“Systemic Managerial Constraints”. How universities influence the information behaviour of HSS early career academics
| Pages | 862-879 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-07-2017-0111 |
| Published date | 09 July 2018 |
| Date | 09 July 2018 |
| Author | Rebekah Willson |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Records management & preservation,Document management,Classification & cataloguing,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Scholarly communications/publishing,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management,Information & communications technology,Internet |
“Systemic Managerial Constraints”
How universities influence the information
behaviour of HSS early career academics
Rebekah Willson
Department of Computer and Information Sciences, University of Strathclyde,
Glasgow, UK
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to explore the information behaviour of early career academics
(ECAs) within humanities and social sciences (HSS) disciplines who are starting their first continuing
academic position. The proposed grounded theory of Systemic Managerial Constraints (SMC) is introduced as
a way to understand the influence of neoliberal universities on the information behaviour of ECAs.
Design/methodology/approach –This qualitative research used constructivist grounded theory methodology.
Participants were 20 Australian and Canadian ECAs from HSS. Their information practices and information
behaviour were examined for a period of five to seven months using two interviews and multiple “check-ins”.
Data were analysed through two rounds of coding, where codes were iteratively compared and contrasted.
Findings –SMC emerged from the analysis and is proposed as a grounded theory to help better understand
the context of higher education and its influence on ECAs’information behaviour. SMC presents university
managerialism, resulting from neoliberalism, as pervasive and constraining both the work ECAs do and how
they perform that work. SMC helps to explain ECAs’uncertainty and precarity in higher education and
changing information needs as a result of altered work role, which, in turn, leads ECAs to seek and share
information with their colleagues and use information to wield their personal agency to respond to SMC.
Originality/value –The findings from this paper provide a lens through which to view universities
as information environments and the influence these environments can have on ECAs’information practices
and information behaviour.
Keywords Neoliberalism, Higher education, Information behaviour, Social sciences, Transition,
Humanities, Early career academics
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Early career academics (ECAs) face a wide range of challenges when starting their first
continuing academic position. Experts in their content areas –and often with research and
teaching experience –ECAs now have to learn how to carry out a new role in a new context.
Additionally, many academics move to new cities or countries to take up positions,
requiring adaptation to unfamiliar higher education sectors and university systems,
as well as the personal challenges of setting up a life in a new location. The challenges of
“being new”are added to the current challenges in higher education, which, in recent years
has seen a massification of education (i.e. the sharp increase in the number of students in
higher education), increased teaching loads, increased audit and reporting requirements,
decreased job stability, and increased workloads (e.g. Côté and Allahar, 2011; Gill, 2009;
Ginsberg, 2011; Giroux, 2007; Hil, 2012; Kimber and Ehrich, 2015).
The challenges in higher education have frequently been attributed to the influence of
neoliberalism within public universities and the treatment of institutions of higher education as
corporations (e.g. Chomsky, 2015; Côté and Allahar, 2011; Ginsberg, 2011; Giroux, 2007, 2014;
Journal of Documentation
Vol. 74 No. 4, 2018
pp. 862-879
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0022-0418
DOI 10.1108/JD-07-2017-0111
Received 23 July 2017
Revised 26 February 2018
Accepted 4 March 2018
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0022-0418.htm
The author wishes to thank the participants for taking time out of their busy schedules to participate, along
with PhD supervisors, Prof Lisa M. Given and ProfAnnemaree Lloyd, for their help and support. Lastly, the
author would like to acknowledge the financial support received for this research, including a Doctoral
Fellowship, Social Sciences and Research Council of Canada (Award No. 752-2014-0499) and an Australian
Postgraduate Award International Postgraduate Research Scholarship (Charles Sturt University).
862
JD
74,4
Hil, 2012; Kimber and Ehrich, 2015; Lorenz, 2012). While neoliberalism is a contested term
(e.g. Boas and Gans-Morse, 2009; Flew, 2014; Harman, 2007; Mitrović, 2005; Thorsen, 2010), it has
been described as a “series of ideas about socio-economic order”(Flew, 2014, p. 64, emphasis in
original) and “a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can be
best advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional
framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade”(Harvey,
2005, p. 2). Neoliberalism, as the “defining political economic paradigm of our time”(McChesney,
1998, p. 7), has direct influence on the institutional conditions of academic work. Neoliberalism
within universities typically entails a decreased government funding, increased pressure for
external income (e.g. grants, international student tuition), increased casualisation (i.e. increasing
the number of casual and adjunct contracts), and increased workloads (e.g. cutting professional
staff positions, increasing academics’administrative burden). Hil (2012) described the move in
academia towards “economic rationalism, commercialisation, managerialism, corporate
governance”that shifts the mission of universities and the components that constitute
academic life (p. 7). This shift towards managerialism and an audit culture brings with it
increased bureaucracy and increased administrative activities to the day-to-day work of
academics. It is into this context that ECAs begin their academic careers.
As the transition to their first job is a time of upheaval for most ECAs, it is important to
examine how ECAs interact with information in their new university environment. While
academics as a group have been the subject of much information behaviour research, much of
this has been on their finding and use of formal information sources for research purposes,
rather than the information they need in the performance of their day-to-day work. To explain
the contextual influences of universities on the information behaviour of ECA in humanitiesand
social sciences (HSS) disciplines, the grounded theory of Systemic Managerial Constraints (SMC)
is proposed. SMC is a grounded theory about contextual factors that influence ECAs’academic
work and their resulting interactions with information on a day-to-day basis. The term refers to
the pervasive manageralism within universities, the increased roles of managers that shift the
focus of higher education to efficiency, effectiveness, quality assurance, accountability, and cost
cutting. Managerialism is systemic in its influence, which largely acts as a constraint on
academics’work. This paper will discuss ECAs’uncertainty in response to the precarity within
higher education and increased information needs due to changing work roles as contextual
aspects of SMC, the results of which include altered information-seeking and sharing practices,
and the use of information to employ agency in response to SMC.
Literature review
Academics’information behaviour
Academics’work is complex, requiring abilities to work with information across a variety of
roles. However, within the information behaviour literature, the focus has tended to be on
information seeking and use of formally published information sources during research
processes rather than on the performance of the everyday aspects of work. Teaching, service, and
administrative work, while part of most academics’jobs, receive less attention, failing to look
inclusively at academics’information behaviour. While academics seek information for writing
and conducting research for publication, maintaining currency, and for lecture preparation
(Rupp-Serrano and Robbins, 2013), the literature focusses on academics’information seeking for
research. Much of the information behaviour research with academics is based on Ellis’et al.
(1993) categorisations of academics’information-seeking patterns (e.g. Bronstein, 2007; Chu, 1999;
Ge, 2010; Meho and Tibbo, 2003; Savolainen, 2017). Some of this research examines the stages of
academics’research processes (e.g. Bronstein, 2007; Chu, 1999), while other studies, in addition to
examining research stages, examine academics’information-seeking behaviour more broadly
(e.g. Meho and Tibbo, 2003; Foster, 2004). A focus on social aspects of academics’information
behaviour, including information sharing, has become more prominent.
863
Information
behaviour of
HSS ECAs
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