Resistance to organisational change on behalf of academics is part and parcel of the transformation of higher education. Scholars of organizational resistance have concentrated on the power differentials between employers and employees and have shown how workers resist in terms of appropriation of time, work, and product, where resistance is seen not only as stalling but also as contributing to organizational change (Ford et al., 2008). We aim to investigate how senior and early career academics respond to managerial demands. We show that academics respond both in silent as well as in more proactive ways to the new structures and procedures of evaluation imposed on them when it comes to their academic work. Finally, we observe that manipulation, largely used by senior academics, as a pro-active form of resistance, may bridge the dissonance between academic and managerial values and facilitate hybridity in academic identities.

Ford, F. D., Ford, L. W., & D'Amelio, A. (2008). Resistance to change: The rest of the story. The Academy of Management Review, 33(2), 362-377. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2008.31193235 L. Leisyte, J. Dee, & B. van der Meulen (2023) (Eds.). Research handbook on the transformation of higher education. Edward Elgar.