The Culture of Control in the Contemporary University

Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is to present a critique of the fundamental ideas of neoliberal university management, where the culture of control and the culture of evidence play key roles. It is based on the concepts of new public management as applied to universities, which have been reflected on in a critical management studies stream and other radical trends in social sciences. This chapter puts forward a question about the effectiveness of applied neoliberal management solutions and the legitimacy of their criticism under the radical trend in management, pedagogy and social sciences. Along with making public goods, such as health care, welfare and higher education, accessible to the general public in the twentieth century, the problem of growing costs of such services emerged as well.

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Introduction

The purpose of this chapter is to present a critique of the fundamental ideas of neoliberal university management, where the culture of control and the culture of evidence play key roles. It is based on the concepts of new public management as applied to universities, which have been reflected on in a critical management studies stream and other radical trends in social sciences. This chapter puts forward a question about the effectiveness of applied neoliberal management solutions and the legitimacy of their criticism under the radical trend in management, pedagogy and social sciences.

Along with making public goods, such as healthcare, welfare and higher education, accessible to the general public in the twentieth century, the problem of growing costs of such services emerged as well. A solution that is chosen in line with a new public management approach or, more broadly, neoliberalism, is privatisation of public services combined with the transformation of the public good into the private good and offloading its maintenance costs on to the purchaser (Bullen et al. 2004; Amaral and Meek 2003; Lynch and Moran 2006; Steier 2003). This also refers to higher education, which is being increasingly privatised in many regions, especially in developing countries. Researchers identifying themselves with the critical trend perceive at the same time the expansion of neoliberal ideology that justifies the changes made (Giroux 2002, pp. 425–464; McLaren 2005).

The argument structure is based on a dialectic approach, according to which the neoliberal position and the culture of control concept (thesis) have been presented, then submitted to criticism (antithesis), and eventually possible synthesis has been sought. First, the most important neoliberal management methods and the characteristics of the culture of control have been gathered. Next, the essence of neoliberal management of universities, which is based on the concepts of new public management and its reflection in the cultural sphere, has been described. And then they have been submitted to criticism with an attempt made to balance neoliberalism and the culture of control.

Neoliberal University

The academic culture in the heyday of the research university and the Humboldt-type university was generally not the subject of scientific reflection, because it existed as an obvious, assimilated pattern of functioning of the university. Cultural studies began to appear along with the symptoms of profound change, the traditional models of the university have been subject to for the last few decades. One of the axes of this change is the evolution from a culture based on trust to a culture based on verification, audit and control. Traditional academic culture bestowed academic staff with trust, based on the assumption that the professor’s ethos of university faculty commits them to decent scientific and didactic activity. In the course of history, under the influence of many cultural, social and economic factors, among which the development of new public management played an important role, decomposition of the traditional model of the university occurred and the patterns of the culture of trust disappeared. A new formation, in the literature of the subject called evidence culture, audit culture, control culture or assessment culture, is developing to replace it (Shore and Wright 1999, pp. 557–575). Evidence culture is based on the concept of managerial control and management of processes and quality at the university. Its underlying assumptions are taken from new public management and applied to universities, namely (Shore and Wright 1999, pp. 557–575):

• embedding competitive mechanisms in the education system and the activities of universities;

• economisation of higher education sector activities that will create constant pressure on savings in universities and permanent reduction of the share of public finances in the activities of state universities;

• partial privatisation of higher education by creating the possibility to open private universities as well as the outsourcing of some services in public universities;

• transformation of the management systems of universities from a traditional academic and collegial administration system into a managerial-corporate system, modelled on business applications;

• implementation of the accounting system (accountability), which will allow for controlling university management (financial, quality assurance) processes,

• change of education orientation from academic to professional, by adjusting teaching programs to the needs of the labour market.

