Higher Education Policy, 2010, 23, (397–411) r 2010 International Association of Universities 0952-8733/10 www.palgrave-journals.com/hep/

Still Academics After Ally Teresa Carvalhoa,b and Rui Santiagoa,b a

CIPES, Rua 11 de Dezembro 399, Matosinhos 4450-227, Portugal. E-mail: [email protected] b Universidade de Aveiro, Campus Universita´rio de Santiago, 3810–193 Aveirio, Portugal. E-mail: [email protected]

Changes in the governmental policies aiming at restructuring the Portuguese Higher Education system and institutions have been, over the last years, defined under the influence of New Public Management. External pressures induced by these reforms translate the attempts to create a new institutional environment particularly by changing professionals and organizational cultures. In this context, actors with managerial positions are those over whom more pressures for change are exerted, mainly because they are seen as leaders who have a strong influence over other professionals and can, in this way, promote more acceptable and convergent changes in higher education institutions. This study aims to analyse the attitudes, values and identities of Portuguese deans in the context of increasing state managerial pressures based on a qualitative study with 26 interviews of heads/deans from four public higher education institutions in Portugal. Data analysis allows us to conclude that deans identify homogeneous pressures in the institutional environment and perceive several changes in their managerial roles. Nevertheless, the majority of them still feel like academics and reject the idea of restringing their roles or their positions only to management. Higher Education Policy (2010) 23, 397–411. doi:10.1057/hep.2010.17 Keywords: state; new public management; higher education; Portugal; deans

Introduction In almost all developed countries, the ‘modernisation of the public sector’ has been a euphemism for the reconfiguration of state structures, roles and policies aimed at transforming the public sector, vertically and horizontally. The former is connected with the replacement of the hierarchical control of public institutions by what has been termed ‘steering from a distance’, often based on ‘management by contracts’ and the formalization of evaluation and accountability systems. The latter embodies the political expectation that organizational autonomy and ‘management devolution’ are key devices for constructing a competitive environment within the public sector, supported by new marketlike organizational forms, public service delivery and institutional and professional cultures and behaviours. ‘Modernisation’ also involves the

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replacement of the typical bureau-professional regimes (Clarke and Newman, 1997), previously hegemonic and based on trusted professionals, with the right to manage given to those in charge of top public management positions. This general political environment has a strong impact on higher education. Higher education institutions (HEIs) came to be perceived as a sort of collective, rational actor that was exhorted to assume an active and pivotal role in the political and social construction of a market economy and an entrepreneurial society, supported mainly by efficiency and effectiveness principles. Within this logic, coercive pressures are exerted over HEIs to integrate organizational structures and decision-making processes (Carvalho and Santiago, 2007; Enders et al., 2008). In this way, academics are involved in profound dynamics of change (Bleiklie and Michelsen, 2008) that have the potential to transform their identities, cultures and modus operandi. It can be argued that they are stimulated and encouraged to be more like a homo economicus by reframing their relationship with knowledge production and diffusion and with their institutions on a more economic and utilitarian basis. This is embodied in the emergence of new modes of institutional regulation of the academic profession aimed at ‘adjusting’ professional behaviour and creating convergence around common objectives and values towards the maximization of a sort of collective organizational efficiency in light of the challenges posed by the higher education market. Academics with managerial responsibilities are emerging as key actors in these new political and institutional contexts. Among academics, deans have a central and strategic position in the new institutional power and managerial architecture, meaning that they are expected to play an important role in transformational changes inside HEIs (Harman, 2002; Keka¨le, 2003; Huisman et al., 2006). This is not only because they have managerial duties but also because they are seen as having a strong influence on other professionals, and can therefore promote a more acceptable and convergent change in culture, values and attitudes. Thanks to their key institutional position, deans’ narratives can be seen as important signs of how the market and new public management are being shaped in HEIs and as important personal statements regarding the way the academic profession and professionalism (Slaughter and Leslie, 1997; Freidson, 2001; Bleiklie and Michelsen, 2008; Musselin, 2008) are facing these new challenges. In the Portuguese case, some national studies support the idea that government policies aiming at modernizing higher education structures and processes since the end of the 1990s have been based on New Public Management (NPM) assumptions and instruments similar to those observed in other developed countries (Amaral et al., 2003; Santiago and Carvalho, 2004; Santiago et al., 2006). With respect to HEIs, these assumptions and instruments include ‘steering from a distance’, increasingly injected with market expectations and values, evaluation and quality assurance systems Higher Education Policy 2010 23

