Management Identities in Transition: A Case Study from Further Education

Abstract

Since the mid-1980s, Further Education has experienced deep transformations as the result of market driven reforms and the emergence of ‘new managerialism’ in the sector. The changes affected its governance, purpose, organisation and culture, and had deep influence on the relations and identities in the workplace. This paper explores the response of managers in selected Colleges of FE in England, and their discursive construction of new work identities. It is argued that in mediating the reforms, managers adopt a range of responses and position themselves differentially to the discourses of ‘managerialism’ and the ‘market'. From enthusiastically adopting entrepreneurial management, to resisting, or quietly re-constructing vocabularies and practices to fit traditional models of professional practice, the managers in this study illustrate the contested nature of implementing reforms in the public sector, and the complex interplay between agency and institutional practice.