Labouring in the Augean Stables? HRM and the reconstitution of the academic worker

Abstract

This paper considers the impact of UK higher education reforms in the context of globalisation on academic workers, and the extent to which those reforms reflect a specific policy trajectory to gain greater control over academic labour through the use of human resource management. The 2001 Rewarding and Developing Staff (RDS) programme is used as a critical incident to consider the academic employment relationship and the effect of RDS on academics by presenting empirical data from a qualitative study of three English universities carried out between 2005 and 2007. There has been a growth in the size and influence of the HR function in universities and an increasing reliance on individual performance management technologies. However, academics have little awareness of these HR strategies. They do have concerns over the increasing business focus of universities and expanding hierarchies of management. There is evidence of both covert and overt resistance.