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influenced by the entrepreneurial culture, budget cuts, coercive changes in the HEIs’ governance and management from collegiality to corporate-driven forms, and strong pressure on HEIs to reorient their teaching and research activities towards economics. Most Portuguese HEIs’ central governance and management bodies have at least partially endorsed some of these policies, internalizing them in their own institutional strategies (Amaral et al., 2003; Santiago and Carvalho, 2004; Carvalho and Santiago, 2008). However, it is less clear that this endorsement truly touches HEIs’ shop floors — especially academics with management responsibilities at intermediate levels, such as faculties, schools and departments. Starting from this framework, our analysis is intended to contribute to the understanding of the cognitive-cultural processes of change involved in the NPM presence in public higher education, as well as suggesting how academic managers construct their own professional identities and values in these contexts. First, the Portuguese higher education context will be analysed according to the idea that the change is not an isolated phenomenon in the global movement of the ‘modernisation’ of Portugal. Second, the specific research questions and strategies that guide the empirical component of the research will be described. Finally, based on the data analysis, the study is able to show that changes in the academic culture and identity are less profound than politically expected.

The Restructuring Movement in Portugal As elsewhere, since the end of the 1990s, the (re)configuration of the Portuguese State endorsed a set of ‘modernizing’ principles, structured around neo-liberal ideas, that can be summarized along three main overlapping axes: self-governance, competition mechanisms and critical scrutiny of professional power. The first entails the assumption that public institutions can be socially and economically constructed as ‘self-governed’ and integrated organizations (Carvalho and Santiago, 2007; Enders et al., 2008), or as a sort of ‘collective’ rational mechanism, able to be the best judges of their own interests in dealing with their opportunities, as well as with the allocation of their financial resources. Like individuals, institutions are interpreted as singular entities that make rational choices in a complex market. The second involves the introduction of market or market-like competition mechanisms to public ‘self-governed’ (autonomous) institutions, and this competition is perceived as a decisive tool to enhance efficient interactions with internal and external stakeholders in order to be more responsive to economic and societal needs and to obtain financial support from sources other than the government. Finally, the third is linked to the current market view on the inefficiency of the welfare state bureau-professional regime (Clarke and Newman, 1997) as a dominant Higher Education Policy 2010 23

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regulation mode of public institutions. From this perspective, the belief emerges that these obstacles would be neutralized by the unification of the institution with a concentration of strong power and leadership at the top and the creation of line management structures. This movement reached the higher education system that had had a firmly institutionalized collegial model of governance and management since the democratic revolution of 1974. The Portuguese higher education system was elitist until 1974. At that time, a binary system was created and new public and private institutions emerged, opening the route to massification. The democratic and egalitarian principles dominant in this historical period allowed the legal construction of a higher education system based on democratic, collegial and Humboldtian values and principles. In this context, the institutional structures were based on collegial principles of decision making with all institutional actors represented on governing boards (including students and administrative staff ). The legal framework for academic careers emerged first in the university sector (Decree Law 448/79) and a few years later in polytechnics (Decree Law 185/81), based on the idea of a full-time permanent academic professor. This legal framework can be considered a further step in academics’ professionalization. Indeed, it recognizes autonomy and occupational control for professionals to develop their work conceived as tripartite: teaching, research and administration. The process of marketization and managerialization in higher education has been increasingly manifest since the end of the 1990s, being especially visible in government actions and policies with a range of aims. In order to introduce new regulatory modes to the system and institutional steering, a clearer assumption about the market-driven philosophy in the HEIs’ autonomization process was assumed. This was based on the ‘self-governance’ principle combined with centralized controls at the financial, access and contractual performance evaluation levels. To restructure HEIs’ governance structures, attempts to replace the collegial structures with top-down line management were developed, resulting in strategic and political power concentration at the top. Other initiatives, such as the reframing of evaluation and quality assurance towards quantitative performances, changes in science and technology policies aimed at connecting knowledge production to the economy and the entrepreneurial sector, and pressures on HEIs to reorient their curricula towards vocations and employability, were also implemented. As had occurred previously in other higher education systems, the new political narratives were structured around ‘modern’ technocratic managerial ideas: efficiency, diligence, rationality, consistency and justifiability (Gustafsson, 1983). In fact, these attempts have been explicitly promoted by the Portuguese state using both coercive mechanisms as well as inductive ones (Santiago et al., Higher Education Policy 2010 23

