Marketization, Performative Environments and the Impact of Organisational Climate on Teaching Practice In Business Schools

Abstract

Marketization of higher education has emerged as a global trend in many countries, and in the UK, students are now paying among the highest tuition fees globally. Marketization is synonymous with performative management practices that require universities to report on an expanding range of metrics designed to demonstrate value to students and the general public. It is also changing the way educational provision is delivered and managed, including the way in which teaching practice is managed to meet the challenges of marketization, managerialism, and student demand. We use the concept of Organization Climate (OC) to examine the challenges facing U.K. business school academics particularly in their teaching role, focusing on the factors shaping the climate for teaching across different institutions. Using focus groups, we identify the determinants of OC for teaching practice to explore how academics perceive their role and the effect of marketization and performative systems on the changing conceptions of teaching in higher education. Our work has wide-ranging implications for business schools globally in understanding how marketization affects teaching practice, where managerialism and metric outputs are already impacting other key agendas facing the delivery of academic subjects with a strong business orientation.