Auditing as the eternal present: the depoliticising implications of organizational transformation in British higher education

Baker, G; May, T

Abstract

his article examines organisational transformation within Higher Education in Britain. In the process it highlights the focus upon the ‘how’ rather than the ‘why’ of organisational existence that guides these changes. Drawing on recent experiences of auditing of subject provision within Universities, it is argued that the new discourse of managerialism that is reflected in the drive for ‘quality assurance’ constitutes the triumph of method over purpose. Internal to the thinking motivating these transformations is an uncritical attachment to putatively universal forms of market-oriented practice. This, in turn, involves a process of historical forgetting vis-à-vis the academy’s longer-standing practices that have been rooted in bodies of organisational knowledge developed out of a distinct ethos. The resulting sense of an ‘eternal present’ constructs points of difference from newly dominant discourses of organisational practice as merely ‘old-fashioned’ customs to be overcome.

Citation

Baker, G., & May, T. (2002). Auditing as the eternal present: the depoliticising implications of organizational transformation in British higher education. European Political Science, 1(3), 12-22

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2002
• Deposit Date: Jul 29, 2011
• Journal: European Political Science
• Print ISSN: 1680-4333
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 1
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 12-22
• Related Public URLs: http://www.essex.ac.uk/ecpr/publications/eps/onlineissues/summer2002/features/baker_may.htm