Neoliberal Management Methods

The concept of neoliberal management methods is criticised by the radical trends in the social and management sciences. The neoliberal management methods are usually largely identified with the concepts of new public management, and thus they adopt the assumptions that organisational solutions used in the business sector should imitate the concepts known in business (Lorenz 2012, pp. 599–629). This involves orientation towards competition within the sector, limiting state interventionism, freedom of competition, managerial decision-making methods and strategic, and structural and cultural solutions modelled on corporations (Table 5.1).

Table 5.1 Selected “neoliberal” management methods in public sectors

The new public management trend is one of the fundamental points of reference in public sector analyses (Boston et al. 1996). Business activity models are transferred to public activity, which is also the subject of criticism (Chang 2008; Dunleavy and Margetts 2006). Jan-Erik Lane describes numerous examples of effective implementation of the new public management concepts in various countries, indicating also the role of the cultural context and institutions (Lane 2002). In the cultural sphere, public organisations can also reflect business solutions, which is not devoid of controversy (Barzelay 2001). In his attempt to synthesise the new public management trend, Christopher Hood indicates the existence of a conflict of values between striving towards “effectiveness” and “equality” in public management. A solution might be referring to the possibility of “endless reprogrammability” of the new public management trend allowing for balancing between these values (Hood 1991, pp. 3–19).

Neoliberal Management of Universities

Traditional universities were founded on the ethos of science, and education was understood as the Enlightenment inheritance (Lynch 2006, pp. 1–17). The ethos of science is understood as creating the fundamental common good for the development of humankind and improvement of prosperity. According to Robert Merton’s norms, science referring to communalism, general availability, disinterestedness and universality remains the public good by its nature and should not be privatised (Merton 1973). Higher education in a traditional university, being the community of researchers and students, was inseparably interwoven with scientific research and for this reason alone had the status of the public good. The universities were also to protect valuable, disinterested and critical education, which prepares for the role of a citizen and develops humanistic values (De La Fuente 2002; Lieberwitz 2004). Over the last few decades, we have been observing gradual transition of the universities from universal human values orientation to market orientation. Higher education has ceased to be perceived as the public good, and started to be the private good for which you pay. Rutherford says that the universities have become “corporate consumer-oriented networks” (Rutherford 2005). Summing up, the critics of market changes raise a number of important topics that question the directions of changes to the contemporary university:

• 1. Higher education in the traditional university used to be perceived as the “public good”. Over the last decades, however, it has been perceived more and more as the “private good”, and thereby as the type of investment in a personal or family career (Marginson 2011, pp. 411–433). Therefore education is losing its mission of civic education to foster community and collaborative spirit (Sławek 2013).

• 2. Universities submitted to market pressure, beside charging students with tuition fees, seek other sources of income, which include: commercialisation of research (e.g., patents, licences, spin-offs and the renting of infrastructure) (Perkmann 2013, pp. 423–442), which might lead to the instrumentalisation of university activity and the decline of the ethos of science.

• 3. The application of management methods taken from business, which allow for the increase of economic effectiveness and at the same time make the universities resemble corporations by applying the concept of new public management (Guglietti 2012).

• 4. A shift to more hierarchical and managerial forms of organisation consisting in empowering the managing functions (chancellors and presidents) at the expense of collegial decision-making; establishing supervisory bodies with broad prerogatives, where business sector representatives play a significant role; and the weakening of academic and trade union liberties and academics’ participation in making decisions on the university (Deem 2008).

• 5. Creating a new organisational hierarchy within the university consisting in distinguishing a new group of academic managers, expanding and enhancing the prerogatives of university administration. Employing more administrative workers and increasing pays for the university management (Webster and Mosoetsa 2002, pp. 59–82).

• 6. Making university employment more flexible by switching to contracts and making employment less stable. More people employed under temporary contracts and focusing on teaching only (Shore and Davidson 2014, pp. 12–28; Vernon 2010).

