Diversity, Difference and
Distributive Justice in Academic
Leadership
Professor Louise Morley
Centre for Higher Education and Equity
Research (CHEER)
University of Sussex, UK
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/education/cheer
28 June, 2016
Why Diversify Academic Leadership?
Higher education a major site of:
Cultural practices/messages/
values
Identity formation
Knowledge formation, capital &
dissemination
Opportunity structures for
social mobility
Worker production for other
influential institutions
Symbolic control
(Holmwood, 2011; Morley, 2011)
28 June, 2016
Snapshot Statistics: Absent Women
Hong Kong
• 13% professors/readers in 2009/10
• No female vice-chancellor (HKSAR, 2012).
Sweden
• 20% professors in 2010/11
• 43% vice-chancellors (SOS, 2012).
Turkey
• 28.5% professors in 2010/11
• 7% vice-chancellors (ÖSYM, 2012).
UK
• 21% professors in 2010/11
• 14% vice- chancellors (HEFCE, 2012).
28 June, 2016
Consequences of Absence of
Leadership Diversity
Employment/ Opportunity Structures
 Distributive injustice/ Structural Prejudice.
 Depressed career opportunities.
 Misrecognition of leadership potential/
wasted talent.
Service Delivery
 Knowledge Distortions, Cognitive/ Epistemic
injustice (Fricker, 2007)
 Reproduction of Institutional Norms and
Practices.
 Margins/ Mainstream hegemonies, with
women, BME staff seen as Organisational
28 June, 2016
‘Other’.
Impeding Diversity in Senior Leadership
• Who self-identifies/ is identified by existing power elites, as having
leadership legitimacy? (Morley, 2012).
• Are certain groups, styles, talents and potential mis-recognised/
perceived as too risky? (Fitzgerald, 2011).
• Do dominant groups continue to appoint in own image/ clone
themselves? (Gronn and Lacey, 2006).
• Is leadership still synonymous with structural positions and traditional
types and displays of masculinity (Davies & Thomas, 2002).
• Do current leadership scripts offer creative or restrictive potential (identity
cage) to under-represented groups? (Alvesson et al., 2008).
• Are informal practices e.g. networks, headhunters’ searches reproducing
privilege? (Watson, 2008).
28 June, 2016
• Does decision-making lack transparency/ accountability? (Rees, 2011).
Diversity = Representational Space?
Norm- saturated policy narratives
add more under-represented
groups
into current higher education
systems as students and academic
leaders
=
a form of distributive justice/ smart
economics
organisational and epistemic
transformation.
Development of a sociology of
absences (Santos, 1999) (2007/8- ECU,
2009).
28 June, 2016
Diversity in Academic
Leadership is Not…
• Treating identity simply as a
demographic variable.
• Access to organisations
monopolised by the elite.
• Allowing women/ minorities in,
but ensuring that they continue
to lack capital (economic,
political, social and symbolic)
to redefine the requirements of
the field
(Corsun & Costen, 2001).
28 June, 2016
Action or Words?
• ‘Speech acts’– ‘saying it’ does
not bring about actions that ‘do
things’.
• Difference between higher
education being diverse and
‘doing diversity’
(Ahmed, 2006).
• Gulf between staff experiences
of diversity and equality and
organisational statements and
policies (Deem et al., 2005; ECU, 2011).
28 June, 2016
Action for Change: Promoting Informed and
Inclusive Practices
Structural Interventions
• Accountability and
Transparency
• Data Collection and Diversity
Monitoring
• Diversity Data in quality audits/
league tables.
• Equality Impact Assessments/
Mainstreaming
• Action on Bullying, Harassment
and Discrimination
• Developmental Opportunities Coaching, Mentoring and
Networking.
28 June, 2016
New Conceptual Grammars, Innovative
Vocabularies and Leadership Styles
How can
• Leadership narratives,
technologies & practices be more:
than discursive performances
involving repetitions of the values/
beliefs of new public governance
than legitimating HE reform
narratives
more generative, inclusive and
diversity-sensitive?
28 June, 2016
Follow Up?
Centre for Higher Education and
Equity Research (CHEER)
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/education/cheer/
Follow CHEER on Twitter
https://twitter.com/intent/user?sc
reen_name=SussexCHEER
28 June, 2016