Entrepreneurial Processes in Academia

                 Entrepreneurial Processes in Academia

         Young Academics in a New Public Management Regime and Gender Implications

        Ilse Costas  Stephanie Michalczyk Céline Camus

Management techniques are increasingly used in public sectors like administration and education.  In higher education managerial thinking, rationalization and commodification have transformed working conditions and the incorporate behaviour of young academics.

The implementation of New Public Management (NPM) in universities has deteriorated the situation of young academics. Reforms which should enhance efficiency as well as competitiveness of universities increase precarious work since then. Not only scientific management skills are relevant to a career, but "self-management" for a good performance according to new rules of scientific output regimes signify new challenges for young scientists. Quantitative performance indicators gain momentum and determine competitiveness. Market-related processes and control instruments were imported to academia, intensifying competition for higher positions. This could be detrimental to efforts to obtain gender equality in higher education and research.

Flexibility and self-management are essential criteria of a career in academia. The requirements of high flexibility and strong competition could let women become losers of this game - a tendency that foils efforts to increase female rates in academic careers. The typical "manager" is connotated with masculine properties and stereotypes, such as leadership, assertiveness, aggressiveness, competitive behavior elements as well as risk taking. Internalizing these gendered stereotypes, discouraging impacts on female academics’ self-perception and self-image are supposed to be the result – not to mention gendered ascriptions of decision-makers and gate-keepers (Beaufaÿs 2003).    

Considering the fact that women are underrepresented in academia, such NPM effects are getting increasingly relevant for the gender issue. Therefore we analyze concepts of NPM regimes in academia in France and Germany under a gender perspective. As a theoretical basis we refer to Foucault's approach of governmentality (Foucault 1991) including the perspective of gendered power relations.