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2005, 2006; Carvalho and Santiago, 2007). Legal and budgetary constraints (on teaching) are examples of the first mechanism but inductive ones are also present in the form of international reports (OECD, 2006) or the creation of special and competitive incentives for research funding. These incentives are aimed at stratifying the system in order to concentrate resources on HEIs with the capacity to be classified as research institutions. At the micro-level, this general context has been translated into pressures to transform HEIs from ‘academic communities to managed organisations’ (Harley et al., 2003, 332). It can be argued that these pressures to turn HEIs into managed organizations are based on transformational change, representing an attempt to replace the dominant academic archetype rooted in the intersection between the Humboldtian and the bureaucratic-collegial principles. Greenwood and Hinings (1993) have described similar phenomena for other professional organizations. These authors define the archetype concept as ‘(y) an interpretative scheme, or a set of beliefs and values, that is embodied in an organization’s structures and systems’. An archetype is thus a set of ‘structures and systems that embodies a single interpretative scheme’ (Greenwood and Hinings, 1993, 1055). Currently, the replacement of the traditional academic and professional archetype in Portuguese HEIs’ modus operandi has been induced by the emergence of new organizational structures and the use of tools associated with new human resource policies and practices (Santiago and Carvalho, 2004, 2008; Santiago et al., 2005; Carvalho and Santiago, 2008). Those new organizational structures have resulted from the reorganization of ‘academic services’ and redistribution of academic roles and power based on giving managers the ‘right to manage’. It can be argued that this new higher education institutional environment, which has been politically constructed and externally imposed by the new Portuguese government policies, has the potential to replace the homo academicus by the homo oeconomicus (Bourdieu, 1989, 2006). However, more evidence is needed to assess whether academics’ behaviour and perceptions are in line with those market and managerial assumptions and pressures. Although there is growing interest in this research field (Deem, 1998; Reed, 2002; Huisman et al., 2006), the paucity of empirical studies is evident, especially those linked to academics’ response to the new challenges. This is also the situation in the Portuguese case. Studies become even more relevant when academics (such as deans) who act in the intersection between the new market and managerial pressures and the professional values and cultures are the object of analysis. The way Portuguese deans perceived changes in their particular power, roles and leadership can be a pertinent indicator of how deeply the dominant traditional professional ‘archetypes’ have been reconfigured. If these alternative schemes are present in the deans’ perception of the Higher Education Policy 2010 23

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HEIs’ organization and processes, do they correspond to new professionalization strategies or do they reflect a weakening of academic professionalism? This research topic is largely unexplored, and the lack of studies is surprising especially because deans have a key position as mediators (Ramsden, 1998; Santiago et al., 2006; Carvalho and Santiago, 2007), buffers (Sotirakou, 2004) or ‘thermostats’ (Keka¨le, 2003) as regards the translation of institutional policies and strategies to departments and other organizational structures and individual academics. They are thus confronted with high levels of conflict (Sotirakou, 2004), emerging from the professional and managerial conditions and due to contradictions in the legitimacy of their authority — professional, managerial or both (Keka¨le, 2003). The way Portuguese deans and heads approach these conflicts represents a focal element for improving knowledge of the potential changes to the contemporary academic profession and professionalism in Portugal.