• 7. The development of audit, evidence and control culture consisting in implementing quantitative measures of effectiveness to the key aspects of university activity. Implementing motivation mechanisms for the academics consisting in measuring scientific achievements and making promotion, and even remuneration, conditional upon them. In consequence, pressure appears to publish and apply quantitative measures to scientific activity, which is not very measurable (Castree 2002, pp. 222–229).

• 8. Linking higher education closely to the needs of business and labour market, which removes universal meaning from education to replace it by specialist professional education (Levidow 2002, pp. 1–21).

• 9. University functioning becomes more and more determined by economy and measured using effectiveness measures. However, the problem actually consists in the immeasurability of creative work. The result of creative work marketisation is that the university and academics must in many cases compete with corporations or serve them with their research results. Such an ideological shift in the concept of knowledge largely limits research and teaching in humanities and social sciences reducing them to the role of professional education (Zabrodska 2011, pp. 709–719).

• 10. Universities service the professional interests of many groups very well. Professional associations in many disciplines, such as medicine, dentistry, law, pharmacy, psychology, building engineering and many others, have a considerable impact on university education in many countries by shaping standards, course content and certification of professional qualifications (Lynch 2006, pp. 1–17).

• 11. The neoliberal trend manifests itself in the privatisation of the majority of public services, including education above all, especially at the higher level (Angus 2004; Bullen et al. 2004; Dill 2003; Lynch and Moran 2006; Steier 2003; Stevenson 1999).

Criticism in Research on Neoliberalism

A question can be put forward whether narrative of neoliberalism, forced by the representatives of the critical current, is not an oversimplification. Let us consider a few arguments here that might question the cognitive value of the very notion of neoliberalism and indicate the value of implemented changes, unperceived by the critics of neoliberalism. First, the “neoliberalism” term derives from political life rather than from in-depth scientific reflection. A simplified division into the left and the right resulting in a dichotomised manner of looking at the reality is a sort of Manichaen perception of contemporary social reality. Many representatives of the academic community and activists sympathising with leftist views tried to find a “banner” they could unite under. There is no better method of internal integration than to clearly identify and stigmatise the “enemy”. Therefore, an “anti-neoliberal” camp started to crystallise in the 1990s and it built an alternative reality versus the political and scientific establishment. The opposite side did not lack radicals either who treated the assumptions of classical economy as a dogma and moved towards market fundamentalism without trying to enter into dialogue and reach compromise. To quote an example referring to UK educational policy: a clause on the confirmation of “academic freedom” by the legislator, which underlay the system of neoliberal changes to British education, disappeared completely from the original version of the Education Reform Act of 1988 designed by Lord Kenneth Baker. Only the actual threat of its rejection by the House of Lords caused reintroduction of academic freedom to the Act (after: Antonowicz 2013, p. 37). The academic discourse did not lack dogmatic standpoints either Radical approaches, which sometimes disavow in an emotional manner new public management and the direction of changes implemented to higher education, also started to prevail among the representatives of the critical current (Antonowicz 2013, p. 38). For example, Chris Lorenz defines new public management in scientific texts as “bullshit discourse”, which can be translated more elegantly as “bull discourse” (Lorenz 2012, pp. 599–629). There are also political groups formed that often refer to Marxism and organise active resistance against the educational system, e.g. ROU (“Really Open University”), an organisation occupying institutions and referring to the slogans, such as: “Strike/occupation/transformation” (Pusey and Sealey-Huggins 2013). Thus, mixing up academic and political discourses as well as ideological and emotional stigmatisation by both parties to the dispute are not conducive to calm reflection on occurring changes. On the other hand, however, maybe creating the potential for resistance and a critical approach to changes could deter political decision-makers from implementing even more radical privatisation changes. Maybe also thanks to that, universities in many countries retained their partial autonomy, and science and university education have not been privatised completely. The unquestionable value of the critical camp seems to be triggering discussion on the problems of new public management and neoliberalism. While giving credit to critical and “anti-neoliberal” researchers, perceiving the values in occurring changes is also worthwhile in order not to limit oneself to criticism only. Undoubtedly, the changes over the past few decades have included the egalitarianisation of education achieved through the process of making university education widely available. Popularisation of higher education and social mobility increase are the value that the critical researches cannot question either. Of course, it gave rise to a number of problems related to: education quality, limiting availability for the poorest, the development of purely profit-oriented universities, strengthening the position of elite universities, but it removed the aspect of upper-class privilege from university education. From the point of view of the left wing acting in favour of giving equal opportunities to social groups, and especially the disadvantaged ones, the value of egalitarianism is hard to question. Referring to the Polish example, it seems that a scholarisation ratio leap from approximately 8 % in 1990 to over 40 % in 2015 could not be achieved without partially transferring education costs to students and without opening the sector for founding private schools (Sulkowski 2016). It would seem that retaining free full-time studies at public universities throughout 25 years helped the individuals from the lower income groups. Unfortunately, as research shows, the members of higher income families, living in big cities, used free studies in Poland statistically more often, whereas paid courses at private universities or part-time courses were taken up more often by less wealthy individuals. Thus, the lack of tuition fee does not always contribute to the increase of egalitarianism in education (Domański 2010, pp. 7–33).

