Education as a Core Task of Universities
Author(s):
Bente Elkjaer (presenting / submitting) Pia Bramming (presenting)
Conference:
ECER 2017
Network:
32. Organizational Education
Format:
Paper

Session Information

32 SES 10, Organizational Learning Labs and the Task of Universities

Paper Session

Time:
2017-08-24
15:30-17:00
Room:
K3.18
Chair:
Petr Novotný

Contribution

The role of universities has changed due to an increased intake of students and to an adamant demand for openness toward society. This has resulted in both more and qualitatively new tasks for academics and other staff at the university employed to meet university needs in areas such as external and internal funding, information systems, human resource management, marketing and public relations, knowledge transfer and public-private partnerships (Bleiklie, Enders, Lepori, & Musselin, 2011: 174). This plethora of new task as well as the growing emphasis upon the role of universities in knowledge production in the knowledge societies may give rise to questions in relation to the traditional tasks of university. One may wonder whether the new tasks results in diminished emphasis on the importance of education and teaching as part of the core tasks of universities. The majority of the scholarly debate on the new role of universities due to the changes of management has been on the consequences for research and knowledge production (e.g. Kallio, Kallio, Tienari, & Hyvönen, 2016) rather than the consequences for education other than the financing hereof (Wright & Williams Ørberg, 2008).

 

The debate seem somewhat less interested in the role of education although the main bulk of a university teacher’ work is teaching and supervision (on average 60%). Further, the Danish universities  are witnessing annual cuts in appropriations, which results in the growth of less cost-intensive ways of teaching (i.e. mass lectures and collective forms of supervision) and away from more cost-intensive teaching forms (i.e. small group teaching, individual supervision). This development clearly creates a new kind of obscurity vis-à-vis the  core task(s) of universities in as much as this/these task(s) are intricately connected to the universities renowned status and role  as primary producers of knowledge at a societal level in a still more competitive market of knowledge producers (e.g. Czarniawska & Genell, 2002). I.e. how the relation between research (‘knowledge production’) and education (teaching of students) is affected and affecting the definition of the core tasks of universities.

 

Two intra-related circumstances in this field of problems has stirred our interests: First it seems as though processes towards producing the product (research-based learning) are being confused – or is being managed without knowledge of  how learning occurs in students (bodies), among academic staff and organizationally. The argument for how universities are restructured seems mainly to be driven by economic rationales, which one could assume will be to the detriment of student learning.  How this shift towards a more marked based form of organizing the student learning situation affects the learning of students is either black boxed or backgrounded in the process.

 

Second the organizing processes towards market driven universities affect the core task of academic staff in their efforts to produce knowledge and as a result of these changing working conditions both core tasks and employee relations (i.e. motivation, passion, wellbeing) (Buch, Andersen, & Klemsdal, 2015; du Gay, 2008; Lorenz, 2012) hereto changes in presumably negative ways. This complex of problems is well known in the everyday practice of university education, but has not been dealt with in research. The aim of the paper is from an organizational theory and organizational learning perspective to unveil some of the intricacies in the relation of the processes and core tasks of universities viewed as research-based educational institutions.

 

We will therefore ask how education can be understood and analyzed as a core task of the university, and how the new developments in the nature and magnitude of tasks related to education find expression in the organizing of work (professional knowledge production), management and passion.

Method

What is particularly interesting in revisiting universities as organizations (Brunsson & Sahlin-Andersson, 2000; Seeber et al., 2015) from a perspective of the notion of task (research and teaching) (Musselin, 2007) is that the task of teaching cuts across the university as an organization and calls for a coordinated and collaborative process across different university functions. The paper is a literature review on the importance of the core task within organization studies and for organizational learning. We will furthermore discuss universities as organizations, from loosely coupled to tighter coupling (Brunsson & Sahlin-Andersson, 2000; Weick, 1976). This will be illustrated with examples from micro-level everyday practices of university teaching in which we use the model of balancing passion, professional knowledge and management – not as individual endeavors but as an organizational and organizing drive of university education. The notion of ‘task’ is contested within organization studies (Vikkelsø, 2015), where the critique agrees that “that a practical understanding of organizations as task-systems is both simplistic and dangerous” (Vikkelsø, 2015: 424). However the classic organizational theorists (Barnard, 1956) argue that it is the collective task or purpose that distinguishes an organization from more random groups of people. Vikkelsø (2015) argues - following Simon (1947), contingency theory (Lawrence & Lorsch, 1986), and the socio-technical school (Bion, 2013 [1961]) – that organizations may have more than one primary task – but that it is around primary task(s) that the organization is make serve as an organizing body of work and persons. Vikkelsø (2015) argues that tasks viewed as core objects makes it possible to investigate organizations – such as schools and universities – as practical to create knowledge about the organizing and learning processes specific to the situations at hand. Interestingly ‘the task’ is also central when we change our focus to organizational learning (learning always has a content) as well as within the area of employee wellbeing (Costea, Crump, & Amiridis, 2008; Fleming & Sturdy, 2009; Maravelias, 2011; Pedersen, 2008). To research the task, we will argue, is of central importance if we want to understand the intra-relatedness of how the work is organized across the university as a whole, i.e. across boundaries of functions.

