Academic Arrhythmia: Disruption, Dissonance and Conflict in the Early-Career Rhythms of CMS Academics

Starting a career on the margins of the neoliberal business school is becoming increasingly challenging. We contribute to the understanding of the problems involved and to potential solutions by developing a theoretically-informed approach to the rhythms of academic life and drawing on interviews with 32 Critical Management Studies (CMS) early-career academics (ECAs) in 14 countries. Bringing together Lefebvre’s rhythmanalysis (and his concepts of polyrhythmia, eurhythmia and arrhythmia), Zerubavel’s sociology of time, and identity construction literature, we examine the rhythm-identity implications of the recent HE changes. We show how the dynamics between the broader pressures, institutional strategies, and our interviewees’ attempts to reassert themselves are creating a vicious circle of arrhythmia – a debilitating condition characterized by rhythmic disruption, dissonance and conflict. Within the circle, identity insecurity and regulation, CMS ECAs’ identity work, and arrhythmia are mutually co-constructive, so that it is hard for individuals to break out. We consider the possibilities and limitations of individual coping strategies and, drawing out lessons for business schools, advocate for more collective and structural solutions. In so doing, we contribute to the reimagining of business schools as more eurhythmically polyrhythmic places where ECAs of all intellectual orientations have the time to learn and develop

Organizational climate, competing values and employee well-being

The concept of organizational climate may facilitate an understanding of relationships between work environment and employee well-being. In the paper, we present a research project focusing on organizational climates at academic workplaces and their relationship with employee well-being. We implemented the Competing Values model as the theoretical framework and a mixed-methods research design including large-scale questionnaire study and in-depth interviews. Based on k-means cluster analysis of the questionnaire data, we identified four types of organizational climate (“self-actualizing”, “collegial”, “performance”, “fraternity”) localized in the dimensions of the Competing Values model (flexibility-control, internal-external focus). We found significant differences between the ways in which members of these types perceived their work environment and well-being. Based on the interviews we discuss some psychosocial processes taking place between different organizational climates and employee well-being