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Work reorganization in the neoliberal university: A labour process perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2023

Stephanie Ross  and
Larry Savage
Stephanie Ross
Affiliation:
McMaster University, Canada
Larry Savage*
Affiliation:
Brock University, Canada
*
Larry Savage, Labour Studies, Brock University, 1812 Sir Isaac Brock Way, St. Catharines, ON L2S 3A1, Canada. Email: lsavage@brocku.ca
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Abstract

This article maps the major changes taking place in academic work within the broader context of the neoliberalisation of universities. Recognising the great variability in the form and pace of neoliberalisation across institutions and national contexts, the article identifies a set of features and indicators to aid in the comparative assessment of the extent and effect of neoliberal processes at different institutions. The authors use conceptual tools from labour process theory to highlight the ways that neoliberalisation has resulted in academic work that is fragmented, deskilled, intensified, and made subject to greater levels of surveillance, hierarchy, and precarity. In doing so, the authors also demonstrate the importance of combining political economy and Foucauldian approaches to neoliberalism, to highlight the way that external structural conditions and subjective processes combine to create new labour processes to which participants find themselves consenting and actively reproducing.

Keywords

J5L2Collective bargainingfaculty associationslabour processlabour relationsmanagerialismneo-liberalismnew public managementtrade unionsuniversities
Type
Original Articles
Information
The Economic and Labour Relations Review , Volume 32 , Issue 4 , December 2021 , pp. 495 - 512
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2021

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