Abstract
Redesigned academic career frameworks are intended to benefit an institution overall, through resourcing academics to use their strengths in support of a university’s strategic priorities. This chapter highlights various benefits from the institutional perspective and addresses broader questions and challenges around career framework redesign and implementation. Robust frameworks recognise that attention to equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) plays a vital role in delivering the kind of experience that a forward-looking institution wishes to create for its internal and external stakeholders. Sector-wide EDI initiatives that support framework redesign and implementation processes at institutional level are therefore highlighted, with specific attention to race, gender, and (dis)ability, and discussed alongside insights from relevant higher education research into these aspects. A related question addressed is organisational capacity to support alignment to new pathways through coaching, mentoring, secondments, and various forms of leadership development. The chapter closes with a note on collegiate, collaborative institutional cultures and two examples of collaboration, one among a network of institutions in the US focused on promoting women and underrepresented minority academics, the other UK-based and connecting universities and other organisations as part of a learning community.
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Sterling, M., Blaj-Ward, L., Simpson, R., Crawford, K. (2023). Career Frameworks and Development: The Institutional Context. In: Redeveloping Academic Career Frameworks for Twenty-First Century Higher Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41126-7_5
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