Executive power and scaled-up gender subtexts in Australian entrepreneurial universities

Deputy Vice Chancellor and Pro Vice Chancellor positions have proliferated in response to the global, corporatised university landscape [Scott, G., S. Bell, H. Coates, and L. Grebennikov. 2010. “Australian Higher Education Leaders in Times of Change: The Role of Pro Vice Chancellor and Deputy Vice Chancellor.” Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management 32 (4): 401–418]. Senior leadership is the sphere where academic and management identities are negotiated and values around the role of the university are decided. This paper examines the changing and gendered nature of the senior leadership setting and its implications for diversity in and of university leadership. The analysis draws from a three-year empirical study funded by the Australian Research Council on leadership in Australian universities. It focuses on executive leaders in three universities – one which is research-intensive, the second, in a regional site, and the third, university of technology. The article argues that the university landscape and its management systems are being restructured in gendered ways. It utilises the notion of organisational gender subtexts to make explicit how gender works through structural and cultural reform.

Neoconservatism as discourse: virtue, power and US foreign policy

Neoconservatism in US foreign policy is a hotly contested subject, yet most scholars broadly agree on what it is and where it comes from. From a consensus that it first emerged around the 1960s, these scholars view neoconservatism through what we call the ‘3Ps’ approach, defining it as a particular group of people (‘neocons’), an array of foreign policy preferences and/or an ideological commitment to a set of principles. While descriptively intuitive, this approach reifies neoconservatism in terms of its specific and often static ‘symptoms’ rather than its dynamic constitutions. These reifications may reveal what is emblematic of neoconservatism in its particular historical and political context, but they fail to offer deeper insights into what is constitutive of neoconservatism. Addressing this neglected question, this article dislodges neoconservatism from itsperceived home in the ‘3Ps’ and ontologically redefines it as a discourse. Adopting aFoucauldian approach of archaeological and genealogical discourse analysis, we trace itsdiscursive formations primarily to two powerful and historically enduring discourses ofthe American self — virtue and power — and illustrate how these discourses produce aparticular type of discursive fusion that is ‘neoconservatism’. We argue that to betterappreciate its continued effect on contemporary and future US foreign policy, we needto pay close attention to those seemingly innocuous yet deeply embedded discoursesabout the US and its place in the world, as well as to the people, policies and principlesconventionally associated with neoconservatism.

The monologic, power and mental illness

 This thesis considers the issue of the ‘Monologic, Power and Mental Illness’. Bakhtin’s concept of ‘Heteroglossia’, Foucault’s concept of ‘Subjectivation’, and the work of other writers in relation to mental illness are covered both in the Exegesis and throughout the creative component comprising excerpts from Kemp’s novella entitled, Haven.

Understanding consumer participation in mental health: issues of power and change

Consumer participation occurs in all Victorian public mental health services. Area mental health services employ consumer consultants to enhance consumer participation across the network. Ongoing support of management is essential to the success of consumer participation. This project aimed to explore understandings of consumer participation from a manager's perspective. Semistructured interviews were conducted with seven participants in this qualitative, interpretive study. The thematic analysis revealed the complexities around defining consumer participation and demonstrated the difficulties and possible reasons as to why there is no real clarity between managers, service providers, and consumers as to what consumer participation should look like. Power and change were the primary themes. Power and the overwhelming consensus that the medical model and those working within it hold the most power was strongly represented in this study. Legislation and workplace settings were seen as considerable factors adding to the disempowerment of consumers within an already disempowering mental health system. Change was the other main theme that emerged, with culture and attitudes of the old ‘institutionalized’ thinking that still pervades some pockets of mental health services being seen as the major barriers to change. The role of the consumer consultant was a prominent subtheme, with their role in training and the education of workers seen as an essential and positive way to progress consumer participation. These findings demonstrate that managers consider there to be hope for consumers, brought about by collective action and lobbying, and through consumer participation in less-restrictive parts of the service (community settings).

Policing in cool and hot climates: legitimacy, power and the rise and fall of mass stop and search in Scotland

Prior to the amalgamation of Scotland’s eight police forces into Police Scotland in 2013 by the Scottish National Party government, Scottish policing generally enjoyed a ‘cool’ political climate, with low scrutiny and minimal political engagement. This paper argues these conditions hindered the critical interrogation of Scottish policing, allowing a policy of unregulated and unfettered stop and search to flourish unchallenged for two decades. We then show how this policy was swiftly dismantled in the ‘heated’ environment that followed centralization, a move that gave rise to the unprecedented scrutiny of Scottish policing by media and political commentators. The analysis suggests that the legitimacy and reputation of the police may owe a debt to political environments that encourage either ‘soft’ or ‘hard’ analysis. Also, that more heated political environments, often disparaged by academics and criminal justice practitioners, can drive accountability and contribute to more progressive outcomes.

Returns to scale, market power, and the nature of price rigidity in new keynesian models with self-fulfilling expectations

Increasing returns to scale and firms' market power are two potential sources of sunspot expectations in neoclassical models. We show that in New Keynesian models, returns to scale and market power can have fundamentally different implications for broad macroeconomic issues, including self-fulfilling expectations, depending on the nature of price rigidity. Our findings suggest that the design of stabilization monetary policy can depend on precise knowledge about the economy's real and nominal features. Therefore, a clear understanding of the specific economic environment and its relevance to monetary policymaking for ensuring macroeconomic stability can be an integrated part of monetary policy practice.

