Managerialism and the arts : a complete and utter bloody waste of time

Managerialism has been adopted with alacrity by Australian government agencies across multiple sectors. Studies of managerialism in concept and practice have been undertaken in some public sectors but not from a critical management perspective. This position paper examines the contribution of organization theory to an understanding of managerialism. Here we challenge the appropriateness and effectiveness of new managerialism generally, and for the arts in particular, through an analysis of conflict between an Artistic Director, General Manager and Board in a key Australian community arts organization. We call for further research into the appropriateness of management theory and practice for the arts; and seek better ways of managing our cultural capital.

I'm here to save you : a case study of the arts and managerialism in Australia

Managerialism has been adopted with alacrity by Australian government agencies across multiple sectors. A few studies of managerialism in concept and practice have been undertaken in some public sectors. Here we challenge the appropriateness and effectiveness of new managerialism generally, and for the arts in particular, through an analysis of conflict between an artistic director, the general manager(s), and the board of directors in a community arts organization. We outline the implications of the implementation of managerialism for the organization generally and the implications specifically for the workplace rights of some of the artistic and administrative staff. We call for further research into the appropriateness of management theory and practice for the arts, and we seek new ways of managing our cultural capital.

`Zealotry or nostalgic regret`? women leaders in technical and further education in Australia : agents of change, entrepreneurial educators or corporate citizens?

Education has been restructured in many Western post-industrial nation states during the 1990s. The Australian Technical and Further Education sector (TAFE) has been particularly susceptible to discourses of responsiveness to the market and the new entrepreneuralism. This article explores how women have been repositioned in contradictory and ambiguous ways as the new entrepreneurial middle managers by existing and emergent discourses that circulated in and through TAFE organizations. In turn, it points to how discourses of change management and client responsiveness took on particular readings within specific institutional and professional cultures of the eight Technical and Further Education institutions (TAFEs). At the same time, the restructuring that arose from the corporatization of TAFE, in a highly gendered process, through the twin strategies of marketization and the new managerialism produced new possibilities for individual women educators who moved up into middle management. Yet these individual women were positioned within highly masculinist 'neo-corporate bureaucratic cultures' that co-opted their passion for the capacity of education to make a difference and incorporated these new entrepeneurial work identities.

Performing and reforming leaders : gender, educational restructuring, and organizational change

Performing and Reforming Leaders critically analyzes how women negotiate the dilemmas they face in leadership and managerial roles in Australian schools, universities, and continuing education. The authors examine how new managerialism and markets in education transformed how academics and teachers did their work, and in turn changed the nature of educational leadership in ways that were dissonant with the leadership practices and values women brought to the job.

Bureaucratic, corporate/market and network governance : shifting spaces for gender equity in education

Education as a field of policy, research and practice has been reconfigured over four decades by economic, social and cultural globalization in conjuncture with neoliberal policies premised upon markets and new managerialism. One effect has been shifting boundaries between, and understandings of what constitutes the public and the private with regard to the role of the state vis-á-vis the formation of gendered subjectivities and civil society and the gendering of public– private relations in and between family and work. Drawing on feminist readings of Bourdieu and critical policy sociology, I consider the implications of a move from bureaucratic educational governance framed by state welfarism to corporate or market governance framed by the post-welfare state, and consider whether particular constructions of globalization and corporate/market governance lead to network governance. Network governance, it is argued, is premised on new forms of sociality and institutional reconfigurations of knowledge-based economies and a spatialized state that coordinates rather than regulates multiple public– private providers. The question is how each mode of governance frames various possibilities and problems for gender equity in education.

