The literature concerning work identities within universities is limited and focussed upon the ways academic staff construct their identities and the impacts these have upon their approaches to change. Similar studies for the range of differentiated roles that characterise the newly managerialised university are not available. The first stage of the research, therefore, was to develop a categorisation of the ways in which senior managers, line managers, support staff and academic staff construct their identities at work. This categorisation was created by bringing together the experiences of change of fifty three staff from five similar Australian universities, reported in interviews, with a review of the discourses widely available within the university sector (Deetz 1992; du Gay 1996a; Knights & Morgan 1991; Marginson 2000; Readings 1996) to produce thirteen different classifications associated with different roles. These categories described as case study one provide an initial framework for making sense of the different viewpoints expressed by staff in interviews and a language for understanding w hat particular actions might mean to the organisational members making them. As such it provides a starting point or tool for analysis and makes an original contribution to understanding change within universities. The second stage of this research examined the dynamics of a teaching change project and the interactions between differently constructed work identities it entailed. This was undertaken through an ethnographic study of a change project in process. The ethnography was supplemented by interviews with participants at the conclusion of the project. The analysis of the ethnography combined the first theoretical focus on constructed identity with concepts of power and their forms within organisations (Foucault 1998; Clegg 1989a; Callon 1986) to take account of the hierarchical organisation of the university and the differentiated organisational roles of participants in the change project.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/210065 |
| Date | January 2005 |
| Creators | Lines, Robyn Laraine, robyn.lines@rmit.edu.au |
| Publisher | RMIT University. Management |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | http://www.rmit.edu.au/help/disclaimer, Copyright Robyn Laraine Lines |
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