It also seems that critical but balanced look at the development of the contemporary university might bring higher value than a radical viewpoint. Of course, the voices of radical criticism are the loudest, most spectacular and thereby they sometimes inspire thinking and questioning of seemingly obvious solutions. On the other hand, however, radicalism is not conducive to decision-making, dialogue and reaching compromise solutions. The consequence of permanent criticism of changes forced by politicians can be the opposition of part of the academic community, which leads to defiance, resistance and rejection of changes or complete twisting of their true meaning. It seems to be the Polish case, where, as research shows, a significant part of the academic community rejects changes, while the simultaneous arrogance of central authorities makes dialogue very difficult (Merton 1973). One of the solutions can be seeking a compromise on contemporary university governance. There is no going back to the Humboldt-type university, which picture is actually often idealised by the representatives of the critical current. Making education widely available has initiated an avalanche of changes that transforms the university. However, it needs to regain controllability and the academic and managing community should search for the solutions together. Radical researchers do not have a monopoly on criticism here. Philip Altbach, representing the mainstream, also objects to treating higher education solely as a market commodity and “private good” and perceives the threats of the decline of the academic ethos and the pauperisation of academic staff (Altbach 2015). In consequence of that criticism, however, he offers solutions the implementation of which is based on dialogue that underlies democracy and on understanding that change to the university model has been effected already and the subject of discussion is in fact the level of marketisation of higher education and science. Some researchers who also assume a standpoint identified as neoliberal perceive the value of the academic ethos and culture. E. Grady Bogue and Kimberely Bingham Hall emphasise the value of the ethos recognising it as the out-of-system components of education quality. The authors describe case studies where university managers transformed the system of education quality to the better with courage, passion and integrity (Bogue and Hall 2003, pp. 215–217). A good example here is the author of “The Best American University”, who, as the president of Cornell University, helped to make it one of the best universities in the world (Cole 2012). It is also hard to question the value of the competition mechanism, or rather collaboration of universities, for the importance of image, quality of education and effective leadership (Bakonyi & Humanitas 2011).

Culture under the Pressure of Change

The academic culture in the heyday of the research university and the Humboldt-type university was generally not the subject of scientific reflection, because it existed as an obvious, assimilated pattern of functioning of the university. Cultural studies began to appear along with the symptoms of profound change, the traditional models of the university have been subject to for the last few decades. One of the axes of this change is the evolution from a culture based on trust to a culture based on verification, audit and control. Traditional academic culture bestowed academic staff with trust, based on the assumption that the professor’s ethos of university faculty commits them to decent scientific and didactic activity. In the course of history, under the influence of many cultural, social and economic factors, among which the development of new public management played an important role, decomposition of the traditional model of the university occurred and the patterns of the culture of trust disappeared. A new formation, in the literature of the subject called evidence culture, audit culture, control culture or assessment culture, is developing to replace it (Farkas 2013, pp. 13–31). Evidence culture is based on the concept of managerial control and management of processes and quality at the university. Its underlying assumptions are taken from new public management and applied to universities, namely (Singh 2001, pp. 8–180):

