Trouble at Mill: Quality of academic worklife issues within a comprehensive Australian university

Abstract

This study describes the quality of academic worklife (QAWL) within a comprehensive university in Australia. Academics responded to the Academic Work Environment Survey, a diagnostic instrument designed to assess the relationships between and among academics' demographic characteristics (age, gender, position, discipline area), work environment perceptions (role, job, supervisor, structure, sector characteristics), and work attitudes (self-estrangement, organisational commitment). Findings revealed positive QAWL features such as role clarity, motivating job characteristics, and low levels of self-estrangement (alienation). Negative QAWL features included role overload, low levels of job feedback, and limited opportunities to influence university decisionmaking. Comments indicated that many academics feel disenchanted and demoralised with the tenets and practices of managerialism. The study concludes that comprehensive universities suffer from strategic dissonance. They want to deliver cost efficiencies and maintain institutional reputation (i.e. centralise), but also want to serve distinct market sectors and expand their revenue base (i.e. decentralise).