Redundancies don’t have to destroy trust: a tale of two business schools

In recent decades, the captains of British higher education have assumed that financial growth would be enduring, funded by an ever-expanding flow of overseas student fees and manifested in a proliferation of cranes on campus. But with no scenario planning for a downturn, the walls – metaphorically, at least – are now tumbling down.

If deficits can no longer be masked or postponed, universities respond with severance and redundancy rounds, departmental closures, course culls and even shotgun mergers. But when senior leadership, including the governing council responsible for financial stability, is, unaccountably, insulated from the consequences of their decisions, the trust and goodwill of staff erode.

They were already at a low ebb, having been eroded by years of intensifying competition, managerialism and financialisation. Administrative centralisation, asset sales, franchising, securitisation of rents from student accommodation and so on have transformed universities from places of learning into collections of “cost centres”, where staff are incentivised to substitute measurable outputs for meaningful scholarship.

During times of austerity, when trust and cooperation are needed most, their absence results in division, secrecy and vengeance. And when retrenchment schemes are ill-conceived or disingenuously presented – complete with phony consultation processes – morale drains away and staff withdraw psychologically and physically.

The importance of trust in higher education is not unrecognised. But that recognition is rarely accompanied by examples of how, in practice, trust is destroyed or built. However, the current turmoil has thrown up two highly illustrative instances in two different UK business schools: let’s call them Paris and London, in reference to Dickens’ account of those cities’ respective cultures in A Tale of Two Cities.

In Paris, trust destruction is illustrated by the opacity that permeated a review of its PhD programme. The initial proposals were drafted without consulting the staff responsible for delivering the teaching. When faculty members challenged the procedure on the basis that it deviated from established practice, the proposal was withdrawn and staff were reassured that they would be consulted over a replacement.

Once again, however, the draft was developed without any input from teaching staff. Instead, they were invited to comment on a developed proposal that recommended radical changes to the teaching programme, including the combination or elimination of modules.

The principal reasons for the changes were not academic. Rather, they were justified in terms of their contribution to reducing student contact hours and bringing the syllabus into line with those of equivalent or rival business schools. No evidence of student feedback was produced. No minutes of review committee meetings were apparently taken; transcripts of the committees’ virtual meetings were offered but, when the offer was taken up, they suddenly became unavailable. Faculty feedback on the proposal was not included in the version presented to the relevant committee. But when concerns were raised at the most senior level of the university, it was found impossible to ascertain whether the relevant procedures for course review and revision had been breached.

Paris’ approach is a practical instance of what has been called a “stupidity-based theory of organisations”, whereby an impulse to maintain control overrides purpose and ethics. Protective ignorance and symbolic rationality nullify dialogue.

By contrast, in London – where cost-saving pressures were more intense and the proposed reforms required substantial staff reductions – dialogue was maintained, building trust.

As a condition for lifting the threat of compulsory redundancies, the central university demanded that a required percentage of its business school faculty should accept voluntary severance. This had the potential to provoke considerable division and discord. Academics in subject groups with high student-staff teaching ratios – who, therefore, generated the most income per capita – could have claimed special exemption. And the university could have leveraged the intensified pressures on other business school staff to take voluntary severance to sow further division.

However, in practice, London’s senior leadership team fostered and presented a united, collegial response to the university’s headcount reduction demands. The dean and subject group heads’ open-door policy facilitated solidarity. Staff felt heard and supported: particularly important for those contemplating severance or worrying about the threat of redundancy on their mortgage repayments.

In addition, over many months, the dean, in concert with the business school’s senior administrator, held regular, often weekly, meetings (with online access) to update staff and answer questions. Sufficient staff volunteered for severance, thereby averting compulsory redundancies.

The business school leadership’s humane attentiveness contrasted directly with the university centre’s bunker mentality. Awkwardly choreographed, opaque and often bungled, its communications were described by one governance specialist as having been contrived to escape scrutiny, internally and externally. The business school’s very different example contributed to strengthening the resolve of staff across the university to collectively question the centre’s competence and challenge its demands – which went well beyond the business school.

A moment of crisis that threatened to be divisive and demoralising became an occasion to build trust and fortify solidarity.

The author prefers to remain anonymous.