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Narratives and Sensemaking in the New Corporate University: The Socialization of First Year Communication Faculty by Andrew F. Herrmann A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Communication College of Arts and Sciences University of South Florida Major Professor: Arthur P. Bochner, Ph.D. Eric M. Eisenberg, Ph.D. Carolyn Ellis, Ph.D. Charles Guignon, Ph.D. Date of Approval: June 16, 2008 Keywords: academic capitalism, discourse, ethnography, Foucault, identity, interactive interview, storytelling, strategic ambiguity, Weick © Copyright 2008, Andrew F. Herrmann Dedication To my advisor, mentor, teacher and friend, Dr. Arthur P. Bochner. Thank you for the critiques, guidance, support and wisdom. And patience. To my committee members, Dr. Eric Eisenberg, Dr. Carolyn Ellis, and Dr. Charles Guignon. Thank you for your insights and encouragement. To my dissertating comrades – Dr. Tony Adams, Dr. Cara Mackie and Robyn Boylorn – for providing me feedback and keeping me grounded. To Dr. Bob Krizek for taking a chance on an adult student. To Mom: this is the culmination of all the “bad parenting.” To Charlie, Fred and Jim for consistently being there and never doubting. To my nephew Garrett, for reminding me to play. To the CB from the EB. To the brave participants who opened their lives to me, showing me the future. Table of Contents Abstract iii Chapter 1: The Agenda – Studying Organizational Socialization in the University 1 Chapter 2: The Construction of Social Reality and Academic Socialization 6 Vocational and Organizational Socialization of Newcomers 10 Individual Agency, Information-Seeking, and Sensemaking 17 The Socialization of the Academic 22 Chapter 3: The Changing University and the Discourses of Academic Capitalism 33 Narrative Sensemaking in Academia 42 Chapter 4: Methods and Modes of Representation 47 Methodological Approach 47 Why Request Narratives 50 Participants 50 Deborah 53 Frank 53 Harrison 53 Jo 54 Aaron 54 Gabe 54 Tell Me the Story… 55 Responses 58 Interactive Interviews 59 Socialization Processes 60 Transitional Identity 60 Advice 60 Epiphanies 60 Ethnographic Practices 61 Writing It Up 63 Chapter 5: Deborah: Stuck in the Middle 70 Chapter 6: Frank: Back to the Beginning 104 Chapter 7: Harrison: Happily Overworking 133 Chapter 8: Jo: The Changing University’s Effects 162 i Chapter 9: Aaron: Colleagues Are the Difference 193 Chapter 10: Gabe: Academia is Boring, Lonely and Weird 224 Chapter 11: The First Year (of Living Dangerously) in the Changing University 254 Deborah: Struggling in the Disempowered Present 257 Frank: Self-Doubt and Loathing 260 Harrison: Compromise and Competition 262 Jo: Learning the Ropes and Changing Research 264 Aaron: Shocked and Awed 267 Gabe: Boredom, Loneliness and Uncertainty 269 Chapter 12: Between-Case Commonalities and Inconsistencies 273 Socialization, Tactics, Orientations and Mentors 273 Together or Alone 273 Lessening Ambiguity – The Seven Tactics 275 Underwhelmed by University Orientation 277 Mentoring? What Mentoring? 279 Cohorts and the “Academic Subject” 282 Teaching as a Stabilizing Force 286 Strategic Ambiguity, Power and the Tenure Process 289 Tenure as Strategically Ambiguous 292 Foucaultian Power 293 Power and Tenure 297 The Power of the Pursuit of Prestige 300 Chapter 13: Reviewing the Ride on the Tenure Track 305 Everything is Different, Including Me 305 “The Only Good Dissertation…” 307 Socialization and the Reduction of Ambiguity 308 The Impact of Tenure Narratives 309 Future Directions 311 References 313 Endnotes 348 About the Author End Page ii Narratives and Sensemaking in the New Corporate University: The Socialization of First Year Communication Faculty Andrew F. Herrmann ABSTRACT I examined what brand new Ph.D.s in Communication experience when they start their first, entry-level, tenure-track assistant professor position at a new university. Through the lens of scocial construction, I review vocational and organizational socialization, individual agency by newcomers, academic socialization processes, and the concept of the academic career in the current climate of university change and transformation. Then, I present the method of research, including the population and sampling method, and rationales for utilizing a narrative approach, interactive interviewing, and autoethnographic writing. After presenting the participants’ narratives, I revisit both within— and between-case issues, beginning with socialization from the “bottom-up” lived experiences of the new faculty. The universities socialized these new professors through individual socialization processes. To lessen their uncertainty in their new place of work, the faculty members utilized seven individualized