Research Strategies To draw conclusions about the way NPM has been able to permeate Portuguese HEIs and the academic profession, one has to reflect on the extent to which changes have been occurring in the academics’ cognitive-cultural framework. What are their dominant ideas about the higher education system and institutions? Has there been a change in the dominant conceptions about governance in and management of HEIs? If so, do they reflect a weakening of academic professionalism, because of the replacement of the occupational collegial archetype by the managerial one, or do they represent new professionalization strategies to keep the control over HEIs’ market/managerial-driven changes? How do they perceive their occupational roles in the institutional decision-making processes? Do they see themselves as academics, or as managers? In order to find answers to these questions a qualitative study was developed, based on semi-structured interviews. This research strategy seemed to be suitable to this study since our main epistemological objective was to describe and interpret what can be detected as the managerial narratives in deans’ discourses about the governance and management of HEIs. The qualitative approach adopted for this study strategy allowed an in-depth analysis of their perceptions of change. The phenomena that influence the processes are complex, and the deans come from a range of institutional backgrounds. Twenty-six deans from four public HEIs were interviewed, from two universities and two polytechnics. University X is a ‘traditional’ university and is one of the oldest in the country. It has 28,000 students and a structure based on faculties. University Y is a new one (post-1973) with 12,000 students, and its structure is based on departments. Polytechnic Z and W have 4,500 and Higher Education Policy 2010 23

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6,000 students, respectively. Both were established in the early 1980s, and have the same structure, based around schools. This is neither a probabilistic sample, nor a representative one. However, it represents approximately 10% of all Portuguese deans responsible for the management of organizational units in 15 public universities and 33 public polytechnics. In qualitative terms, the sample allowed for an in-depth approach to the knowledge particularities and circumstances linked to the diversity of the deans’ experiences. The distribution of the deans according to the type of HEI was also a guarantee of the diversity represented in the sample. In fact, public universities and polytechnics have different organizational arrangements. The oldest universities, such as the University of Coimbra, the University of Oporto, the Classical University of Lisbon and the Technical University of Lisbon are organized according to autonomous faculties and institutes, while the post-1973 institutions present a wider range of organizational structures, according to faculties, schools or large departments. The polytechnics tend to have similar organizational structures, based on the association of autonomous schools. In this way, one can consider that our qualitative sample reflects the experience that deans have in the different types of Portuguese HEI. Interviews averaged 1 hour, and all but one was audio recorded. The large number of interviews meant that there was an element of ‘discourse saturation’, meaning that some of the information was reproduced by multiple interviewees. These interview discourses were analysed using content analysis, and the results of this analysis are the focus of the next section.

Changing Cultures, Changing Identities? This qualitative study was focused on the analysis of the deans’ perceptions of global changes in HEIs’ governance and management and on the potential replacement of the traditional dominant archetype of ‘academic professional community’ by the new ‘market/managerial’ archetype in Portuguese HEIs. Therefore, this analysis can also reveal important elements about the way academics control their work, and even the division of labour within HEIs. Changes in the traditional principles of self-direction and discretionary judgements on the occupational control of academic work and other tasks encompass relevant symptoms of the way the HEIs’ managerial environment is affecting the academic profession and professionalism. The deans’ perceptions of governmental and institutional managerial policies that aim to transform academics’ traditional values, cultures and identities (that Reed (2002) refers to as occupational ideology) emerged as a crucial issue in the discussion about the potential loss of professional control over the political and managerial ‘circumstances’ surrounding academic practices and work. Higher Education Policy 2010 23

