The tower of pong

Bullshit Towers – Neoliberalism and Managerialism in Universities by Margaret Sims

ISBN: 978-1-78997-812-4, Peter Lang Publisher, Oxford, x+196 pp., 2020.

Reviewed by Thomas Klikauer and Norman Simms

Ever since neoliberalism and managerialism arrived at universities, the ivied halls have deliberately been changed from places where people wanted to go to places that people endure. As a new caste of managerialist, corporate apparatchiks, and CEOs – albeit the latter with a range of titles – took over (Murray & Frijters, 2017), students eager to learn became customers eager to get the stamp of approval for a job (Hil, 2015). Inside The Toxic University (Smyth, 2017), the most willing executors of managerialism (always to be found in administration) were promoted into management. Others, less manageable, were downgraded, side-lined, dismissed, retrenched, and casualised. Simultaneously, academics, who originally constituted ‘the university,’ became a necessary evil, a cost, but one to be reduced. Based on her decades of experience in academe, Margaret Sims’ book outlines how this process was inexorably and relentlessly carried through.

Today, many academics go to work, to a place that ‘makes [their] stomach churn and [their] blood pressure sky-rocket’ (p. 3). Sims says, she got the idea of using the word bullshit from reading management emails, something she has done for the better part of the last twenty-five years. While the term bullshit has become ever more prevalent ever since the US philosopher Harry Frankfurt wrote a book On Bullshit (2005), the word has entered the scholarly arena, the champion of the dispossessed, ready to take on the lions (liars and their prevarications) of managerialism. Recently, bullshit became truly popular in other gladiatorial combats through Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs (2018) and Spicer’s Business Bullshit (2018).

There are many very justifiable reasons to call universities bullshit towers, places run by those with bullshit jobs engaged in the business of bullshit. What corporate apparatchiks in universities do may appear as bullshit, it is nevertheless dangerous bullshit (in the sense of meaningless and obscurantist discourse). Much of the bullshit we see – many see it not just from afar as a theoretical ‘cloud of unknowing’ but experience it first-hand as a traumatic shock to the system – is created by a corps of corporate apparatchiks. These corporate apparatchiks do not really work in a proper corporation (one that produces or distributes things) but have taken on the ideology of a corporation (a consolidation of managers who merely self-aggrandise and self-perpetuate). They transfer the ideology of neoliberalism into the idea of a university to the point that it becomes not just another ideology to compete for mental and bureaucratic space, but the very ideology of managerialism (Klikauer, 2013), the one that replaces knowledge, tradition and intellectual ambition.

Sims is correct when saying, ‘Neoliberalism…is an ideology’ (p. 5). Reading through the godfather of neoliberalism F. von Hayek’s catechism The Road to Serfdom (1944), indeed one gets the distinct impression that his short(ish) booklet isn’t on academic economics at all but an insidious ideological pamphlet. At the end of his long life, Hayek himself admitted that his main success had been the influence he had on journalists, working economists, and politicians. One of Hayek’s outstanding successes was ‘the removal of state responsibility’ (p. 7), which is now to be read as ‘the state or status of responsibility.’ In neoliberalism, this new condition of statelessness means privatisation. In managerialism this means shifting responsibilities (liabilities, consequences and burdens of guilt) to workers, ideologically camouflaged as empowerment (another meaningless buzz word, like agency). For university managers, it means taking credit for what academics have achieved (as scholars and teachers) while blaming them when things (the financial and structural integrity of the institution) go wrong. This remains one of the most important rules management has ever invented.

Of course, in the old days of a more equal (collegial) life at university, to be an academic was to enter into venerable learned profession, a career in creating and evaluating knowledge and passing on the improved ideas and the refined skills to the next generation; therefore, it could not continue once managerialism moved in lock, stock and barrel. From then on, it proclaimed to the animals in the farm: ‘No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal’ (p. 8). Any university boss or corporate henchman will tell you that empowerment and collegiality are important. And, of course, at the same time, they say that ‘any viable sense of agency [is] undermined’ (p. 8). Simultaneously, ‘dissent is perceived as traitorous, and as such, a legitimate target for punitive action’ (p. 8). That’s just because some animals are more equal than the others.

