Description: This paper seeks to answer the question of how the academic identity of university staff is constructed and it concentrates on the external factors that complement the internal factors of personality, values and experience. Concepts such as professionalism, managerialism, organisational culture and customer-orientation are examined in order to gain a clear understanding of the impact of external factors.To understand academic identity it is important to consider the different settings that an individual finds him or herself working within. An identity may be thought of as a set of clothes. Using such an analogy it is possible to think of identity as a whole wardrobe that the individual selects from and which shifts depending upon the audience being engaged with. Individuals move between these selves depending upon the context they find themselves in. Significant developments in the higher education sector have meant that these contexts for academics are constantly changing.As universities concentrate on the large scale production of public service, tighter control has taken over the decision-making processes. The movement towards greater customer-orientation, public accountability and a performance culture suggests the manifestation of a managerialist paradigm. Pluralism and professional autonomy are being replaced by indicators and standards. Although it is still possible to identify a range of organisational cultures, the reductionist approach is removing difference in an attempt to allow comparison to be made by predicting outcomes. This paper considers the impact on academic identity of the shift from a professional to a managerialist paradigm. The work of the Higher Education Academy towards developing professional standards provides further evidence of a new managerial thrust that may further restrict autonomy. Academic identity, rather than being based around individual values, becomes based around predictable outcomes relating to managerial requirements. The danger of the shift identified is that the diversity that individuals bring to academic autonomy is reduced and creativity and innovation are suppressed. As long as agreed outcomes are achieved efficiently and effectively, the work of the institution can be viewed as a success.Academic identity has generally been considered to be largely dependent on personality, experiences and the influence of the member of staff's academic discipline. Whilst acknowledging the importance of these factors, this paper examines in particular the increasing impact of external forces as the role and functioning of the university change. Methodology: In-depth interviews, using a semi-structured interview schedule, will be conducted with twenty academic members of staff in a range of pre-1992 and modern universities in south-east England. The questions will probe respondents' views on how they consider their academic identity is constructed. They will be asked about the impact of internal and external factors with the latter being explored in greater detail.In-depth interviews allow for two-way communication with the researcher clarifying any questions that were are ambiguous and the follow up of any interesting statements made by the interviewees (Cohen et al., 2000). The qualitative data collected will be analysed through the use of Constant Comparative Methodology (Strauss and Corbin, 1998) which combines inductive category coding with a simultaneous comparison of all the interview notes. Once meaning has been ascribed to a particular note in an interview, it is then compared with other interview notes and, when similarities of meaning are found, they are grouped andcoded. If no similar meaning is found during a comparison, then a new category is formed. Conclusions: The influence of internal factors on academic identity has been well-documented. The results of an analysis of the literature and the research should provide a clearer understanding of the growing impact of external factors such as customer-orientation and a more corporate organisational culture.