Alternatives to managerialism in higher education and science

Abstract

Commitment to efficiency amid the implementation of competition principles and the market-oriented approach stimulates the emergence of contradictory tendencies such as commoditization and bureaucratization of higher education and science. The paper explores the dissemination of ideas of managerialism and related institutional traps in academic environment. Methodologically, the study rests on original institutional economics and the theory of reforms for analyzing institutional traps in the education and academic sphere. The authors apply qualitative methods and focus group research to identify possible alternatives to managerialism. Using data from three focus groups, we analyze institutional traps in education and science and the mechanisms for eliminating them through identification of opinions, values and experience of respondents (actors). The study underlines that there is a need for considering principles, models and regulation mechanisms in education and science alternative to managerialism. They are being formed either in the context of rules, routines, norms and management technologies emerging as a result of evolution and actors’ adaptation to the changing environment, or as processes deliberately planned and developed within academic self-government and self-organization and/or as a result of state policy. The research develops alternative management mechanisms in the field of education and science with reference to the identified institutional traps and actors that can act as bearers of these alternatives in academic community.