Kristel Miller
Ulster University
Kristel is a senior lecturer at Ulster University. Her research focuses on the areas of university knowledge transfer, technology commercialisation and innovation. Recent research projects have explored the challenges of university, industry relationships, business model innovation and developing innovation capabilities in SMEs. She has published in various internationally recognised journals.
Background to Research
Universities are undergoing a stage of change where they are expected to become more entrepreneurial and make an impactful contribution to society. These changes to universities mission and strategy filtrate down to the micro level and are requiring academics to increasingly engage in a wider range of knowledge transfer activities and more specifically to engage more with industry. This is resulting in universities seeking to employ individuals who have significant industry experience. However, individuals who have significant industry experience and networks, do not always come into academia through traditional routes. Hence these type of academics are often called late career academics.
Within literature there is a lack of research exploring the challenges late career academics face when adjusting to scholarly demands and activities. In particular there is a lack of research exploring the personal identity perceived by these late career academics and the implications this has. This research attempts to fill this gap by providing an exploratory study which explores and develops aspects of identify among a group of late career academics. The theoretical lens of sensemaking from Weick (1995) is adopted as a lens through which to explore late career academics identity experiences. This theory originates from the field of organisational research which aims to study the complexity of organisations and their environments. Sensemaking is a cognitive, social process of creating shared understanding and meaning during uncertain and unstable organisational episodes (Weick, et al., 2005).
Methodology
A qualitative approach is adopted resulting in 10 exploratory interviews with late career academics across two Russel Group Universities. Interviews were triangulated with secondary documents on each universities respective strategies, human resource policies, promotional criteria etc. A thematic coding progress took place where open codes were grouped into sub themes and overarching categories.
Findings and contributions
Whilst the research project is still going, we identify that there is an intrinsic value in using sensemaking theory for understanding the social cognitive process through which late career academics interpret and construct meaning from the employment experiences. It was also identified that late career academics view themselves are being ‘secondary’ to academics who have often came into academia via the traditional route (from degree to masters to PhD) and that they struggle to meet performance mechanisms which appear to favour more traditional ‘early career’ academics.
This research helps extend research on the changing nature of academic roles, stressing the challenges universities face at micro levels when trying to embrace becoming more entrepreneurial and connected to industry. This will have practical implications in helping inform university human resource and performance policies to ensure that they are in line with the changing academic roles.
