Sycophants and Targets: Constraints and Restraints under the ‘new managerialism’ Larry Smith ‘New Managerialism’ in the university sector refers to the increasingly pervasive use of corporate processes and practices for institutional leadership and management. The focus of ‘new managerialism’ is on efficiency, accountability and standards – generally packaged under the rhetoric of ‘quality assurance’. Under the ‘new managerialism’, business processes, practices and performance indicators override the previous dominance of learning, professional skills and knowledge in Australian universities. Jeannie Rea, the President of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) in Australia, recently commented that in Australian universities, there is now “simply no space to move, to innovate, to respond to the needs of increasingly diverse student cohorts, or to meet the community’s demands for research and engagement” (Rea,2011:6). Rea goes on to say that “many accuse senior managers of not listening to informed advice or criticism, of micromanaging and measuring everything. Staff feel under constant critical scrutiny and ... despite the rhetoric there is not really a whole lot of working smarter going on” (p.6). It is reasonable to assert that there is a growing crisis of confidence in the direction and management of Australian universities. The rapid drift to corporate management and leadership practices in our higher education institutions has restrained and constrained creativity and innovative practices. Compliance is rewarded, and critical thinking is actively opposed, particularly when it challenges the decisions and directions of senior management. The ‘new managerialism’ has seen our universities become market-driven businesses rather than student-driven sites for intellectual enrichment. This chapter explores a range of issues associated with the emerging dominance of the ‘new managerialism’ in the Australian higher education sector. It discusses the nature of university leadership and management in this new environment, and identifies a number of the ‘symptoms’ of ‘new managerialism’ that are overtly impacting on the operation of Australian universities and, in particular, on the capacity of staff to be innovative and creative professionals. The basic theme of the chapter is that current university leadership and management practices have divided staff into two distinct groups, the ‘sycophants’ (supporters) and the ‘targets’ (critics). The ‘sycophants’ are not disposed to innovation, at least on an individual level, and the ‘targets’ are unable to leverage innovation because they have been professionally isolated from critical resources and decision- making forums. The environment for the ‘new managerialism’ in Australian universities In recent times, Australian universities have been subjected to a rapidly changing social, political and economic environment. Foremost among these changes have been: a politically-driven move from 1 an elite to a mass higher education system; significantly decreased government funding of the university sector, with an increased expectation that universities will generate a substantial proportion of their own operating costs; and exposure of Australian universities to the operation of an educational market in which they are not only in competition with each other, but also with an increasing number of private institutions and overseas universities. For at least the last two decades, Australian universities have enacted pervasive changes to their mode of operation as they have sought to respond to fundamental changes in Federal and State government higher education policy agendas and funding regimes. Increasingly, university learning and teaching has been “embedded in a corporate context, driven by market needs” (Crossman, 2005:23) as governments of all persuasions have sought to promote “a more efficient and responsive system” (Sotirakou,2004:348). In the face of significantly decreased government funding, Australian universities have had little alternative but to increase their income from commercial and entrepreneurial ventures because “without the strategies of business [for increasing revenue], universities would be experiencing a grim future in a world where western governments generally appear to be turning their faces to the wall” (Crossman,2005:24). As Sotirakou (2004:348) notes, universities have tried to compensate for the marked fall in government income through “liaisons with business and industry, through partnerships focused on innovative product development, and through the marketing of educational and business services”. The outcome of recent government agendas, then, has been for higher education in Australia to become an educational market place in which knowledge is the primary commodity of trade. In this educational market place, the major source of funding has become international students, who are now worth more than $6 billion a year to Australian universities (Smith & Winter-Irving,2009). Competition among Australian universities in an educational market has been strongly supported by Australian governments because, at least from an economic viewpoint, it is seen as a way of improving performance, productivity and client services. However, a review of the literature reveals that there have been no methodologically rigorous research studies that clearly and unambiguously demonstrate that the quality of learning in Australian universities has improved in any marked way in response to the competitive environment of the higher education sector: indeed, there is a considerable bank of anecdotal evidence to suggest that the quality of learning has, in many ways and for many students, decreased. There is also increasing evidence that competition among Australian universities has heightened the level of scrutiny among employers and tertiary students regarding the quality and useability of the outcomes from university study. If this is true, then it follows that there will be an increased focus on cutting-edge teaching, learning and research because universities need to respond “quickly and in untraditional ways to these demands” (Crossman,2005:25). University leadership under the ‘new managerialism’ Since the 1990s, Australian universities have increasingly taken on a persona that is less that of a scholarly community and much more that of a business enterprise. The change, asserts Kuiper 2 (2005), has seen universities primarily become “managed entities. Institutional values are management values. The discourses that prevail at the institutional level are management discourses” (p.13). This ‘new managerialism’ has seen a move in universities to a tightly integrated regime of managerial discipline and control that is markedly different from the professional environment that preceded it. This has created a conundrum, argues Kuiper (2005), because there are now “two cultures existing under the same institutional roof: the management culture and the academic culture … [and] … the two cultures frequently talk past each other and both seem barely to see the relevance of the other” (p.14). In simple terms, it is axiomatic that the public accountability and market-driven entrepreneurialism that underpin the ‘new managerialism’ are in significant conflict with traditional notions of academic culture and values, yet both are co-existing within the governing parameters and practices of contemporary Australian universities. One of the more intriguing issues surrounding the emergence of the ‘new managerialism’ in Australian universities is that those driving the management culture in higher education are almost exclusively former academics who have gained most of their professional training and development from a system that, at the time, was antithetical to a managerial culture. Thus, suggests Kuiper (2005:14), the “corporatisation of universities has been implemented from within as much as from without”. Current university leaders must, then, be held equally culpable with politicians and industry leaders for the corporate direction of contemporary universities because they largely have been content to respond to external pressures for change, rather than be true leaders of change in their institutions and in our society generally. Indeed, university leaders have often pursued with open enthusiasm the structures and processes necessary for their universities to be more competitive and, above all, more business-like. The general trend in most Australian universities is for any opposition to the corporate agenda to be crushed quickly and often ruthlessly by institutional leaders whose current status was established on the back of an academic career built around the pursuit of open debate and academic freedom! Universities in Australia now operate as multi-million dollar businesses with hundreds if not thousands of employees (academic and administrative staff) and tens of thousands of customers (domestic and international students, and research and consultancy clients in business and the community), yet the members of their senior management teams rarely have formal training or experience in business leadership and management. As a consequence, Australian university leaders have had to surround themselves with large numbers of experienced business professionals in order to obtain sound advice on how to run the business of the university, and on how to attain and maintain that all important business edge over their competitor universities. Nevertheless, it is the capacity to make rapid