truths with their students.

How then is the communication of science relevant to collegiality? As has been shown in contributions to this special issue (Crace et al., 2023, Vol. 87; van Schalkwyk & Cloete, 2023, Vol. 86; Wen & Marginson, 2023, Vol. 86), the university remains a highly politicized space. This is not new. What is new are the emergent outcomes of the politicized university situated in a changed communication environment characterized by real-time, global networked digital communication. Change in the communication of science includes increasing access to science by the public, a decline in the gatekeeping role of the media, and the uptake of digital media platforms (including social media platforms such as Twitter), resulting in, among others, the emergence of "mass self-communication" and "electronic autism" (Castells, 2007, p. 247), as well as more frequent "alternative" (Bucchi, 2004, p. 120) or deviant trajectories (van Schalkwyk, 2019, pp. 50–52) in communication. A consequence of these changes is the highly personal nature of science communication which, in turn, has a direct impact on collegial relations within the university.

The motivations of both university researchers and teachers, as well as the public, for communicating in the digital realm go beyond stimulating collective debate in the service of knowledge production to serve individual (Kosmützky & Krücken, 2023, Vol. 86) and/or ideological agendas as the communication of science becomes politicized (Scheufele, 2014).

Future research will need to focus on how these new features in the communication process disrupt and, possibly, threaten collegial relations in the academy. Particularly when those who govern the funding of university activities become more insistent that academics make use of digital communication technologies to engage with communities outside of the academy (Weingart et al., 2021).

## **A FEW METHODOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS**

Collegiality is a subject related to the investigation of meaning, practices, and situatedness within and across global and local contexts. Yet, this research endeavor poses methodological challenges as meaning, practices, and situatedness are complex, multifaceted, and dynamic. Luckily, organizational scholars are already well-equipped with a large and reliable reservoir of research strategies to enhance our understanding of collegiality and its multidimensionality. The two *Research in the Sociology of Organizations* volumes demonstrate the fruitfulness of various methodological approaches such as case studies and interview surveys.

Additionally, when studying the university setting it is also important to have other ideal types of governance in mind. In an analysis of social contexts, the development that takes place may not necessarily be an outcome of circumstances specific to collegiality but a result of the interaction of other mechanisms. For instance, if a matter seems to be the result of speedy decision-making, the analysis of rapidness may be a result of the researcher not having insights into the formal and informal processes applied to prepare the final formal announcement of a decision taken.

We also wish to point scholars to additional methodological avenues that can leverage our understanding of collegiality. While case studies and interviews are useful to study the reflection of actors on their practices, ethnographic studies, and experiments enable a stronger focus on unconscious mechanisms underlying the execution of practices.

We consider *ethnography* to be a fruitful avenue because organizational scholars have undergone a similar socialization process as the actors they study. This fact is beneficial as deep knowledge of professional actors can uncover the mechanisms on which practices rest. At the same time, this fact requires a reflexive approach to avoid biases and to ensure the reliability of ethnographic studies (Wacquant, 2004). Special attention has to be paid to the ethical dimensions, that is, studying the closest working group of the researcher is not recommendable. Accordingly, we suggest that ethnographic research could be complemented with other techniques such as a joint analysis of the researcher and the actors studied (McDonnell, 2014).

Whereas ethnographic studies may be distorted by the situatedness of researchers, *experimental designs* may complement the study of collegiality (Haack et al., 2021). Experiments are well suited to isolate cognitive processes from being influenced by external variables and thus provide evidence of causality. For example, experimental design can be used to study the selection of one practice over the other. This can be meaningful to investigate collegiality, its situatedness, and its divergence and change within and across contexts.

We also see potential in novel methodological approaches in organizational studies that are connected to the application of natural language processing techniques, such as parsing, topic modeling, or word embeddings (Goldenstein & Poschmann, 2019; Nelson, 2021). These techniques uncover grammatical structures, thematic orientations, or word semantics in texts. Further, digital image processing techniques are able to assess visual angles, image semantics, image structures, and graphical renditions. As texts and images can be considered to be symbolic manifestations, for example, of organizational identities and practices, of social relations and interactions, and of institutional and cultural level processes, we see promise in applying these techniques to large amounts of data in their full complexity and nuance in studying collegiality.

Moreover, the outputs of these novel methodological approaches can support the construction of variables for conventional statistical analysis. In other words, language and image processing techniques can be used to capture theoretical constructs (e.g., the manifestation of organizational identities) which can be used as dependent or independent variables in studies on or related to collegiality.

Above, we have already highlighted the importance of continuing international comparative research. The examples we have provided point to the importance of remaining sensitive to variations in how collegiality is organized, practiced, and understood, as well as to conditions and challenges to collegiality.

Finally, we want to alert scholars to the possibility of using the abovementioned and other methodological approaches in *mixed-method designs* to study collegiality and account for its multidimensionality. For example, the symbolic manifestation of meanings and practices revealed by natural language processing and digital image processing techniques could be deepened and contrasted with findings from ethnographic or interview data. Such an approach would allow for the study of symbolic and practical domains of collegiality in combination.

