University corporatisation: Driving redefinition

Drawing on international research into changing university environments, profiles, and structures, this study applies a neo-institutional perspective to the analysis and critique of underlying developed country trends in public sector university corporatisation and commercialisation. Identifying primary environmental and historical influences, the paper focuses upon key environmental factors that have promoted the importation of new public management and private sector philosophies into universities of which a significant proportion have been traditionally identified as operating within the public sector. The findings reveal an underlying neoliberal political and economic agenda, that has laid the foundations for the profound transformation that has reconfigured universities’ governance, missions, core values and the roles of their academics. These changes emerge as mimicking private sector corporate philosophies and governance structures, as well as returning to scientific management approaches of a century ago. Accounting and accountability are revealed as conduits supporting these significant shifts in university identity and role. Their realignment with shifting societal economic preoccupations and priorities is revealed as permeating their intellectual core, commercialising knowledge production and transforming the identity and role of the academic community.