• embedding competitive mechanisms in the education system and the activities of universities;

• economisation of higher education sector activities that will create constant pressure on savings in universities and permanent reduction of the share of public finances in the activities of state universities;

• partial privatisation of higher education by: creating the possibility to open private universities as well as the outsourcing of some services in public universities;

• transformation of the management systems of universities from a traditional academic and collegial administration system into a managerial-corporate system, modelled on business applications;

• implementation of the accounting system (accountability), which will allow for controlling university management (financial, quality assurance) processes;

• change of education orientation from academic to professional, by adjusting teaching programs to the needs of the labour market.

The strength of university culture was embedding academic self-control mechanisms in the activities of the university. The internalised academic ethos’ mechanism was not 100 per cent effective, but the costs of functioning were low. A professor felt bound in the didactic area to deliver classes of proper quality, set requirements for students, control younger workers and advise them and to participate in the development of curricula. In the scientific area, the need to carry out research and publish was connected with pursuing a scientific career and sprang from inner motivation. In practice, only part of the academics carried out research, the others focused on teaching. Research staff enjoyed higher professional status proportionate to their scientific position (Altbach 2015). Such awards were ingrained in the academic culture and they were not reflected in financial motivation. Traditionally, the academic work system was relatively unformalised and gave a lot of freedom to choose activities, working time as well as research issues. It was also characterised by collegiality and teamwork orientation, which often led to slowing down decision-making mechanisms, but gave the academic staff the sense of participation and engagement in the functioning of the university.

Transformation into control culture is combined with departure from trust in the employee to the mechanisms of motivation and control. The result is to be higher effectiveness and cost-efficiency of the new system. Solution implementation costs are connected first of all with hiring professional administration and IT system implementation, which however should be compensated by higher teaching and research productivity and quality. The key values for control culture are productivity, effectiveness, quality of scientific work and teaching, and cost-efficiency. A traditional collegial and team approach is being transformed into a quasi-corporate model. Academic staff have been formally divided into the groups of academics and teachers. Assessment, motivation, and controlling systems and mechanisms have been implemented in both research and teaching areas. In the cultural sphere, the system transparency is growing, because employees’ achievements can be measured and compared, but the oppressive nature of the system is growing at the same time. The employees are subject to pressure on scientific achievements, which are parameterised and serve as the basis for prolonging employment, promotion and granting awards. The didactic staff are formally appraised by superiors and students, which provides data used for improvement, but sometimes is also a painful confrontation of the employee with his/her ideas of own work value (Sułkowski 2016). The direction of cultural transformation taking place is defined, and Polish universities are at the various stages of change as compared to the universities worldwide (Kwiek 2015, pp. 77–89; Kwiek and Antonowicz 2015, pp. 41–68). Drawing from the experiences of other countries, we can learn about the consequences of cultural changes occurring in higher education, in the area of culture.

Culture of Academic Quality

The academic culture changes under economic pressure, which is reflected in governance and accountability processes. Marylin Strathern calls this change a transition towards “audit culture”, which is a radical change versus Humboldt-type academic cultures (Strathern 2000). “Audit culture” is connected with the development of the “audit society”, where all actions, if they are to be recognised as legal, must be audited and submitted to potential public control (Power 1997). In case of the academic culture, communitarianism and organised scepticism, which is based on the values similar to audit culture but refers to science only and not to education, exist in the Mertonian ethos – Communalism, universalism, disinterestedness, organised scepticism (CUDOS) (Merton 1996). In the traditional academic ethos, teaching remained within the individual responsibility of a professor. Formalisation of the education quality management systems eliminates the culture of trust, and replaces it by audit culture. The change of the university ethos is connected with the assimilation of the “rites of passage” characteristic of the culture of trust and academic ethos in control, supervision and accountability culture characteristic of the accountability concept (Power 1997; Douglas 1982). Thus, the heart of the system is the mechanism of bureaucratic control, which is forced by the state but can cause inertia and demotivation at the same time.

