When will Academics Learn about Quality? 217
lors, academic boards, deans, and the like, of the quality of the university for which they
are accountable. Government, the AUQA, and universities conceive quality as fitness for
purpose, where the purpose is determined by the providers of the service—the university.
However, there is little if any evidence to suggest that this conceptualisation is consist-
ent, or indeed inconsistent, with conceptualisations of quality from the perspective of
academic faculty members. This potential lack of congruency may explain why academics
respond to and behave differently when confronted with change, initiated under the
‘quality’ umbrella.
Academic Behaviour in Response to Quality-Led Change
Several authors suggest that there is evidence of academic distrust of administrations that
are viewed as having a growing desire to conceive higher education as a corporate service
industry, acting as a government-funded provider of services to students (Taylor et al.,
1998). Research undertaken by Campbell and Slaughter (1999) empirically tested the
tension between administrators and academic staff, and confirmed their hypothesis that
academics and administrators hold different views towards potential conflicts. Further
evidence that there may be some disparity in the aspirations of administrators and
academic staff, particularly, is provided by research findings that indicate a steady increase
in dissatisfaction and alienation among Australian academics (Everett & Entrekin, 1994),
and overwhelmingly negative views with regard to the worth of quality assurance
mechanisms and their effectiveness and efficiency (McInnes et al., 1994). Where quality
assurance systems are designed by university administrators to ‘suit’ the audit require-
ments of external quality agencies, academics, who do not conceive quality as fitness for
purpose, are likely to question the value of such a system. Their behaviour, when required
to engage with the system, is likely to reflect this.
Other research has investigated the impact of quality initiatives, quality policies and
quality assurance mechanisms at the local or departmental level and found that aca-
demics adopt various behaviours to cope with what they perceive as accountability-led
change, driven by the quality agenda (McInnes et al., 1994; Stensaker, 1997; Trowler,
1998; Vidovich, 1998; Newton, 2001). In her study of Australia’s higher education
‘quality’ policy process, Vidovich (1998) found that 69% of respondents at the grass-roots
level displayed varying levels of resistance to accountability requirements that were
viewed as an outcome of quality policy implementation. These behaviours included
verbal objections (37%), outright refusal (33%), careless responses (21%) and delaying
tactics (9%). Similarly, disparate behaviour was observed by Trowler (1998) in his study
of academics at the school/department (grassroots) level in a UK higher education
institution. Trowler investigated how academics behave as a result of a ‘critical aspect of
change’, referred to as the credit framework, and identified four broad categories of
response from his data.
Trowler’s first category is ‘sinking’, in which academic responses indicated some level of
discontent with the current environment and an acceptance of the status quo. Respondents
in this category ‘… engaged in conformity ritualism and even retreatsism’ (Trowler, 1998,
p. 114). The second category is ‘swimming’: responses provided evidence of academics
who were content and accepting of the status quo. In fact, academics in this category
‘thrived’ on the changed conditions and viewed the new environment as one of oppor-
tunity. The third categorisation is ‘using coping strategies’ and refers to responses indicat-
ing a level of discontent and an approach that works around or changes policy at the local
level. The final category, ‘policy reconstruction’, describes how academics contentedly