## **STUDIES OF UNIVERSITIES AS A BASIS FOR DEVELOPING ORGANIZATION THEORY**

Papers across the two volumes demonstrate an academic interest in understanding how universities work and the central role of collegial mechanisms in such entities. More broadly, these works contribute to the knowledge on organizations at large. Over the years, studies of universities have formed important grounds for the development of organization theory. In the words of Krücken et al. (2021, p. 4):

Leading scholars in the 1960s and 1970s like Peter M. Blau, Burton R. Clark, James G. March, Henry Mintzberg, Jeffrey Pfeffer, Gerald R. Salancik, and Karl E. Weick based their specific approach to organisations on the study of universities and, thus, had a wide impact on both general organisational theory as well as the analysis of other types of organisations like business firms and public administrations. Theoretical concepts like "bureaucratic organizations" (Blau 1973), "organizational saga" (Clark 1972), "organized anarchies" (Cohen et al., 1972), "professional bureaucracies" (Mintzberg 1979), "resource dependency" (Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978) or "loosely coupled systems" (Weick, 1976) shaped the entire field of organisation studies.

It should be noted that viewing universities as a form of organization is a rather recent shift that occurred well after the development of research that examined academic staff as a community or as a profession. It started in the 1960s and was almost exclusively in the USA at that time. Two main phases can be identified in the organizational approach of universities.

### *Phase 1: Studies of Universities as Particular Objects Contributed to the Organization Theory*

The first phase covers the 1960s to the end of the 1980s and is characterized by two main features. First, scholars tried to characterize the internal governance of universities, that is, the way members of universities make decisions, work with one another, set priorities, deal with conflicts, etc. Second, many of these studies have been used to contribute to organization theory more broadly and to analyze other kinds of organizations.

Four main perspectives were developed, each of them reacting to the former. The first perspective derived directly from Merton's work on academics as a community of peers sharing the same ethos. Goodman (1962) and Millet (1962) assumed that universities are collegial. They did not provide a very firm definition of collegiality but reaffirmed that universities should be led by academic peers sharing the same ethics and norms. The idea of universities as organizations sharing the same values has then been enlarged by Clark (1972) who argued that each US university is founded on a specific saga whose objectives and norms are shared by the academic staff, but also the administrative staff, the students, and even their parents.

Baldridge (1971) discussed this perspective and considered that universities are political rather than collegial and that they are a locus of conflicting interests. Academics are striving for resources and reputations and compete with one another to get them. The same conception infused the study led by Pfeffer and Salancik (1974) and Salancik and Pfeffer (1974) who developed their resource dependence theory from the research they led on the power situation gained within their university by departments able to get external resources. They then extended this argument about resource dependence to firms (Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978).

The third perspective has been developed by Blau (1973) who used a large data basis to measure which aspects of university structures correspond to the definition of a Weberian bureaucracy and which aspects are not bureaucratic. A further development of this characterization of universities as bureaucracies has been proposed by Mintzberg (1979). In his typology of organizations, he identifies the professional bureaucracies, that is, organizations hosting a profession and having an administrative structure supporting the activities of this profession. This includes universities but also hospitals, courts, law firms, and the like.

Criticizing the three former perspectives, March and his two colleagues, Cohen and Olsen (1972) suggested a fourth one. For them, universities are organized anarchies, that is, structures with multiple missions, unclear technologies, and fluctuant participation and attention of their members. Because of these characteristics, their choices rely on a garbage can model of decision-making. Even though this model specifically applies to universities, the three authors did not limit it to them. Some authors extended this model to other situations (Padgett, 1980) like Kingdon (1984) who applied it to the access of public problems to the political agenda.

### *Phase 2: Studying the Transformation of Universities into Enterprise Organizations*

In the 1980s, research focused on universities took a completely new turn. Characterizing university governance and contributing to organization theory through the study of universities were no longer an issue. Rather, organization theory frameworks were employed to explain university transformations and their consequences. As reviewed in Sahlin and Eriksson-Zetterquist (2023, Vol. 87) research explored the ways in which enterprise and bureaucratic ideals came to influence universities, and how universities were turned into more governed, more managerial, and more hierarchical organizations. Today, researchers continue to explore the extent to which universities are becoming more similar to firms. Previous research reviewed throughout these two volumes on collegiality reveals that while some authors have stressed the strong corporatization of universities, the merchandization of their activities, and their economization, others tempered these conclusions and observed the resilience of universities and identified forms of hybridization between traditional and new modes of governance. Whatever the results, during this period, the life of universities was rarely studied for themselves, and they were not seen as interesting cases for developing organization theory.

### *Toward New Contributions of the Study of Universities to Organizational Theory?*

The papers in these two volumes plead for a renewed perspective. First, because many studies referred to above rely on a rather traditional conceptualization of firms and do not take into account the following paradox. Whereas universities were expected to become more hierarchical, and more rational, and to strengthen their borders and identities, managerial doctrines on firms have gone in the other direction (with greater or lesser success). Reduction of the hierarchical lines, recognition of professional groups (Evetts, 2003) interest for the freedom-form company or F-form company (Charles et al., 2020), development of benefit corporations (Stecker, 2016), expansion of pluralistic organizations (Denis et al., 2007), etc., challenged the traditional representation of firms. In a way, these new conceptions can be interpreted as a movement of firms in the direction of universities (Menger, 2002). This underscores pleas for reinvestment in the study of university governance, stressing the benefits of its particularities. This could furthermore renew the contribution of the organizational studies of universities to the theory of organizations.

## **THE RESEARCH AGENDA IN BRIEF**

In this outroduction, we have summarized the main findings from our studies of collegiality. These studies have some clear practical implications. Perhaps even more importantly, they open avenues for a broad range of comprehensive future studies. We discussed themes for future studies on collegiality in the sections above, and summarize them here in a simple list.


This broad list of themes emphasizes the centrality of collegiality for scientific work, both as a practice and mode of governance, and a central research topic.

## **REFERENCES**


(Eds.), *University collegiality and the erosion of faculty authority* (Vol. 86, pp. 105–126). Emerald Publishing Limited.

