Explanations For The Lack Of Resistance Of Finnish University Workers In The Era Of Knowledge Capitalism
Author(s):
Tuomas Tervasmäki (presenting / submitting) Tiina Nikkola (presenting)
Conference:
ECER 2017
Network:
32. Organizational Education
Format:
Paper

Session Information

32 SES 06, Resistance and Dissent as Elements of Organizational Change

Paper Session

Time:
2017-08-23
15:30-17:00
Room:
K3.18
Chair:
Mariagrazia Riva

Contribution

For three decades one global trend in education policy has been the reform of education systems along managerialist and entrepreneurial lines (Olssen & Peters 2005; Ball 2012, 11). The reforms have meant a shift from government to governance mechanisms such as growing emphasis on accountability, standards, transparency through monitoring and reporting (Bromley 2016).

 

Finnish higher education has not been an exception from the wider transformation. Since the 1990s the ‘free market’ policies and practices have had growing influence on the finnish welfare state and its higher education. Fundamental changes in Finnish higher education system took place in 2010 when the new university funding scheme and intensified performance management mechanisms were adopted with the renewal of the Universities Act in 2010 (Välimaa 2012; Kallio et al. 2016; Universities Act 558/2009). These reforms aim to increase the effectiveness and competitiveness of national higher education systems in the global scale (Välimaa 2012).

 

Reforms have affected working cultures of universities: possibilities for the participation and democratic decision-making have been narrowed, the management has been centralized, hierarchy in administration culture has increased and well-being of the academics have been decreased in general (Rinne & Jauhiainen 2012; OKM 2016, 76–79). In recent study a major part of Finnish scholars argued that the latest reform in 2010 changed the ethos of academia from Humblodtian collegium to market-oriented and competitive ethos (Kallio et al. 2016). The current government (effective since mid-2015) has continued cutting the funding of education and research sector in whole which have lead to termination of academic positions.  

 

Yet the academics have remained surprisingly passive in relation to these changes. The critique towards reforms has mainly taken the form of petitions, condemning articles and a few demonstrations, but substantial resistance haven’t been actualized. In our paper we analyze what could explain passivity and the lack of resistance of Finnish academics against university reforms that have worsened working conditions and have reduced resources.  In this paper we examine the explanations for this passivity leaning on the Laclauian discourse theory and more precisely the logics of critical explanation -approach (Glynos & Howarth 2007), which is a poststructuralist framework and method. According to approaches psychoanalytical emphasized perspective the personal experiences reflect individual emotions but also the norms and self-understandings of social practices of university work communities that can be subliminal.

 

Logics approach aim to describe, explain and criticize the existence, continuation and transformation of concrete practices. Social logics characterize the rules, norms and self-understandings directing of the practice. Political logics analyze the historical conditions that made possible the emergence, development and defence of these practices. Fantasmatic logics assist to explain how subjects are gripped by certain practices. Our research questions are (1)What kind of social logics characterize university department’s organizational culture? (2) How these logics have become possible and how they are being sustained? (3) What alternatives and identities are being excluded?

 

In our analysis we adapt the social logics that Glynos and Howarth (2007, 171–172) identified in their macro-level analysis of the higher education in the United Kingdom. More specified we analyze the logics of competition, atomisation, hierarchy and instrumentalization. We apply the logics to test its ability to analyze micro-level ethnographic data and situation in the Finnish context. We assume that this perspective can offer some fresh viewpoints for understanding more accurately the mediation between structural reforms and social practices as well as the passivity and the lack of resistance among  academics in general.

Method

In our study we adapt Glynos’ and Howarth’s (2007) logics of critical explanation and apply the method to analyze semi-structured individual interviews of the university workers’ whose contract of employment was not renewed against their own will. Interviews are a part of wider ethnographic data “The undercurrent of groups and communities”, which includes observations and interviews. It was collected from one department of a Finnish university in autumn 2013. The collection of interview data is based on ethnographic observation in work community. Wider collection of ethnographic data leans on questions: “What kind of experiences in organisation are being left in shadow or even completely neglected? Why some experiences are difficult to listen to?” The collection of data held a presumption that in work communities there are something which meaning is not reached within everyday existence and in everyday language, which normally is used to structure everyday life in organisation. Informants were all PhDs who had long careers (16-28 years) at the university. Data is very special by nature, all informants had very personal, and even traumatic, experiences as a starting point for the interview. Strong emotions, like shame, even some kind of stigma are attached to the subject in question. Our intention is not to generalise the phenomena discussed in this article, but we rather intend to bring forward a particular area which has a significant meaning in relation to our research questions. We have chosen a narrowly framed part of larger data as the target of more specific analysis. Despite the narrowness, data tells us something very essential about the preconditions of actions and formations of social practises of organisations, and therefore demystifies them in today’s academic context. With the help of case examples we bring forward into discussion those often hidden actions which function on the intersection of personally motivated and organisational action, and which might have a crucial meaning to how workers react to changes in their work environment. “On the one hand, its [a practice of ethico-political interpretation] task is to reactivate those options that were foreclosed during the emergence of a practice or policy – the clashes and force which are repressed or defeated – in order to show how present practices rely upon exclusions that reveal the non-necessary character of existing social formations, and to explore the consequences and potential effects of such ’repressions’.” (Howarth 2010, 328–329.)

