This portfolio concentrates on the experiences of administrative staff in universities. The aim of the portfolio is to examine the work and work experiences of administrative staff in the three universities in South Australia, particularly in the light of increased corporatisation of universities over the last fifteen years. Administrative staff are rarely discussed in the literature focused on universities as organisations and workplaces and yet they constitute over half the staff in Australian universities. They are growing in visibility and importance as universities become more corporate in their operation and structure. New occupations have come into existence as a result of the commercialisation of higher education and the accompanying increased government surveillance has resulted in greater professionalisation of administration and administrative work roles. This research brings these changes to the working lives of administrative staff in universities into focus and places their stories at its centre. / This portfolio consists of a series of three sequential interrelated reports, each of which takes a particular approach to the working lives of administrative staff in universities. “Research report 1: The Invisible Workers: Representations of administrative workers in the literature around higher education” analyses a range of literature- academic, journalistic, government and fictional in the light of four discourses which are part of the meta-discourse of corporate managerialism. / “Research Report 2: Who Keeps the Organisation Running?: Interviews about the working lives of administrative staff in universities” analyses a collection of interviews with administrative staff undertaken over a six month period across the three South Australian universities using a hybrid method based on grounded theory. / “Research Report 3: Tell me a Story: A narrative analysis of stories in interviews” uses narrative analysis of stories told in interviews used in “Research Report 2” to gain a greater understanding of experiences common to workers located in specific universities and across the sector. “Meta-analysis: This is My Song: An auto-ethnographic account of the research project” is approached as an auto-ethnography of my own work story interwoven with the experiences of participants and selected literature to link together the findings of the first three Reports. / This portfolio adds to the corpus of knowledge around the work of administrative staff in universities by illustrating a gap in the literature and addressing this by using the descriptions of experiences of some administrative staff in the three South Australian universities to gain a greater understanding of how they view universities as work sites. / Thesis (PhDEducation)--University of South Australia, 2005.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/267427 |
| Creators | Szekeres, Judy. |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | copyright under review |
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