According to Nixon (2004) the role of teaching in Universities has been systematically disesteemed, resulting in the disruption of the research-teaching nexus. This manifests itself in a number of forms such as: the predominance of technical rationalist pedagogy (Parker 1997), the increasing casualisation of teaching staff and the comparatively higher rewards in pay and status for non-teaching activities within an internal market (Piercey 1999). Several theories have been forwarded to explain these phenomena. For example, the growing hegemony of the neo-liberal conceptualisation of universities as training and research establishments for the “knowledge economy” (Harvey 2006, Molesworth et al 2009); the fragmentation of the university in an era of supercomplexity (Barnett 2000) and the conceptualisation of universities as being in a degenerative state of “moral loss” where “service to others” is being replaced by a culture of self-aggrandisement (Macfarlane 2007). This paper focuses on primary research into the relationship between undergraduate pedagogy and academic professional identities in a UK business school 2010-11. The evidence from this research will be used to illuminate and refine the theories of relating to the disesteeming of teaching outlined above.