Negotiating the hidden curriculum: power and affect in negotiated classrooms

Garth Boomer's ideas in Negotiating the Curriculum (1992a) resonate with discussions of shifting teacher and student roles and relationships in the 'student voice' movement. Boomer (1988) critiqued his earlier conception of power in Negotiating the Curriculum, asserting that he would 'now like to write a book on Negotiating the Hidden Curriculum', in which he would conduct an ethnographic 'micro-analysis' of the 'moment-by-moment dance' between teachers and students and the fluctuations in the 'flows and ebbs of affect and primal resistance in teachers and taught' (p. 171). This article takes up this provocation, considering a 2013 meeting of a cross-age student voice group where students, teachers and researchers collectively discussed the meanings and manifestations of the hidden curriculum through exploring Pink Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall (Waters, 1979), other film representations of school, and their own school. Four students and I analysed a transcript from this meeting, considering the dynamics of power and affect in negotiated classrooms.

Power and participation: enhancing service user agency in social care

The research explored how community services organisations could enhance service user agency through a participatory approach to service development. It demonstrates, theoretically and empirically, how participation can offer individual empowerment and wellbeing benefits to service users, and deliver insights for organisations and government into how they could improve their services.

Consumer participation: power and change

Although the literature is replete with well documented studies very little research has been carried out specifically on burnout among mental health nurses.

Women, religion and social change in the Philippines : refractions of the past in urban filipinas' religious practices today

This research is an exploration of the place of religious beliefs and practices in the life of contemporary, predominantly Catholic, Filipinas in a large Quezon City Barangay in Metro Manila. I use an iterative discussion of the present in the light of historical studies, which point to women in pre-Spanish ‘Filipino’ society having been the custodians of a rich religious heritage and the central performers in a great variety of ritual activities. I contend that although the widespread Catholic evangelisation, which accompanied colonisation, privileged male religious leadership, Filipinos have retained their belief in feminine personages being primary conduits of access to spiritual agency through which the course of life is directed. In continuity with pre-Hispanic practices, religious activities continue to be conceived in popular consciousness as predominantly women’s sphere of work in the Philippines. I argue that the reason for this is that power is not conceived as a unitary, undifferentiated entity. There are gendered avenues to prestige and power in the Philippines, one of which directly concerns religious leadership and authority. The legitimacy of religious leadership in the Philippines is heavily dependent on the ability to foster and maintain harmonious social relations. At the local level, this leadership role is largely vested in mature influential women, who are the primary arbiters of social values in their local communities. I hold that Filipinos have appropriated symbols of Catholicism in ways that allow for a continuation and strengthening of their basic indigenous beliefs so that Filipinos’ religious beliefs and practices are not dichotomous, as has sometimes been argued. Rather, I illustrate from my research that present day urban Filipinos engage in a blend of formal and informal religious practices and that in the rituals associated with both of these forms of religious practice, women exercise important and influential roles. From the position of a feminist perspective I draw on individual women’s articulation of their life stories, combined with my observation and participation in the religious practices of Catholic women from different ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds, to discuss the role of Filipinas in local level community religious leadership. I make interconnections between women’s influence in this sphere, their positioning in family social relations, their role in the celebration of All Saints and All Souls Days in Metro Manila’s cemeteries and the ubiquity and importance of Marian devotions. I accompany these discussions with an extensive body of pictorial plates.

Putting the power in power, politics, and MIS implementation : a reworking of Markus (1983) 20 years on

This paper examines Markus' (1983) paper, using literature from the sociological and philosophical disciplines to provide an updated view of power and its influence on politics and Information Systems (IS). Using these different literature sources, which are becoming more accepted in the IS discipline, provides a richer understanding of power and politics in Information Systems. An alternative research methodology, critical ethnography, has also been described in the context of Markus' study and a case study has been provided which adopts this alternate approach.

Power, politics and legitimacy in information systems implementation : an ethnographic study

Systems implementation is inherently a political process. However, the majority of the literature in the area of systems implementation takes a simplistic look at factors attributed to success. These studies provide empirical evidence that “human factors” such as “top management support” contribute to a successful implementation. Rather than accept this, we challenge this view and explore two “human” issues – power and legitimacy inside systems implementation. By exploring the implementation of a learning management system at the University of New Zealand, issues such as power and legitimacy affect the way an implementation team collaborates. Systems implementation is a complex and messy process and we need to understand the implementation process, acknowledging that top management support is not always necessary to “successfully” implement a system.

Language and power in vocational education and training

In this paper I explore the way language is used in Training Packages, and the impact this language has when Training Packages are used to support work-based vocational programs. Training Packages are a fundamental component of the regulatory framework of the national vocational education and training (VET) system [in Australia]. The national strategy for VET places employers and individuals at the centre of VET, and policy commitments to access and equity are enshrined in the auditable standards of the Australian Quality Training Framework (AQTF). Yet Training Packages and related official VET texts are written in an abstract, generalised and complex language form which acts as an insurmountable barrier to many people at the front line of VET. My PhD research (a work in progress) explores the proposition that this language form is representative of, and constructive in, unequal power relationships. Early data analysis suggests that VET practitioners and training participants talk about their experience of this language in terms of power and exclusion. In contrast, the official VET response generally leaves the official language form above challenge, and instead largely focuses on the presumed deficient language and literacy skills of those who are excluded by these texts.