The UNESCO Glossary of Quality Assurance and Accreditation defines quality culture as “a set of shared, accepted, and integrated patterns of quality to be found in the organisational cultures and the management systems of higher education institutions” (Vlăsceanu et al. 2004, p. 14). The awareness and engagement in creating quality and evidence culture lead to the effective functioning of the quality system. An alternative notion is used in respect of quality culture, namely evidence culture, which can be juxtaposed with a traditional academic culture based on trust. Evidence culture was intended to be the system of values, norms and cultural patterns, which is characteristic of the university and where the emphasis is put on: self-assessment, teaching effects, academic staff and administration commitment to gathering, analysing and interpreting the data on the functioning of the university. According to some researchers, evidence culture forms the basis for quality culture (see: Bensimon et al. 2004). Thus, according to the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC), evidence culture requires the organisation and its employees to deliver data verifying the achievement of strategic goals (Appleton and Wolff 2004, pp. 77–101).

Cultural Change Process

Ernest Grady Bogue and Kimberly Bingham Hall describe tension between two cultures in the contemporary higher education system in the United States. We have the culture of stewardship on the one hand, which treats higher education as the public good that needs to be fostered and its autonomy needs to be preserved. On the other hand, we have the ideal of quality improvement culture focusing on teaching effectiveness, transparency of accounts, professional administration and effective management (Bogue and Hall 2003, pp. 224–225). Tension between these two cultures can be reflected in seven dilemmas:

• improvement versus stewardship,

• peer review versus regulation,

• processes versus results,

• enhancement versus compliance,

• consultation versus evaluation,

• trust versus evidence,

• interpretation/holistic versus measurement/specifics (Bogue and Hall 2003, p. 229).

The general direction of transition is from peer review, enhancement and trust culture towards more control, evaluation and regulation culture. Attempts to reconcile the concept of stewardship with improvement orientation should put emphasis on entrepreneurship with the academic ethos culture. Peter Drucker says that American universities are a model example of entrepreneurship development, although he has simultaneously projected that the universities would cease to exist by 2030 (Gumport and Sporn 1999; Drucker 1997). For the universities to continue to exist in the future, there might be a need to establish public-private partnerships that will allow for maintaining an increasingly expensive trend of science and higher education development (Bogue and Hall 2003, p. 234). An attempt to reconcile these “two cultures” should take the following demands into account:

• continued application of peer reviews,

• working out and application of university effectiveness indicators,

• application of effectiveness audits,

• enhancing academic partnerships and market-oriented universities,

• university accountability for the achievement of goals and missions.

It is worth to note that organisational culture changes relatively slowly in comparison with other subsystems. Change to strategy, structure and then to organisational procedures is usually implemented in a controlled manner and relatively fast in the organisational system. The organisational culture functions implicite, is assimilated, refers to the mentality of culture participants and therefore it will change in a much slower manner. Cultural change is also hard to foresee and control. Control culture is secondary to changes to structures, strategy and as organisational procedures are developed, but it becomes autonomous after some time and operates in combination with other subsystems. This means that the impact of organisational culture, which is not a controllable passive medium but an active subsystem, must also be taken into account when interpreting the functioning of the university as an organisation. At the stage of transformation from the culture of trust to control culture, there is a considerable resistance from a petrified and conservative academic culture. It is also hard to foresee whether the values, standards and cultural patterns shaped in the process of change implementation will be conducive to or hinder change implementation. Marvin Peterson and Melinda Spencer indicate two aspects of academic culture functioning, which on the one hand assumes the form of a rational and planned activity, while, on the other hand, it is rather contained in the intuitive and subconscious sphere. The authors indicate that tension in discourse on culture and describe paradigm change towards qualitative and intuitive orientation (Peterson and Spencer 1990, pp. 3–18).