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Portuguese deans interviewed for this study identified homogeneous external pressures that sought to induce transformational changes in their institutions. These external pressures are based mainly on state policies that attempt to institutionalize a new HEI governance and management modus operandi and habitus through the use of coercive and inductive mechanisms. These pressures seem to be producing relevant changes in HEIs already, since deans identified some of the impact of those pressures on their managerial roles, expressing transformations not only in the activities they need to develop but also in the notion of time. In a general way, all the discourses expressed the feeling of an expansion in their managerial and administrative roles in recent years in comparison with their teaching and research careers. Some of them perceived the increase of ‘entrepreneurial management’, which seemed to have seriously reduced their discretion in decision-making processes and have driven their roles and responsibilities towards maximizing managerial predictability and dependability. Managerial issues are becoming more important. I have been feeling the need more and more to have information and management systems that will enable me to make timely responses. This is true at all levels because I want to know in real time which material I will need in the near future because it has a financial impact and there is a risk of not having enough money for it. Things need to be done with more rigour. Each day we greet a more entrepreneurial management. (University X, Interview 26) It seems that not only has the time dedicated to administrative and managerial activities increased, but also that its nature is changing. In fact when referring to managerial and administrative roles, deans spoke mainly about day-to-day or operational activities and not of their involvement in strategic activities or of their roles as policymakers at the institutional and organizational unit levels. It seems that their field of action is increasingly confined to a sort of ‘operational academic management’, based only on administrative tasks. The power they have within these co-ordination activities is perceived as becoming restricted to a ‘periphery’ without resonance to other institutional levels. This reveals that the deans interviewed perceived profound changes in HEIs’ bureaucratic environment. They observed a sort ‘managerial standardization’ of their roles, responsibilities and procedures, and therefore they felt that they had lost the occupational power to control their professional work. It is also the increase in the time dedicated to these activities that led deans to express a feeling of fragmentation in their academic work and in the way their professional time was used. Every day we are faced with little or very little things that fall down our heads for which we need an immediate response; these have nothing to do with strategic, broad and global management. This situation is stressful Higher Education Policy 2010 23

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and leaves us disappointed. Sometimes we have to develop several administrative roles that take us a lot of time. (University Y, Interview 5) Facing these external and internal pressures, deans expressed a range of positions about HEIs’ ideal organizational, governance and management models. In this sense, we were able to find the coexistence of elements from the different archetypes, reflecting the emergence of a sort of ‘hybrid archetype’, which seems to translate different forms of socio-cognitive intersections between ‘traditional’ and new managerial elements in the social construction of the interpretative schemes. Potentially, this can represent a relevant insight on how to improve knowledge of how other academic occupational ideologies and habitus have been reconfigured and how further the ‘endogenous’ occupational control mechanisms over the institutional decision making and the academic work and division has been weakened by ‘exogenous’ managerial assumptions and devices (see Freidson, 2001). In general, all the deans interviewed seemed to agree with the need for change in HEIs. The acceptance of this idea not only reflects a kind of erosion of the dominant archetype (Kitchner and Whiper, 1997) or a deinstitutionalization of the collegial values and culture but may also mean that academics do not want to feel left out of the dominant and ‘more modern’ narratives (Pollitt, 2002). When referring to structures and systems, there was a tendency in some deans’ discourses to favour a concentration of power in central governance structures, showing a preference for the implementation of a corporate-like top-down rational process as the best ‘model’ to ensure efficiency. This position is sustained mainly through the use of managerial narratives such as the need for resource rationalization, to develop efficiency and effectiveness, to increase responsibility and also to promote a unified organizational identity. As some deans argued: I have a clear idea for change. First, I think that all the executive boards of schools should be eliminated. In my opinion, institutions with fewer than 10,000 students justify the existence of only one president with a small team working with him y (Polytechnic Z, Interview 11) (y) the rector thinks that the ideal would be to have a more centralised model. That, for some circumstances, would be better because it could make university more visible as a whole and not only faculty A, B or C. (University X, Interview 14) These narratives seem to express the managerial-dominant tendencies that emphasize organizational logic, rather than occupational logic in the control of the academic labour. These discourses come closer to the notion of an Higher Education Policy 2010 23

