HR Practices and Processes in the Context of Change

In the context of organizational change, universities’ HR processes and policies are impacted on. In the Australian context, Dunkin (2003), for instance, writes that universities are adopting corporate sector practice in redesigning their structures, in designing jobs and in how they manage and reward performance. However, these emerging practices and systems within the university are contested not only because they are based on the outdated bureaucratic model, but also because they undermine prevailing assumptions of knowledge-based organizations (Dunkin 2003). The break with established practice creates tensions that center on the taken-for-granted basic assumption of tenure, motivation and reward structures, recruitment and selection. Dunkin (2003) proposes that rather than looking to corporate best practices new practices and systems be developed that will better reflect the current and complex needs of the universities.

Recruitment and Selection

As academic work expectations have changed, job design and recruitment and selection is redefined to reflect these changes. Recruitment and selection is the organizational function which serves to align people with the work that needs to be performed (Bolman & Deal 2003). As the purpose of the university has shifted, the nature of academic work has taken on new dimensions giving cause to the need to acquire additional skills and competencies for job performance even as the traditional functions of teaching and research and service remain. Additional competencies include consultancy skill; and partnership and collaboration skills necessary for collaborative research with other professionals, industry personnel, and employers and clients. Beiber and Lawrence (1992) observe that in US university campuses,

academic careers are affected as competition to enhance their organization’s image in the public arena for marketing puts pressure on academics to increase research

productivity and secure grants. The need to be entrepreneurial requires academics to possess consultancy skill to engage in partnerships with other professional

organizations, industry and other employers as clients for research (Kogan, Moses & El-Khawas 1994). The need to secure funds has given rise to entrepreneurialism and managerialism and attendant concerns with efficiency which led to the institution of quality assurance processes (Kogan, Moses & El-Khawas 1994). These expectations translate into increased administrative tasks to be attended to, with such demands impacting on workload. An additional expectation on academics that are a

consequence of the rise of entrepreneurialism and managerialism and the subsequent revaluing of knowledge is to make curricula relevant to both internal and external stakeholders. These stakeholders include students, prospective employers and governments. The need to satisfy the client is symptomatic of the emerging new discourse on university campuses, including DWU. That makes it inevitable that academics acquire business sector discourse and tools of management (Dill 1982).

Reward, Motivation, Promotion and Tenure

An aspect of university change deals with changes to the performance management system within the university. Empirical studies such as those in Australia show that the effectiveness of the promise of tenure and autonomy of practice served as inducements for organizational commitment is diminished (Altbach 1995; Bowen 2001; Raelin, JA 1991). The influence of these inducements has diminished under the entrepreneurial university as empirical evidence from Australia and the United States reveal. In the context of institutional restructure, McInnis found amongst Australian academics that issues affecting job satisfaction and morale amongst academics were job security, salary, academic quality of students and the intellectual and cultural life of the university. In the US, staff on the tenure track experienced a bottleneck, a situation, which when linked up with an entrepreneurial orientation, tipped the requirements for promotion in favour of ever increasing productivity requirements in research performance and away from teaching and service (Beiber & Lawrence 1992). Bogler and Kremer-Hayon (1999) note that if tenure is the reward for research

teaching. In a reconceptualized university, “Being seen to be responsive and innovative has become its own reward regardless of the impact on the identity and integrity of the university” (McInnis 1995, p. 39). In the Australian context, new requirements for promotion are tallied in performance indicators, annual appraisal processes and merit criteria for incremental progression (McInnis 1995).

Another Australian study on work environment perceptions and work attitudes was conducted by Winter and Sarros (2002) in September 1998. Two thousand six hundred and nine full-time equivalent academics stratified by position, discipline and from amongst four university categories were invited to participate. Of these 1014 or 40% responded. The survey explored what environmental, that is, institutional characteristics represented sources of high/low motivation for academics and whether there was a correlation between demographic variables such as age, gender, level of qualification and rank influenced their levels of motivation. They found that, overall, academics were moderately involved in their jobs but were committed to their

organization and desired to see it succeed. However, they did not see their university as inspiring best performance in them. Academics also felt that their loyalty to their organization was not matched by extrinsic recognition and reward. They were more intrinsically motivated that is, they were motivated by their teaching and research commitment, but de-motivated with administrative work. These experiences are shared by academic staff at DWU where reward is not indicative of the loyalty and commitment they demonstrate to the organization.

Staff Development

In the context of university change, staff development as an organizational function has become a focus of research (Akerlind 2005). However, staff development provision is focused on the development of one aspect of academic work, that is, teaching (Akerlind 2005). Several assumptions justify this limited focus. In the case of DWU, its reward structure shows a preference for teaching over the research and service functions. But, this situation is changing. It is observed in the organization’s discourse that, since 2004, DWU is moving to incorporate both service and research into the reward structure. Even with this progress, the prospects of staff advancing in their careers remained unlikely as promotion policies and processes remained stalled.

The changes outlined are manifestations of an organization whose culture is undergoing a redefinition. This study contributes a live case study of university cultural change in the transforming context of the post-industrial globalized society driven by neoliberal values. In terms of this study, apart from commentary in the national newspapers such as Ogio (2007) and Patience (Patience 2005) as well as Meek’s (1982) sociological case study of UPNG in 1982, there is little research current or otherwise on the state of the university in PNG. This study on DWU, therefore, makes a contribution to understanding the status of the organization in PNG in the context of global change and national public policies that are impacting on the institution.

3.7 Conclusion

This chapter presented the literature on the university, its culture as manifested in artifacts such as structure and HR processes, and how under changed external conditions these are taking new directions. It showed that the organization has undergone a shift in the core function which had informed how the university

organized work and integrated participants to serve its purpose. The literature showed that the university has moved away from the core function of providing advanced education as a public service, a function validated in public support to advance education as serving the national economy driven by market forces another function. Political, social and economic imperatives have contributed to this shift in

organizational purpose whose impact is translated at the organizational structure level in changed decision-making structure, and redefined integrative functions such as HR. As the organization is reconstituted, the academic profession is also redefined. The culmination of these shifts is a contestation of cultural norms, values and beliefs and taken for granted basic assumptions.