Academentia, management and satire: ‘The good, the bad and the ugly’

Abstract

Orientation: The argument rethinks current managerial practices in higher education.

Research purpose: Satire beckons when normal science cannot reproduce itself or shift to account for different ways of doing things. When reality mimics satire, satire becomes an appropriate methodology. Such literary approaches can reveal what normal science cannot.

Motivation for the study: To add to critical management studies and the combatting of academentia as an institutional condition.

Research design, approach and method: The general methodology derives from both literary and business principles read through critical management studies and cultural studies. Autoethnography is shown here to be useful within accounting and management studies. The Semler and the Kalahari management practices explicitly specify the need to rethink ‘operational models’.

Main findings: No findings are offered in the conventional sense. Rather, relations are analysed and conclusions result from my own internal dialogue as a central player in the case study. The ‘transformation’ objectives of governance were disconnected from educational purposes. The resulting dramatic narrative hopefully appeals to readers in terms of their own lived conditions: can readers insert themselves into the narrative in terms of their own experiences?

Practical and/or managerial implications: Institutions to be managed as adhocracies. What has been learned after 20 years of transformation and restructuring, if anything?

Contribution and/or value-add: An engagement with critical management studies from the perspective of cultural studies identifies some solutions. Like the former, the latter examines issues of power relations, in this case, relations subsisting within administrative systems rather than the more usual framing as being between classes, races, ethnicities and genders.