Expected Outcomes

As a result of our research, we found that at least in some cases management seems to be arbitrary, and it is based on atomisation, competition, unpredictable and ambiguous decision making, in short precarious mentality overruled the atmosphere. The academics’ possibility to influence on decisions are strictly limited. For example, the ending of employment contracts came as a major surprise to the experienced workers, and given explanations were not satisfying. The decision-making was described as impersonal, and the informants describe arbitrary management as a shared experience in the whole work community, not only as their individual sentiment. Arbitrary management seems to have several consequences. It forces individual worker to continuous identity process (see Ylijoki & Ursin 2013). One has to be flexible and always ready to progress and produce what is on the agenda today. Employees questioning the working practices also seems to be a problem. In case of “crisis”, problems in working community seem to be individualized while the structural level is downplayed. Workers are afraid of their own post, which prevents for example the articulation of the collective resistance. Management is implemented through the social logics of competition, atomisation, hierarchy and instrumentalization. The emergence of these social logics can be traced back to the changes in national level. The “globalization schock” (Välimaa 2012) and economic recession have made it possible for global competition and efficiency discourse to arrive. Our aim was also to apply logics approach to ethnographic micro-level empirical data, and see how they coordinate. The result that similar social logics can be analysed from different European contexts (UK - Finland) is an interesting finding per se and it suggests about wider transformation of the universities social practices in Europe. In this case it can be described as a shift from collegial to managerial forms of governance.

References

Ball, S. J. (2012). Global education inc. New policy networks and the neo-liberal imaginary. London: Routledge. Bromley, P. (2016). Policy and administration as culture: Organizational sociology and cross-national education trends. Teoksessa K. Mundy, A. Green, B. Lingard & A. Verger (eds.) The handbook of global education policy. Chichester, UK; Malden, MA: John Wiley & Sons, 470–489. Glynos, J. & Howarth, D. (2007). Logics of critical explanation in social and political theory. London: Routledge. Howarth, D. (2010). Power, discourse, and policy: articulating a hegemony approach to critical policy studies. Critical Policy Studies 3 (3–4), 309-335. 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. OKM. Opetus- ja kulttuuriministeriö [the Ministry of Education and Culture]. (2016). Yliopistolakiuudistuksen vaikutusten arviointi. Loppuraportti 30.6.2016. Opetus- ja kulttuuriministeriön julkaisuja 2016: 30. [Impact evaluation of the Universities Act reform. Publications of the Ministry of Education and Culture, Finland 2016:30] http://www.minedu.fi/export/sites/default/OPM/Julkaisut/2016/liitteet/okm30.pdf?lang=fi. (Accessed 24.10.2016.) Olssen, M. & Peters, M. A. (2005). Neoliberalism, higher education and the knowledge economy: from the free market to knowledge capitalism. Journal of Education Policy 20 (3), 313–345. Rinne, R. & Jauhiainen, A. (2012). In the shifting sands of policy – University academics’ and employees’ views and experiences of Finland’s new higher education policy. In S. Ahola & D. M. Hoffman (eds.) Higher education research in Finland. Emerging structures and contemporary issues. Jyväskylä: Jyväskylä University Press, 89–110. Universities Act. (2009) 558/24.7.2009. http://www.finlex.fi/fi/laki/kaannokset/2009/en20090558.pdf (Accessed 22.1.2017.) Välimaa, J. (2012). The corporatization of national universities in Finland. In B. Pusser, K. Kempner, S. Marginson & I. Ordorika (eds.) Universities and the public sphere. Knowledge creation and state buildinf in the era of globalization. London: Routledge 101–120. Ylijoki, O-H. (2014). University Under Structural Reform: A Micro-Level Perspective. Minerva 52 (1), 55–75 Ylijoki, O-H. & Ursin, J. (2013). The construction of academic identity in the changes of Finnish higher education. Studies in Higher Education, 38 (8), 1135-1149.

Author Information

Tuomas Tervasmäki (presenting / submitting)
University of Tampere
Faculty of education
Jyväskylä
Tiina Nikkola (presenting)
University of Jyväskylä, Finland

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