Community development and enterprise culture : prospects and dilemmas

Community Development as a form of practice promotes empowerment and social justice. Its origins lie in people's collective struggle to be heard, recognised and accorded full citizenship in society. It has developed strategies to achieve social change that challenge dominant ways of thinking, policy and resource allocation in society. 'Enterprise culture has its origins in the individualism and competitiveness of capitalism. These essentially neo-liberalist concepts have been remoulded into a radical political program of change sponsored by the state under the guise of new managerialism, competitive tendering and privatization. This research seeks to examine the interface between community development and enterprise culture as a potential site of tension and contestation through an analysis of discourse. The initial task, therefore, was to elaborate the concept of enterprise culture and examine the ways enterprise culture has been manifested in community development. The focus has been on practitioners committed to community development through a qualitative, empirical approach with a view to discerning their views on the relevance and impact of enterprise culture on their work. Community development provides a useful domain for interrogating the infiltration of the concept of the enterprise culture because of its history of opposition and mobilisation. The research seeks to understand the ways in which the forms of enterprise culture as an essentially cultural project are manifested in practice contexts and to analyse the nature of the response to its various manifestations. As a result, it constitutes more than just a critique of any one of these forms, eg, privatisation, tendering out, managerialism, and instead seeks to investigate the degree to which a cultural shift may be occurring towards notions of greater individualism and away from collective notions of responsibility, obligation and citizenship. The research critically analyses the impact of enterprise culture on Australian social policy through the case study of community development practice. The manifestations of enterprise culture are investigated at various levels, with an emphasis on the responses of practitioners. A related aim is to reveal the range of possible responses to the infiltration of the enterprise culture in terms of values, language and practice into community development. Are new forms of practice emerging or is the field being steadily co-opted by government social and educational policy? Finally, the research should enable some future directions to be identified for the field of community development. The findings represent an initial attempt in an Australian context to establish the degree of influence that enterprise culture has had and/or will have on social policy. Chapter 1 examines the concept of enterprise culture and a background to its impact on community development as a domain of practice. The meaning of enterprise culture and its origins will be examined in Chapter 2. Its influence on Australian social policy is then discussed with particular reference to recent changes in Victoria regarding family services. In Chapter 3, the main features of critical discourse analysis are outlined as a framework for subsequent analysis of the links between discourse and hegemony. The work of Fairclough (1992, 1995) is utilised to highlight the relevance of discourse analysis to an examination of the infiltration of ideas associated with enterprise culture into the domain of community development. Chapter 4 provides an overview of the origins and defining characteristics of community development practice. The diverse beginnings and philosophical underpinnings are discussed and the main features of community development outlined in order to establish meanings attached to key concepts such as empowerment and participation. In Chapter 5, the findings of initial interviews with sixteen community development practitioners are discussed in terms of their perceptions of the impact of enterprise culture on their practice and the organisational culture within which they operate. These initial interviews were conducted in November-December 1996. A primary focus of the interviews was to establish the key words in their lexicon of practice and to provide an opportunity for reflection on the relative influence of discourse and practices associated with enterprise culture. A framework for analysing and making sense of the forms of response to enterprise culture is applied to the responses. Four forms of possible response are proposed and discussed in the context of the data. Follow up interviews were conducted in November-December 1997 and the findings of these interviews are discussed in Chapter 6. A particular emphasis in these interviews was on any changes in the lexicon of practice and indications of a change in the impact of discourse and practices associated with enterprise culture. The forms of response suggested in the framework outlined in Chapter 5 are discussed in the light of any movement in the responses of participants in the study. The implications of the findings are discussed in the context of the framework of responses or forms of embrace of enterprise culture analysed in earlier chapters. Finally, in Chapter 7, the potential for community development as a form of practice to transcend or at least accommodate the impact of enterprise culture through strategic forms of embrace is discussed and possible strategies based on the research that may assist in the development of this response are proposed.

Heteroglossia : a space for developing critical language awareness?

This paper reports on research into the challenges of implementing a critical writing pedagogy within a teacher education program in Australia. Participants in this study are student teachers enrolled in a compulsory subject, “Language and Literacy in Secondary School”, a subject requiring them to develop a knowledge of the role of language and literacy across the secondary school curriculum and to show personal proficiency in literacy as part of graduate outcomes for teacher education dictated by the State Government of Victoria. To develop an understanding of the way that language has shaped their lives, students write a narrative about their early literacy experiences – a task which they all find very challenging, especially in comparison with the formal writing of other university subjects. Rather than simply reminiscing about their early childhood, they are encouraged to juxtapose voices from the past and the present, and to combine a range of texts within their writing. Later in the semester they revisit these accounts of their early literacy experiences and, in a separate piece of writing, endeavour to place these accounts within the contexts of theories and debates they have encountered in the course of completing this unit. The students’ writing provides a small window on how they are experiencing their tertiary education and their preparation as teachers, including the managerial controls that are currently shaping university curriculum and pedagogy. We argue that such heteroglossic texts (Bakhtin, 1981) prompt students to stretch their repertoires as language-users, enabling them to develop a socially critical awareness of language and literacy, including the literacy practices in which they engage as university students.

Globalisation and the restructuring of higher education for new knowledge economies: new dangers or old habits troubling gender equity work in universities?

This article undertakes a feminist critique of the restructuring of the modern university in Australia. It considers the interaction of the processes of globalisation, corporatisation (through the twin strategies of marketisation and managerialism) and the social relations of gender, and their implication for gender equity work in the academy. The paper locates the reform of Australian universities within their Western context, and considers the gendered effects of the new disciplinary technologies of quality assurance and online learning on the position of women academics. It concludes with some comments about the shift in language from equity to diversity which has accompanied corporatisation, and how this has effectively coopted women's intellectual labour to do the work of the entrepreneurial university.