This managerial gobbledegook comes along with a ‘curriculum [that] is simplified, so that students obtain good grades and respond with high customer satisfaction ratings’ (p. 13). Both are important for academic promotion and for the marketing of The PR-University (Cronin 2016). Surveys (not objective, careful meditations on the subject) are also used to indicate quality (a diaphanous mode of bovine excreta). In that game, everyone, except (naturally) the student (or customer), is a winner. The ideology of quality assurance (Aspromourgos, 2012) is highly useful to force academics into ‘standardising their teaching’ (p. 13). This is not the only reminder of Henry Ford’s car factory with assembly-line manufacturing. What in a car factory is called SOS (Standard Operation Sheet) is called standard teaching and the ‘standardisation of assessments’ (p. 13). Following Ford, it creates standardised academics and students, readymade for the standardised world of consumer capitalism. Best of all, it creates a standardised illusion of thinking, bullshit framed within appropriate jargon.

Self-evidently, the language of managerialism ‘often sounds profound but its weighty sounding words hide a complete lack of clarity and meaning’ (p. 17). Managerialism does this deliberately. It is a valued strategy to obscure issues so that the managerialists can blame academics when things do not turn out as planned. It allows corporate apparatchiks to claim misunderstandings and to extract (or abstract) themselves from the scene. The advancement of the learned language of managerialism can be gauged in rafts of managerial buzzword generators available on the Internet (Watson, 2004; 2009).

It is equally important for corporate apparatchiks to master the babble of managerialism because it shows ‘leadership potential’ (p. 18) and belonging. Managerialists have no problem at all with ‘spreading not only the bullshit language, but the meaningless ideas upon which it is based’ (p. 18). This is a crucial point. While academics are trained to examine words and concepts, to detect holes and contradictions, for managerialism all of this is worse than irrelevant. It is threatening. Managerialism operates on ideology and power. Holding power allows managerialists to blame academics when they misunderstand the bullshit language of managerialist obfuscation. It forces academics into a position of having to interpret what is said by corporate apparatchiks.

Beyond that, it reinforces a much-valued power asymmetry in which managers tell academics what to do, as though a gang of monkeys typed out the lectures for the lecturers to read out to their students. It is power play which corporate managers enjoy, as academics, not just students, are regularly on the receiving end. They are the winners, further cementing their power. In a second move, academics can be exposed as incompetent. Thirdly, whatever the once-respected professors say provides valuable information that can be used against fellow academics. Big Brother is always watching you.

For the corporate apparatchiks running universities, academics are not much more than human resources, materials, tools, chattels, (unfortunately) still a necessary and above all a costly ‘function,’ the rest is pretence. The occasionally issued invitation to participate in the university’s organisational affairs means nothing to managerialists except gaining insights into academia and the gathering of information to be used against those down Fayol’s chain of command (1916). From the standpoint of the managerialist, academic involvement is unwarranted, as it simply gets in the way. Nothing should get between a managerialist and his maker. Based on decades of excruciating experience, Sims is correct in saying, ‘Once in the management group, the language of bullshit must be spoken to maintain one’s position. The language of bullshit speaks the neoliberal managerial culture into reality’ (p. 21). Using the mystifying language of managerialism means expressing a manager’s conformity to the esprit de corps of managerialism and a readiness to further the spirit of managerialist culture. This culture, by the way, isn’t culture at all. It is ‘organisational’ pathology (Schrijvers, 2004) sold as ‘culture’ [sic], a key term when enforcing the ideology of Managerialism. Managerialism assumes that organisational culture means shared values. These are the values of managerialism – not the values of academia or students.

Still, when all is said and done, ‘language [is] a powerful tool used to shape and re-shape realities, beliefs, and worldviews … it acts as a complete tool of social control’ (p. 21). This is exactly what managerialism is about and how it sees language. The language of managerialism is a vital tool to establish social control over universities. This is even more the case in organisations in which profitmaximisation, euphemistically labelled ‘shareholder value’ under managerialism, is not the prime goal of a university. Free from the demand to generate profits, university managerialists can freely go about cementing managerialism into all the nooks and crannies of higher education. Much of this ‘concretisation’ (or intellectual constipation) comes at the detriment of students and academia as a (w)hole. That all of this is damaging to Alexander von Humboldt’s idea of the university is of no concern to corporate apparatchiks so long as they can fly business class and get picked up by a chauffeured blue Maserati with license plates depicting the corporate logo of the university.

