Mediating a Quality Enhancement Policy at Departmental Level: the Middle Managers’ Experience

Author(s):

Cristina Sin(presenting / submitting)Murray Saunders

Conference:

ECER 2014

Network:

11. Educational Improvement and Quality Assurance

Format:

Paper

Session Information

11 SES 13 A, Governance Actors of Promoting Quality of Educational Institutions

Paper Session

Time:

2014-09-05

11:00-12:30

Room:

B231 Sala de Aulas

Chair:

Antonio Medina

Contribution

This study analyses how middle managers experience their role in mediating and enacting policy in the context of the Quality Enhancement Framework (QEF) for learning and teaching in higher education in Scotland. Launched in 2003, the QEF – coordinated by the Scottish Funding Council with the participation of the universities themselves – represented an innovative approach. It emphasised 'enhancement' rather than 'assurance' in its approach to the quality of university teaching and learning, further to national stakeholders’ awareness of disgruntlement with quality assurance processes, quite common in the UK (Saunders et al. 2006). Its conception was rooted in an emerging higher education sector identity, nurtured and encouraged as part of a devolved educational culture. Scotland had the advantage that its self-governing system comprised just twenty higher education institutions and that control of higher education resided with the Scottish Assembly (now the Scottish Government). This made it possible to assemble a distinctively Scottish alternative to quality assurance practices, which attempted to build on a strong sense of appropriateness, ownership, pragmatism and collegiality (Saunders et al. 2006).

This paper depicts the experience of middle managers as policy enactors of the QEF, as rendered by their own perceptions and discourses about what their role entails. We are particularly interested in whether their experience reflects the values of collegiality and ownership promoted by the QEF. The choice of middle managers as object of analysis was justified by their strategic role in policy enactment further to the introduction of managerialism and private management models in higher education institutions (Meek et al. 2010; Knight and Trowler 2001; Preston and Price 2012; Dearlove 1998; Clegg and Auley 2005). Thus, Knight and Trowler (2001) described the head of department as placed firmly at the centre of university management procedures. Meek et al. (2010) argued that middle managers were the group of actors who felt most acutely the impact of the managerial push in the transformation of university governance and management. They noted that the increased pressures for performance management and accountability determined the professionalisation and expansion of the middle managers’ role to include definition of missions, objectives and strategies; financial and human resources management; and strong leadership as opposed to traditional academic negotiation. The tensions inherent in an expanded middle manager role have been well documented in literature (Bolden et al. 2008; Floyd and Dimmock 2011; Gallos 2002; Preston and Price 2012; Meek et al. 2010; Smith 2002; Sotirakou 2004; Winter 2009). Bolden et al. (2008) referred to the difficulties experienced in striking a ‘balance between top-down, bottom-up and lateral processes of communication and influence’ and the ‘dynamic tension between the need for collegiality and managerialism, individual autonomy and collective engagement, leadership of the discipline and the institution, academic versus administrative authority, informality and formality, inclusivity and professionalisation, and stability and change’ (364).

We explore how these tensions play out in the policy context generated by the QEF. Arguably, the values of collegiality, ownership and improvement upheld by this new policy framework would alleviate the conflicts noted above. One would expect these values to filter down to middle managers and to infuse their experience of the role, while managerialism would become a less pronounced feature. Our research questions, therefore, are: Does the enhancement orientation of the QEF and the fact that quality is entrusted to institutions soften these tensions? Does middle managers’ role continue to reflect the systemic conflicts documented in the literature?

Given the prominence of quality in recent higher education policy in Europe, actors’ experience of an innovative enhancement-focused approach can help identify potential pitfalls and provide lessons in the further development of quality systems.

Method

The policy ‘implementation staircase’ metaphor (Reynolds and Saunders 1987) helped situate middle managers’ position in enactment and analyse their experience. It illustrates the systemic positions held by particular ‘layers’ within higher education systems, bringing a useful perspective on middle managers’ strategic location at the interface between top institutional management and their academic colleagues. The implementation staircase suggests the importance of constructing the experience of policy from the perspectives of its main stakeholder groups and represents each group as both a receiver and an agent of policy messages. Through this process, messages undergo adaptation and interpretation according to the unique experience of each stake-holding group. Twenty focus groups with middle managers – heads of department, heads of school/division, directors of teaching and learning, and programme/course leaders – were conducted in nine Scottish HEIs between October 2008 and December 2010: three ancients (pre 20th century), two pre-1992 universities, three post-1992 universities, and a specialised college. Participants were selected randomly using the contact details available on institutional websites. Focus groups ranged from 1 to 3 in each institution, grouping academics from related disciplinary areas. Overall, just over 100 middle managers from a wide range of disciplines participated. All focus groups were conducted in the same manner. A set of quotes, taken from publications like the Times Higher, served as discussion prompts. They referred to institutional structures and cultures and were chosen to reflect a range of (sometimes contentious) views, for instance related to managerialism, implementation problems, recognition of teaching, etc. The discussion addressed three areas: whether quotes reflected the participants’ experience; how they viewed their own role; factors which helped or hindered their ability to fulfil their role. The discussions centred on teaching and learning issues – the QEF was rarely referred to directly. A key feature of the QEF is its ownership by the Scottish HE sector, intended to facilitate a culture shift from assurance towards enhancement. Therefore, in not mentioning the QEF directly, we aimed to explore whether such a culture shift had materialised for middle managers, manifest in changes in their experiences of and ways of thinking about quality. We thus adopted an ‘inferential’ approach where evidence of new ways of doing and thinking was sought rather than simplistic attribution. The discussions were transcribed and their subsequent analysis identified themes and categories which informed the depiction of middle managers’ experience in the enactment of institutional quality policies.

