Facing Inwards and Outwards at Once: The liminal temporalities of academic perfomativity

Through metaphor (as ever), we explore some aspects of the mutually implicated con-text, ideo-text, ego-text and sub-text to be found in the contemporary UK academic lifeworld. To this end, carefully selected data from a qualitative study of the changing nature of academic work in Britain is analysed to speculate about how a discourse of performativity (‘the RAE’) has been ‘translated’ into what appear to be ‘normalized’ legitimate forms of organizing and social action. By illustrating how these forms are reflected in academics’ liminal ‘work talk’, it emerges that one possible effect of this holographic process is a spatio-temporal constriction of the academic ‘lifeworld’

Facing inwards and outwards at once: the liminal temporalities of Academic Perfomativity.

academic perfomativit

Beyond managerialism?

This article addresses the question of what might constitute Critical Human Resource Management (CHRM). Consideration is given to ideas from critics of HRM, both from within the field and those external to it, in particular Critical Management Studies, and to mainstream scholars who have voiced concerns regarding the moribund and limited nature of mainstream HRM. CHRM is advanced in order that HRM might be better contextualized within the prevailing socio-economic order of capitalism; managerialist assumptions and language may be denaturalized and challenged; and that voices excluded in mainstream HRM, such as workers (especially minorities and those in non-standard employment), trade unions and those involved outside large Western corporations, may be heard. The analytical coherence of CHRM builds from a theorization of the employment relationship and requires acknowledgement of the sociological, psychological, economic, political and ethical aspects of working, managing and organizing. In our view, HRM research will be enriched by the variety of methodological and theoretical approaches of CHRM and by the inclusion of a wider range of different research settings and research questions. However, a fruitful and reflexive engagement between CHRM and mainstream HRM seems unlikely until the latter critically assesses rather than assumes the managerial perspective