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integrated organization (Carvalho and Santiago, 2007), or to the ‘complete organization’ (Enders et al., 2008) and far from the ‘organized anarchy’ (Cohen and March, 1974; Cohen et al., 1992) or the bottom-up dynamics (Clark, 1983), which translates a different view on the participation of professionals’ in HEIs’ decision-making. However, some paradoxes emerge in these discourses since the deans claim that a high level of power should be concentrated in organizational units, which would reflect an increase in autonomy that is incompatible with more concentration at the top. On the other hand, most of the deans also defended a continuation of the ‘traditional’ mode whereby deans are elected by their peers, which is also connected with the collegial power regimes. In fact, the position of deans in the academic ranks as well as their role as disciplinary experts was seen as an important source of institutional power legitimacy. When we come closer to the set of beliefs and values or the interpretative scheme, the presence of the traditional archetype becomes more visible. In fact, the majority of deans reject the notion that professional managers should be members of HEI governance and management bodies. Even if these deans acknowledged the need for change, they also seemed to sustain the need to preserve the traditional interplay (Bleiklie and Michelsen, 2008; Musselin, 2008) between bureaucracy and professionalism as dominant modes of the academic work organization that characterized Portuguese HEIs until the end of the 1990s. I have a point of view, which is a deep belief that every attempt to manage a university with people from outside is an attempt to misrepresent the university. Each different thing is a unique matrix and universities also have their own matrix. (University X, Interview 21) In fact, their cultural-cognitive framework still seems to be based on the ‘academic community’ archetype. In this context, it is important to emphasize that they reject the idea that they should concentrate their activities only on managerial duties, reinforcing the educational and academic components of their work. These results are in line with other studies on changes in academic work concluding that Portuguese academics persist in their preference for the simultaneous development of the three traditional roles of HEIs: teaching, research and ‘academic management’ (Carvalho and Santiago, 2007, 2008). After all, we have roles that are related to faculty economic-financial management. The roles that are most relevant for me are those linked to the pedagogical, didactical and research field. What I like more is to create conference cycles, to conduct workshops, promote new teaching programmes and to provide incentives for academics to develop research. (University X, Interview 17) Higher Education Policy 2010 23

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The deans’ emphasis on the HEIs’ traditional tripartite mission still assumes it is a frame of reference for organizing their academic work. This can be interpreted according to two main overlapping arguments. First, in Bourdieu’s terms (1989, 2006), there is a need to preserve traditional professional symbolic and cultural capital in face of the managerial values and practices perceived as a threat to its integrity. Second, in Abbott’s (1988) terms, preserving this is a way to defend the traditional academic jurisdictional boundaries as a strategy to retain occupational control of the organization and division of academic work. It can also be argued that an academic’s professional background is not based exclusively on the epistemological foundation of their disciplinary knowledge (Halliday, 1987) but is structured by an intersection between knowledge and teaching (including pedagogical concerns) that are still embedded in the Humboldtian knowledge model. To sum up, the majority of deans feel like academics, and they made clear their efforts to maintain this. This effort is reflected in their attempts to balance the time dedicated to each activity. I want to be an academic dean for as long as possible. (Polytechnic Z, Interview 10) Fortunately, I still feel like an academic but I must say that this happens this way because I have always kept my teaching duties. I have been able to publish and to do research. However, I must say that in these positions, if people do not make the effort, they quickly turn into managers. In fact, I believe that in the academic field, someone who is only a manager has lost his competency and relevance in the area. (University X, Interview 23) It is this feeling that justifies their rejection of assuming new managerial positions in the future and the existence of a nostalgic discourse about the past when they had fewer managerial pressures. This could signify that deans find it difficult to perform and to articulate their academic and managerial tasks and, in the same way, continue to orient their academic and intellectual life towards research and teaching in their disciplines. This could also signify that the traditional administrative work deans developed under their discretionary control — such as supervising and coordinating the determination of curriculum, and grading and standards of scholarship and research — become increasingly more managerial in nature and disconnected from academic tasks. The great majority of deans interviewed looked increasingly on these positions as transitory ones and they clearly prefer the traditional academic activities of teaching and research. In the near future, I would like to have some time to do research because I have started to feel that serious research is not easy to accomplish. I still Higher Education Policy 2010 23