Of course, the language of managerialism has been sent to earth by higher beings ‘further privileging’ (p. 31) the new cast of managerialists. In the simplistic world of managerialism where in-group is set against out-group, ‘those who are not fluent in bullshit language are positioned as undeserving outsiders’ (p. 32). For the in-group, it means that ‘managers gain confidence through having the right words to say and rarely seek to delve into any deeper meaning (partly because such a deeper meaning rarely exists)’ (p. 42). Managerialism remains a shallow affair based on ideology and power, not deeper meaning.

The lack of deeper meaning reaches into the teaching part of the university as well. Sims says, ‘In many instances senior managers are completely unable to define what learning actually is’ (p. 57). Of course, top managers in a car factory are unable to define how an ABS braking system actually works, or American presidents to understand the workings of the US Constitution. This mere technicality of knowing what you are talking about is of no concern to corporate apparatchiks. These mechanical things are for people down the line. What concerns the managerialists is ‘the development of policies and procedures designed to standardise the ‘product’, and standardised tool to measure compliance and performance’ (p. 57). Performance management remains a vital component of managerialism and for corporate apparatchiks.

The fact that performance management is quite useless is irrelevant (Klikauer, 2017). The point is to use the illusion as a tool to further the cause of managerialism and to demonstrate to academics who ‘runs the show’. The point is power – not organisational performance (Guest et al., 2013). As William Shakespeare would have his dramatis personae explain at the end of their performance, ‘We are such stuff as dreams are made of.’

Beyond that, the system of performance management gives managerialists yet another punitive tool to be used against academics. If a management-defined failure lies in the area of teaching and research, it will ‘generate…a Unit Action Plan’ (p. 59) or, even worse, a performance improvement plan (PIP) – the first step to dismissal. Corporate managerialists call this, we will performance manage her out of here and my way or the highway (Ryan, 2016). The system has other benefits for managerialism because ‘academics spend more and more of their time each day demonstrating to managers what they are doing, rather than having time to actually do it’ (p. 63). This creates ‘accountability’ (p. 63) – a key term for managerialism. What is relevant is accountability, not teaching, research and attending an academic conference, for example.

In the good old days (for lecturers) or the bad old days (for managerialists), an academic ‘would pop [his or her] head around the Head of School’s door to get approval and sign a piece of paper’ (p. 63) to attend an academic conference. Now, as Sims shows, managerialists have turned this into a 15-step application, vetting, and reporting process. On her list, Sims (p. 63f.) hasn’t even mentioned the final conference report to be submitted to management.

Of course, there are ‘millions of dollars…wasted by excessive compliance demands’ (p. 65). The European Union has even calculated the millions of euros lost and the time wasted every year as academics are forced to apply for funding grants for research projects. Regularly, if one project applicant gets funding, plenty of other applicants do not. More than that, nothing is either lost or wasted, since the whole process makes it more necessary that managerialists run the whole show, thus demonstrating their sublime power to create nothing (ex nihlo). They can dream up endless funding plans, conjure forth funding criteria, generate new assessment procedures, appoint more judges to vet proposals, etc. This keeps academics busy with filling in forms while corporate apparatchiks can set up special management departments assisting academics in the writing of funding proposals.

Meanwhile, the underlings of the corporate apparatchiks have also been kept busy with inventing ever more policies and procedures. Sims’ own university has no less than ‘64 policies, 62 rules, 106 procedures, 31 guidelines (plus an additional 17 guidelines) … eight protocols, four codes, three plans, two statements … 328 documents specifying how things should be done and by whom’ (p. 69). For what purpose? one might well ask. To camouflage the neoliberal ideology. In brief, to respond to the demand for less red tape.