Thus many problems with creating a new university model and its operation can be interpreted at the cultural level. Control culture was faced by considerable resistance from the academic community which assimilated the values of the culture of trust. Academic autonomy and freedom were reflected in a responsible, but not very formalised and restrictive approach to teaching and research. Thus, tension arises between formalism, countability and precision of control culture versus openness, autonomy and freedom of the culture of trust. There are more of such cultural confusions. The culture of trust is based on the authority of professorial staff, whereas control culture makes managers and developed central regulations the source of authority. The level of prerogatives related to authority, participation and rights bestowed on the academic staff is different in both cultural formations.

These tensions are permanent and lead to a few possible options of change implementation that can be defined as: repression, adaptation, hybridisation, superficiality and regression. Repression is an attempt to implement management changes that largely ignores the issues of resistance and cultural response. In the knowledge-oriented organisations with dispersed and loosely coupled management, this solution is rarely possible and even more rarely effective (Weick 1976, pp. 1–19). The repression model happened during change implementation in the universities, but it led to the escalation of tension, e.g. in the form of strikes, or contributed to the loss of strategic resource, namely the eminent representatives of the academic community (Krause 2007). Repressive solutions are more often used in private universities due to centralised authority. Compared to repression, adaptation through negotiations consisting in making change less nagging, gradual and enabling the parties to the dispute to save “face”, is much more frequent in public universities. For example, negotiations combined with gradual transition from the collegial model to the managerial model during university transformation were and are a relatively frequent practice used in many countries. The process of adaptation and negotiation is also accompanied by gradual evolution from the culture of trust to control culture. Hybridisation means creating own transitional solutions that combine the features of various models and cultures. In practice, hybridisation is also effected through the process of negotiation and is a form of adaptation, but it is a more radical solution consisting in seeking own route between the model and culture of academic trust and the rules of managerial controlling. A debate on university governance and critical reception of some solutions from the area of new public management applied to higher education opened the path for such solutions in some developed countries. Yet in many developing countries and growing markets, including Poland, departure from a state monopoly on establishing universities and legal changes led to the transformation of universities, which operate according to hybrid solutions. Superficiality means apparent change, namely only superficial unimportant transition that can be presented as significant change, as the need arises. Superficial change of strategy means adding some clauses that do not lead to more thorough transformation. For example, the Polish Law on Higher Education of 2012 has imposed an obligation to consult strategies with external stakeholders, which prompted many universities to add a clause to their strategies about cooperation with their social and economic environment, without doing anything more. Superficial change of organisational structures means establishing units or positions that have very limited, sometimes only apparent power. Equality or diversity officers have been appointed at some universities over the last decade, but they have been not equipped with proper prerogatives. Apparent change refers to organisational culture to a small extent and only in the sphere of artefacts (e.g., rhetoric), while leaving the core values unchanged. Regression means total withdrawal from planned or even implemented change. It is a solution rarely practiced due to its cost, both in financial and organisational terms. Transformation from the culture of trust to control culture, taking place in the majority of universities, is part of planned change to the higher education management model. Therefore, regression is impossible in most cases.

Discussion and Proposals of Change

So is there a compromise solution to that fundamental tension between traditional academic values and market pressure? A multi-paradigmatic and neo-pragmatic perspective seems to be the solution. Dialogue and an inclusive approach are needed for university development and the fulfilment of its culture-creating, democratic, didactic and scientific mission. The multitude of viewpoints, from neoliberal to radically critical, makes it possible to gain a proper perspective and seek practical solutions that allow for the achievement of university mission.