tactics to lessen ambiguity. Collectively, the new assistant professors saw the organizationally provided orientations and mentoring processes as inadequate. The loss of graduate school cohort necessitates the development of a new cohort with peers for new faculty development, despite the modern isolationist definition iii of the academic “subject.” The new communication faculty generally found teaching to be an activity of stabilization within the new equivocal university environment, despite the supposed unpreparedness of new faculty. I discuss the interrelated use of strategically ambiguous communication, power, and the disciplining of the self and how they relate to the tenure process. I examine how the discourses of academic capitalism impact the daily lives and decision-making of new faculty, including compromised research agendas and publication production. I interrogate the pursuit of prestige by higher educational institutions and the manner in which this pursuit adds additional pressure and stressors on new professors. Finally, I consider how the short-term narrative of “getting tenure” truncates the canonical narrative of the academic career, and legitimizes the outsider-within category of the new faculty members. iv Chapter 1 The Agenda – Studying Organizational Socialization in the University In this dissertation, I examined what brand new Ph.D.s in Communication experience when they start their first, entry-level, tenure-track assistant professor position at a new university. For newcomers to any organization, including academia, the need to make sense of a new situation, a new organizational culture, and one’s place in that culture is one of the first demands they face. The newcomer, however, is not necessarily ‘discovering’ a fixed organizational culture, but is actually involved in the co-creation of a socially constructed and changing organizational culture (Gergen, 2001b; Rorty, 1979; Weick, 2001). Sensemaking involves the development of a set of explanatory concepts or ideas that enables the newcomer to interpret and engage a complex and unfamiliar organizational setting. Most sensemaking research has focused on how people come to understand those events in which they are currently, or have in the past, participated, i.e., how individuals structure the unknown (Weick, 1979, 1995; Weick, Sutcliffe, & Obstfeld, 2005). Sensemaking can be viewed as a narrative process, accomplished through storytelling, which makes the unexpected intelligible, and helps individuals map their reality (Bochner, 1994, 2001; Eisenberg, 2007; Weick, 1999). Through narratives, newcomers create accounts of their experiences that are plausible, coherent, and reasonable, and that create opportunities for agency within social contexts. Narrative sensemaking by the newcomer clarifies the immediate past and refines possible future 1 actions. As the newcomer transitions to a new organization, he or she is continually re- making and refining identity, and simultaneously making sense of social contexts and events. I construe academic identity as an ongoing narrative accomplishment that emerges from efforts to create order and make retrospective sense of ongoing experiences. Although the Western tradition conceives of identity as something one creates and owns, identities are not created in isolation. Identities are mutually responsive, socially constructed and related to each other in cultural contexts, which both restrain and enable the formation of particular identities (Baxter, 2004; Leeds-Hurwitz, 1995). Identities are not unitary; they are relational. They are social achievements that provide a sense of belonging, a sense of personal significance, and sense of continuity though time (Baxter, 2004; Baxter & Montgomery, 1996; Bochner & Ellis, 1995; Eisenberg, 2007; Foster & Bochner, 2008; Guignon, 1998, 2004). As I have discovered through my own personal development, and as others have noted, the workplace is one social context that has a profound effect on personal identity (Alvesson & Wilmott, 2002; Bean & Eisenberg, 2006; Eisenberg, 2007; Weick, 1995). Through assimilation and socialization, individuals become members of organizations by internalizing the behaviors, norms, rules and values of their organizations (Allen, 2000; Ashcraft, 2004; Dickmeyer, 2003; Jablin, 2001). For the new faculty member, there are two overlapping spheres of organizational identity: identity with one’s workplace and identity with one’s discipline (Austin, 1990; Becher, 1989; Boyer, 1990). The first sphere involves the new professor’s institutional and departmental relationships, i.e., his place of work (Clark, 1987; Shumway, 1999; Tierney & Bensimon, 1996). For example upon 2 graduation, I will be able to say, “I’m from the University of