The Role Identities of University Academic-Managers in a Changing Environment: A Chinese Perspective

Abstract

Academic-managers, working at the middle tiers of university management with considerable power and authority, play an increasingly important role in the planning and execution of key university activities. Little attention has been paid to Chinese academic-managers, leaving their work at Chinese universities under-explored. This article, framed by role identity, aims to capture how academic-managers at Chinese universities perceive and internalize their management roles in a dynamic environment fraught with market-led and managerial reforms. Synthesis and analysis of qualitative data obtained through in-depth interviews, field notes, and documents reveal that the three prime role identities that are held by the academic-managers are the ‘manager’, the ‘scholar’, and the ‘bureaucrat’. Key issues that emerged from our study include the growing tensions that exist amongst the managerial, scholastic, and bureaucratic priorities of their roles. Furthermore, our collected data indicate that the perceived role identities are rooted in structural factors, including neo-liberal and new-managerial ideologies, the disciplinary community, and the officialistic culture embedded in the bureaucratic danwei tradition of Chinese universities.