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teach and my schedule is the same as if I were not a dean. (University X, Interview 26) I don’t think I would like to assume other managerial positions in the future. There are no special reasons for this. It is just because I think that this is not a permanent position. Many people like it, and I also like it, but most of all I like to teach. (University Y, Interview 21) To sum up, these results reveal the existence of two conflicting cultures: the managerial and the professional (Halford et al., 1997; Freidson, 2001). Our results show that contemporary deans have difficulties in trying to integrate these two different domains of their roles that are always presented as parallel activities. NPM is increasing these difficulties since they increase deans’ managerial roles and activities and undervalue their academic ones, reducing their capacity of ‘doing academic coordination and supervision’, based on their own professional discretion and judgement. These deans perceived that they have been losing power on behalf of the ‘unified’ (Carvalho and Santiago, 2007) or the ‘complete organisation’ (Enders et al., 2008), based on the strategic and political power concentration on HEIs’ top governance and executive bodies. Deans feel that attempts to transform them into ‘intermediate line managers’ are in place. Along with these transformations in the HEI power architecture, tensions and conflicts based on the gap between the academic and the managerial models, procedures and culture also seem to be increasing. This has also been observed in other studies in several national contexts (Deem, 1998; Ramsden, 1998; Askling, 2001; Winter and Sarros, 2002; Keka¨le, 2003; Sotirakou, 2004). Data analysis has shown that even if managerial discourses have been able to permeate the deans’ institutional narratives, the deans were not able to change completely their traditional occupational and professional archetypes and, in this sense, they persist as academics after all.

Conclusions The content analysis of Portuguese deans’ discourses shows that the NPM’s influence on professional cultures and identities seems to be only partial, and is ambiguous. To date, attempts to impose new values and norms within new market and managerial rationalities do not seem to have been able to produce a new dominant archetype detectable in those actors’ discursive practices. The deans interviewed identified homogeneous pressures in the institutional environment and felt that their leadership and academic managerial roles were changing. They therefore expressed an ambiguous system of beliefs about HEI government and management. When talking about HEI structures and systems Higher Education Policy 2010 23

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these deans defended the maintenance of traditional collegial power and seemed to be in favour of more concentration of power at the top. This apparent contradiction reinforces conclusions from previous studies about the existence of a hybridization process in Portuguese HEIs (Santiago and Carvalho, 2004; Santiago et al., 2006). Further research on this topic would be relevant to gaining a more accurate understanding of how this process is structured, as well as the nature of its components. In the Portuguese case, the ‘impact’ of government policies, towards a mixed ambiguous regime of HEI ‘self-governance’ and hierarchical control, a creation of a sort of higher education ‘market-driven ecology’ and the neutralization of collegial/professional power, needs to be further addressed at the HEIs’ ‘heart’. For instance, beyond the deans, micro-level research could be undertaken on how other intermediate key positioned ‘academic managers’ (heads, course programme directors, scientific and teaching board directors and so on) interpret and respond to the HEIs’ central governance and executives bodies’ incorporation of those policies. This study shows that the deans interviewed have retained an interpretative scheme that is still predominantly anchored in the traditional academic culture. The majority presented themselves as academics, rejected the idea of restricting their role to management duties and revealed a nostalgic feeling when institutional time was based more on academic patterns and less on managerial pressures. These results reflect the existence of two conflicting cultures — the professional one and the managerial one — that create ambiguities with no clear resolution. Furthermore, there were no differences in perceptions whether deans were from universities or polytechnics. Perhaps this is due to the persistence of the ‘academic drift’ phenomenon on deans from polytechnics (Ferreira et al., 2008). On the basis of the idea that professional identity also results from attempts to be in line with the social, political and institutional environment, we can build the hypothesis, for further research in this field, that changes in Portuguese HEIs have not been sufficient to transform these deans’ traditional academic cultural framework. Nevertheless, as external and internal pressures have been growing over organizational and individual practices, one cannot assume that these results will be the same in the near future. References Abbott, A. (1988) The System of Professions, An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Amaral, A., Magalha˜es, A. and Santiago, R. (2003) ‘The Rise of Academic Managerialism in Portugal’, in A. Amaral, L. Meek and I.M. Larsen (eds.) The Higher Education Managerial Revolution? Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 101–123. Askling, B. (2001) ‘Higher education and academic staff in a period of policy and system change’, Higher Education 41: 157–181. Higher Education Policy 2010 23

