| Abstract: |
In recent decades, many universities have been moving in the direction of a
more hierarchical and centralised structure, with top-down planning and
reduced local autonomy for departments. Yet the management literature over
this period has stressed the numerous benefits of flatter organisational
structures, decentralisation and local autonomy for sections or departments.
What might explain this paradox? And why have academics remained strangely
quiet about this, meekly accepting their fate? The paper critically examines
the dangers of centralised top-down management, increasingly bureaucratic
procedures, teaching to a prescribed formula, and research driven by
assessment and performance targets, illustrating these with a number of
specific examples. It discusses a number of possible driving forces of these
worrying developments, and concludes by asking whether academics may be in
danger of suffering the fate of the boiled frog. |