To oversee all this, corporate apparatchiks have invented plenty of managerial positions such as ‘a sourcing and category manager, an asset compliance manager, a content optimising officer, a process innovation co-ordinator’ (p. 76f.). Consequently, universities are full of managers and increasingly fewer (full time equivalent) academics, casualised or otherwise. At Sims’ university, the apparatchik component was a staggering 62% in 2006. By 2017, it had grown to more than 68%’ (p. 78). Increasingly this is a common feature that defines today’s universities as sacred spaces for bullshit managerialist and not ivory-towered academics.

Much of this gives managerialists tremendous power beyond their sheer numerical strength. Therefore, ‘dissenters are casually dismissed as poor team-players, trouble-makers or malcontents’ (p. 95). Of course, the system of managerialism and its overpaid university bosses (p. 107) can call upon external assistance, usually framed as ‘independent advisers’ (Klikauer & Campbell 2020). One such support agency is Price Waterhouse Coopers which in 2016 stated, ‘Academic freedom and democratic governance of universities interfere with the efficient exercise of managerial prerogative and must be reduced in influence’ (p. 95). Unlike neoliberalism that seeks to use democracy, managerialism is outright antidemocratic. What managerialism seeks is efficiency, not democracy. Like the Fascists, they will make the trains run on time.

It relentlessly advances what Sims calls ‘PICO, which stands for power, influence, control’ (p. 111). The increased power of corporate apparatchiks inevitably leads to bullying (p. 113). Expectedly, ‘around 80% of bullying in higher education is perpetrated by managers’ (p. 114). It gets even better as ‘management perceive themselves as the university’ (p. 122). In the end, ‘the educational environments…are increasingly dogmatic and oppressive, and worse still, dogma and oppression are being delivered in the name of freedom and creativity’ (p. 128). Sims’ exquisite book ends with the inevitable necessity of ‘challenging the system’ (p. 169).

Thomas Klikauer teaches MBAs at the Sydney Graduate School of Management, Western Sydney University, NSW. Contact: T.Klikauer@westernsydney.edu.au

Norman Simms is a retired professor of the English and Humanities Department at the University of Waikato, New Zealand, and is the editor of an online journal called Mentalities.

References

Aspromourgos, T. (2012). The managerialist university: an economic interpretation. Australian Universities’ Review, 54(2), 44-49.

Frankfurt, H. G. (2005). On Bullshit. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Fayol, H. (1916). Managerialism Industrielle et Générale (Industrial and General Managerialism). London: Sir I. Pitman & Sons, Ltd. (1930).

Cronin, A. M. (2016). Reputational capital in ‘the PR University’: public relations and market rationalities. Journal of Cultural Economy, 9(4), 396-409.

Graeber, D. (2018). Bullshit Jobs. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Guest, D., Paauwe, J., & Wright, P.M. (eds.) (2013). HRM and Performance: Achievements and Challenges. Chichester: Wiley.

Hayek, F. A. (1944). The Road to Serfdom. London: G. Routledge & Sons.

Hil, R. 2015. Selling Students Short: Why you won’t get the university education you deserve. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.

Klikauer, T. (2013). Managerialism – Critique of an Ideology. Basingstoke: Palgrave.

Klikauer, T. (2017), Eight fatal flaws of performance management. Management Learning, 48(4), 492-497.

Klikauer, T. & Campbell, N. (2020). The Politics of Framing and the Framing of Politics. Counterpunch. Retrieved from https://www. counterpunch.org/2020/05/11/the-politics-of-framing-and-theframing-of-politics/

Murray, C. & Frijters, P. (2017). Game of Mates: How Favours Bleed the Nation. Brisbane, Queensland: Cameron Murray.

Ryan, L. (2016). The Truth About ‘Performance Improvement Plans’. Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/ lizryan/2016/04/08/the-truth-about-performance-improvementplans/#455b4b8d3b36

Schrijvers, J. (2004). The Way of the Rat – A Survival Guide to Office Politics. London: Cyan Books.

Smyth, J. (2017). The toxic university: zombie leadership, academic rock stars and neoliberal ideology. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Spicer, A. (2018). Business Bullshit. London: Routledge.

Watson, D. (2004). Watson’s dictionary of weasel words, contemporary clichés, cant & management jargon. Milsons Point: Knopf.

Watson, D. (2009). Bendable Learnings: The Wisdom of Modern Management. Sydney: Knopf.