Expected Outcomes

Three types of tensions emerged from the analysis, echoing the systemic conflicts documented in the literature: academic/management divide; leadership/management practice; and empowerment/preparedness. Middle managers’ accounts revealed their mediating position between institutional interests and academic concerns, a position which entailed adaptive strategies in implementing policy messages. They portrayed their role as gate-keepers and translators, a telling description which embodied the culture clash between managerialism and collegiality, foregrounding the different policy experiences between upper management and lay academics. The institutional leaders who were involved in the framework's design subscribed to the QEF values of collegiality, empowerment and ownership and united around these in the context of institutional autonomy, against national external control of quality. This study looked beyond, into how this discourse of empowerment was effectively matched inside institutions, through their systemic practices. The inclusive and participative values in the QEF discourse seemed to fade away in internal governance, between the top management and middle management levels, with top institutional policies perceived by our research participants as more impositional than consensual. However, in ‘horizontal’ relations between middle managers and academic colleagues, collegiality re-surfaced. They affirmed their confidence in their academic colleagues’ professionalism and the belief that these pursued quality, perceiving top centralist measures as potential obstacles to quality and their job as mitigating these obstacles. The contradiction between espoused values (of collegiality and ownership) and the centralist practices experienced by middle managers, and associated with senior managers, appear attuned to an assurance rather than an enhancement culture. Middle managers’ experience appears, therefore, to problematize the values of the QEF. In the context of an enhancement policy, their concerns which focus on the disciplinary driven desire to improve research, teaching and learning should receive due attention. This would align more explicitly with the Quality Enhancement Framework’s broadly acclaimed principles.

References

Bolden, R., G. Petrov, and J. Gosling. 2008. “Tensions in higher education leadership: towards a multi-level model of leadership practice”. Higher Education Quarterly 62: 358–376. Clegg, S., and J. McAuley. 2005. “Conceptualising middle management in higher education: A multifaceted discourse”. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management 27(1): 19-34. Dearlove, J. 1998. “The deadly dull issue of university ‘administration’? Good governance, managerialism and organising academic work”. Higher Education Policy 11: 59–79. Floyd, A., and C. Dimmock. 2011. “‘Jugglers’, ‘copers’ and ‘strugglers’: academics' perceptions of being a head of department in a post-1992 UK university and how it influences their future careers”. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management 33(4): 387-399. Gallos, J. V. 2002. “The dean's squeeze: the myths and realities of academic leadership in the middle”. Academy of Management Learning & Education 1(2): 174-184. Knight, P., and P. Trowler. 2001. Departmental leadership in higher education. Buckingham: SRHE and Open University Press. Meek, V. L., L. Goedegebuure, R. Santiago, and T. Carvalho. 2010. The changing dynamics of higher education middle management. Dordrecht: Springer. Preston, D., and D. Price. 2012. “‘I see it as a phase: I don't see it as the future’: academics as managers in a United Kingdom university.” Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management 34(4): 409-419. Reynolds, J., and M. Saunders. 1987. “Teacher Responses to Curriculum Policy: Beyond the ‘Delivery’ Metaphor.” In Exploring Teachers’ Thinking, edited by J. Calderhead, 195-214. London: Cassell Educational Limited. Saunders, M., P. Trowler, J. Machell, et al. 2006. Enhancing the Quality of Teaching and Learning in Scottish Universities: The Final Report of the First Evaluation of the Quality Enhancement Framework to the Scottish Funding Council’s Quality Enhancement Framework Evaluation Steering Committee. Edinburgh: SFC. Smith, R. 2002. “The role of the university head of department - A survey of two British universities.” Educational Management and Administration 30(3): 293–312. Sotirakou, T. 2004. “Coping with Conflict within the Entrepreneurial University: Threat or Challenge for Heads of Departments in the UK Higher Education Context.” International Review of Administrative Sciences 70(2): 345-372. Winter, R. 2009. “Academic manager or managed academic? Academic identity schisms in higher education.” Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management 31(2), 121-131.

Author Information

Cristina Sin (presenting / submitting)

CIPES (Centre for Research in Higher Education Policies)

Matosinhos

Murray Saunders

Department of Educational Research, Lancaster University, UK

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