Hallowed and sometimes hollow - Higher Education academic quality managers’ perceptions and reflexive performance of academic governance: An institutional logics perspective.
New higher education (HE) organisational forms and occupations are emerging to help HE organisations’ ongoing management and development. However, few studies explore how organisational diversity affects academic governance practice within and across diverse HE organisations. This knowledge–practice gap is significant given the role of academic governance in safeguarding and assuring academic standards, quality and integrity. This thesis expands on extant literature by examining how contemporary HE academic governance managers conceptualise and reflexively practice academic governance within and beyond Australian HE organisations of diverse types and commercial purposes. It also analyses how individual actor demographics, specifically organisational role, age and gender affect how academic governance is understood and reflexively practiced within those contexts.
An institutional logics (IL) frame is used to examine how different organisational and individual actor characteristics impact HE academic quality managers’ views about academic governance practice within and beyond their respective workplace contexts. HE organisations, like HE governance and regulation, are multifaceted systems whose inherent multidimensionality and ensuing complexity can be appropriately accounted for using an IL theoretical and analytical perspective. Study results show that HEP type and purpose and organisational actor gender do not affect actor perceptions and reflexive performance of academic governance. However, results show that when organisational actor role and age is considered, these factors impact how academic governance organisational actors perceive and reflexively practice academic governance arrangements both within and beyond their specific employment contexts. This thesis contributes new methodological and knowledge–practice knowledge that can inform HE academic governance theory and practice, and HE system regulation. It is the first in Australia to report on how HE organisational type, commercial purpose and key individual actor characteristics, such as age, affect critical organisational actors’ perceptions and reflexive practice of academic governance within and beyond their respective workplaces. Moreover, this thesis fills a population gap in the HE governance field through its research of under-researched populations, non-universities, for-profit HE organisations and HE academic quality managers.