What would be the role of management sciences in that? They should provide the methods of effective management at all levels. At the micro level, universities need effective tools to monitor education quality, cash flows and scientific research value. There is no harm in using management methods and improving the effectiveness of university operation, but it is important not to lose its social mission at the same time. Thus, the management tools should not be fetishised, which means that not everything is measurable and controllable. Organisational culture, university identity and academic ethos are largely immeasurable and uncontrollable, which means that you can only create incentives to improve them. Exerting excessive pressure on control and change of culture can prove counterproductive in fact, namely enhance the opposition, resistance and the development of countercultures objecting to official narrative prepared by the authority structures. At the mezzo level, the methods of collaboration between universities and entities in the social and economic environment need to be developed. In our times, this is effected through technology transfer institutions, incubators and career offices, and needs to be thought through due to limited effectiveness of such solutions. Relations between the university and the state at the macro level are also the subject of interest of the management sciences, since educational strategy and policy are created and university governance is shaped here. Management can deliver valuable reporting and monitoring methods and tools (accountability). On the other hand, however, centralistic, autocratic and neoliberal inclinations of the managing bodies can be analysed from the point of view of the critical current.

Thus, the neo-pragmatic solution will be seeking balance between the need to implement controlled changes and their costs. In consequence of implemented changes, the universities might develop “third mission”, improve activity and retain institutional continuity.

Summary – Critical Remarks on Control Culture

The expansion of control culture in contemporary universities occurs at a rapid pace in many countries, but it also faces criticism or even resistance from parts of the academic community at the same time. This results from the fact that control culture, which is to be derived from change to the university management and accountability method, is imposed on universities by regulatory bodies (state, ministries and accreditation bodies). Control culture criticism focuses on a few aspects, as follows:

• economisation of university activity,

• decline of the traditional university ethos,

• bureaucratisation of teaching and research processes,

• over-formalised system of teaching quality management,

• superficial system of research result assessment focusing only on measurable achievements,

• departure from the ethos of modern science (CUDOS),

• reduction of creative and prestigious aspects of the academic profession.

Control culture is euphemistically called evidence culture, which means that you have to prove and document the productivity and effectiveness of the university and its staff to supervisory bodies. According to the critics of the university market model, there is no research confirming that the quasi-corporate solutions are more effective in comparison with the academic tradition (Becher and Kogan 1992; Mazza 2008; Alvesson 2013). Economic thinking becomes therefore a dominating system logic which prompts the application of the measures of effectiveness, controlling and incentive systems. Departure from traditional values, mission and university ethos understood as the autonomous community of researchers and students serving the development of science and teaching is observed (McLean 2006). This is accompanied by considerable increase in formalising teaching and research processes. The teaching quality systems expand and become autonomous fast by hiring managers and administration, forming requirements for documentation and reporting, enforcing the formal aspects of the quality system in the accreditation processes and the documentation requirements by the university supervisory bodies (McKelvey and Holmén 2009; Kwiek 2010).

Pressure on the achievement of scientific results by the universities becomes ludicrous sometimes and is criticised as “point-scoring obsession”. Instead of reflexive and critical review of scientific achievements, production of scores on a mass scale is promoted. Uncritical attachment to bibliometric indicators is departure from the traditional ethos of science (Leja 2015). This refers not only to managers and administration, but also to deans and the whole academic staff, and in consequence leads to replacing critical dialogue and reflection with purely bureaucratic indicators (Weingart 2004). Pressure put solely on scoring points is therefore dangerous for the value of the academic culture, because bureaucratic measures suppress creativity and criticism. Cultural change refers then also to the ethos of an academic, who loses authority and prestige by submitting to the quasi-corporate system of control (see Table 5.2).

Table 5.2 The axis of cultural change in universities

Table 5.2 shows how the university cooperated previously, what changes have been made until now and what trends are probable in the future. This comparison allows a deeper view on cultural changes of the universities within the years (more: Sulkowski 2016).¹