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410 Bleiklie, I. and Michelsen, S. (2008) ‘The University as Enterprise and Academic Codetermination’, in A. Amaral, I. Bleiklie and C. Musselin (eds.) From Governance to Identity, a Festschrift for Mary Henkel, London: Springer, pp. 57–80. Bourdieu, P. (1989) Langage et Pouvoir Symbolique, Paris: E´d. du Seuil. Bourdieu, P. (2006) As estruturas sociais da economia, Porto: Campo das Letras. Carvalho, T. and Santiago, R. (2007) ‘NPM and middle management: How do deans influence institutional policies? The manager-academic: Corporate lackey or academe’s champion?’ Vintage House Hotel — Douro. 25–29 May 2007, Pinha˜o. Carvalho, T. and Santiago, R. (2008) ‘Gender differences on research: Is it a problem of professional behaviour?’ Tertiary Education and Management 14(4): 317–330. Clark, B. (1983) The Higher Education System, Academic Organization in Cross-national Perspective, California: University of California Press. Clarke, J. and Newman, J. (1997) The Managerial State, London: SAGE Publications. Cohen, M.D. and March, J.C. (1974) Leadership and Ambiguity, the American College President, New York: McGrraw-Hill. Cohen, M.D., March, J.G. and Olsen, J.P. (1992) ‘A garbage-can model of organizational choice’, Administrative Science Quarterly 17(1): 1–25. Deem, R. (1998) ‘New managerialism and higher education: The management of performances and cultures in universities in the United Kingdom’, International Studies in Sociology of Education 8(1): 47–70. Enders, J., De Boer, H. and Leisyte, L. (2008) ‘On Striking the Right Notes: Shifts in Governance and the Organisational Transformation of Universities’, in A. Amaral, I. Bleiklie and C. Musselin (eds.) From Governance to Identity, a Festschrift for Mary Henkel, London: Springer, pp. 113–130. Ferreira, J.B., Machado, M.L. and Santiago, R. (2008) ‘The Polytechnic Higher Education Sector in Portugal’, in J.S. Taylor, J.B. Ferreira, M.L. Machado and R. Santiago (eds.) Non-university Higher Education in Europe, London: Springer, pp. 191–214. Freidson, E. (2001) Professionalism, the Third Logic, Cambridge: Polity Press. Greenwood, R. and Hinings, C. (1993) ‘Understanding strategic change: The contribution of archetypes’, Academy of Management Journal 21(1): 1052–1081. Gustafsson, C. (1983) ‘Efficiency and related rules for organizational action’, International Studies of Management and Organization XIII(3): 62–68. Halford, S., Savage, M. and Witz, A. (1997) Gender, Careers and Organisations, London: MacMillan. Halliday, T.C. (1987) Beyond Monopoly: Lawyers, State Crisis and Professional Empowerment, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Harley, S., Muller-Camen, M. and Collin, A. (2003) ‘From academic communities to managed organisations: The implications for academic careers in UK and German universities’, Journal of Vocational Behavior 64(2): 329–345. Harman, G. (2002) ‘Academic leaders or corporate managers: Deans and heads in Australian higher education 1977 to 1997’, Higher Education Management and Policy 14(2): 53–70. Huisman, J., de Boer, H. and Goedegebuure, L. (2006) ‘The perception of participation in executive governance structures in Dutch universities’, Tertiary Education and Management 12(3): 227–239. Keka¨le, J. (2003) ‘Academic leaders as thermostats’, Tertiary Education and Management 9(4): 281–298. Kitchner, M. and Whiper, R. (1997) ‘Tracks of change in hospitals: A study of quasi-market transformation’, International Journal of Public Sector Management 10(1/2): 47–61. Musselin, C. (2008) ‘Towards a Sociology of Academic Work’, in A. Amaral, I. Bleiklie and C. Musselin (eds.) From Governance to Identity, a Festschrift for Mary Henkel, London: Springer, pp. 47–56. Higher Education Policy 2010 23

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