Expected Outcomes

Our review will point towards education as a task in modern universities and in which context increasingly is determined by a market-oriented, economic rationale, but where the task can be characterized as being: Distributed, slow and passionate Education is distributed ‘Education’ – as a commonly agreed upon core task of the universities - is in recent times defined and measured from the outside of the. The tasks leading to the education of a student is distributed across different organizational functions and many of these activities created around the student are created in order to make the student not only ‘knowledgeable’ but ‘employable’. Solutions are individualized in terms of supervision and employment of interviews to admit students. These activities are outside the teaching space, and means that the teacher-student relations are altered. Education is slow Universities are organizations whose ‘production’ is dependent on the creation of highly specialized knowledge, but the prevalent market orientation is at odds with innovative knowledge creation. Universities find themselves at a managerial cross road, where they, firstly, have to organize for ‘customer satisfaction’ (that is creating graduates which can immediately be recognized as ‘useful’ in the societal context, i.e. ability to find a job). Secondly, the processes necessary to produce highly specialized knowledge and education in order to make room for learning and the outcomes hereof are fundamentally slow and intricate. Education is passionate The relation between teacher and task is primarily mediated by passion and (passion for) knowledge. Following the core task of the university we observe that academic staff relates to their task of education though engaged involvement and creation of meaning. They are passionately involved not as an individual relation but in the social formation that the work is part of.

References

Barnard, C. I. (1956). The functions of the executive. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Bion, W. R. (2013 [1961]). Experiences in groups: And other papers. London: Routledge. Bleiklie, I., Enders, J., Lepori, B., & Musselin, C. (2011). New public management, network governance and the university as a changing professional organization. In T. Christensen & P. Lægreid (Eds.), The Ashgate Research Companion to New Public Management (pp. 161-176). Farnham, Surrey, USA: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. Brunsson, N., & Sahlin-Andersson, K. (2000). Constructing organizations: The example of public sector reform. Organization Studies, 21(4), 721-746. Buch, A., Andersen, V., & Klemsdal, L. (2015). Turn to Practice Within Working Life Studies. Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies, 5(3a), 1-11. Costea, B., Crump, N., & Amiridis, K. (2008). Managerialism, the therapeutic habitus and the self in contemporary organizing. Human Relations, 61(5), 661-685. Czarniawska, B., & Genell, K. (2002). Gone shopping? Universities on their way to the market. Scandinavian Journal of Management, 18(4), 455-474. du Gay, P. (2008). Without affection or enthusiasm'problems of involvement and attachment inresponsive'public management. Organization, 15(3), 335-353. Fleming, P., & Sturdy, A. (2009). Just be yourself! Employee Relations, 31(6), 569-583. Kallio, K.-M., Kallio, T. J., Tienari, J., & Hyvönen, T. (2016). Ethos at stake: Performance management and academic work in universities. Human Relations, 69(3), 685-709. doi:10.1177/0018726715596802 Lawrence, P. R., & Lorsch, J. W. (1986). Organization and environment: managing differentiation and integration Boston: Harvard Business School. Lorenz, C. (2012). If you're so smart, why are you under surveillance? Universities, neoliberalism, and new public management. Critical inquiry, 38(3), 599-629. Maravelias, C. (2011). The managementization of everyday life–Work place health promotion and the management of self-managing employees. Ephemera, theory and Politics in Organizations, 11(2), 105-121. Musselin, C. (2007). Are universities specific organisations. Towards a multiversity, 63-84. Pedersen, M. (2008). Tune in, break down, and reboot–new machines for coping with the stress of commitment. Culture and Organization, 14(2), 171-185. Vikkelsø, S. (2015). Core task and organizational reality. Journal of Cultural Economy, 8(4), 418-438. Weick, K. E. (1976). Educational organizations as loosely coupled systems. Administrative Science Quarterly, 21(1), 1-19. Wright, S., & Williams Ørberg, J. (2008). Autonomy and control: Danish university reform in the context of modern governance. Learning and Teaching, 1(1), 27-57. doi:10.3167/175522708783113550

Author Information

Bente Elkjaer (presenting / submitting)
Aarhus University
School of Education
Copenhagen NV
Pia Bramming (presenting)
Aarhus University, Danish School of Education
Department of Education Studies
København NV

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