Abstract
The purpose of this study is to qualitatively explore how new managerial practices have influenced the psychological contracts of academics at a university of technology. Little is qualitatively known about how new managerial policies shape psychological contracts for academics in higher education. This study adopts a generic qualitative approach that draws on an interpretivist paradigm. A sample of 15 academics was used. In-depth interviewing was the data collection method. Thematic analysis was employed to reduce the interview data into meaningful themes. Three main themes emerge from the interview data: (a) shifts in the nature of the employment relationship, (b) self-monitoring through performance management systems, and (b) the construction of students as clients. These themes also reflect the nuanced influence of new managerial practices on the psychological contract showing that there is a spectrum of positive and negative consequences. New managerialism policies do impact on psychological contract formation, but this can be positive (as a form of organizational learning) or negative (as a form of control and deprofessionalization). The challenge for managers is to design policy toward the positive side of the spectrum. There is limited qualitative work on psychological contracts and new managerialism in higher education, both at a national and international level. Extant work tends to emphasize negative consequences only of new managerial practices, while this study shows that the outcomes for psychological contracts are more complex than simple binary distinctions.
Introduction
The South African higher education environment is faced with constant change due to ongoing and contested transformations and restructuring (Morreira, 2017). The common thread informing these transformations and restructuring attempts are new managerial (NM) practices imported from the private sector (Davis, Jansen van Rensburg, & Venter, 2016). These practices operate from two central premises. The first premise is that the techniques, values, and practices derived from managing private sector organizations can be successfully transferred to the management of public service organizations such as public universities. The second premise is the belief that managerial practice alone is responsible for increased staff and organizational performativity (Booi, Vincent, & Liccardo, 2017). Therefore managerial practice can override, ignore, and restructure the autonomy, skill, and professional status of workers based on the actual use of a range of managerial techniques that were once the exclusive reserve of the private sector corporation (Ladwig, Rees, & Shields, 2014).
Further most of the work on the ways in which South African academics experience their work is quantitative relying on cross-sectional survey designs (Theron, Barkhuizen, & Du Plessis, 2014). Qualitative explorations of this phenomenon are scarce in an already limited literature (Pietersen, 2018; Ruggunan, 2016). It is to this end that this study makes a contribution through its qualitative approach. The study attempts to explore the ways in which academics negotiate the new terrain that new managerialist practices have carved in their psychological contracts.
Features of New Managerialism
While the literature reveals some disagreement on the specific features and definition of new managerialism and its practices, there is consensus on six features (Lynch, 2014) that define the practice.
It gives primacy to product and output over process and input (Martin-Sardesai, Irvine, Tooley, & Guthrie, 2017). Quantitative measures of output prioritize qualitative measures (Lynch, Grummell, & Devine, 2012).
It endorses strong market-type accountability in public sector spending (Kenny, 2017).
A change of language and vocabulary from that of citizens, rights, welfare, and solidarity to that of customers, service users, and competition (Lynch et al., 2012).
The encouragement of self-monitoring through the widespread use of performance indicators, league tables, target-setting, and benchmarking (Kenny, 2017).
The decentralization of budgetary and personal authority to line managers combined with the retention of power and control at central level (Deem, 2001).
The introduction of new and more casualized contractual employment arrangements, as a means to reducing costs and exercising control, are also defining practices (Kenny, 2017).
Psychological Contract: Past Versus Present
The concept of the psychological contract was introduced by Argyris (1960). For Argyris, the psychological contract captured the unwritten rules and expectations that were held by employees and managers in respect of each other. Several iterations of the psychological contract have since followed (Levinson, Price, Munden, Mandl, & Solley, 1962; D. M. Rousseau, 1996; Schein, 1996) These have remained the seminal theorists of the psychological contract, and contemporary work involves some form of testing or development of these theorists’ ideas.
The literature suggests that psychological contracts can be relational or transactional (D. W.-B. Rousseau, 1995). Transactional contracts involve some form of exchange of effort for monetary rewards over a finite period of time. Relational contracts, on the contrary, involve the relationship between the employee and the organization as a function of nonmonetary actions. Relational constructs could be employee commitment, organizational loyalty, and trust in management (Guzzo, Noonan, & Elron, 1994). Relational contracting is less tangible than transactional contracting. A range of seminal studies found that transactional and relational contracting impacted upon each other (D. M. Rousseau, Hansen, & Tomprou, 2018) suggest that a third component may be at play in psychological contracts. They identified ideology as this component. This moved psychological contracting beyond a bipolar model. Ideology refers to the employee’s commitment to a cause that is viewed as being bigger than the organization or individuals (Herriot, Manning, & Kidd, 1997).
The literature has accepted the three components of the psychological contract as transactional, relational, and ideological. Variations and debate on these components occur, but empirical work has validated these constructs (Thompson & Anderson, 1998; Thompson & Bunderson, 2003).
The concept of the psychological contract has become an important focus area for management researchers and practitioners in recent years because of the dominant resource-based view of the firm (Wöcke & Sutherland, 2008). The central idea is that employees are key to sustainable competitive advantage, and it follows that relationships between employers and employees are critical to ensuring productivity and the continued release of innovation and creativity. The traditional psychological contract that existed in organizations was characterized by stability, certainty, and development (Tipples &Verry, 2006). The psychological contract of employees in such organizations reflected loyalty on behalf of employees as a result of the long-term employment assurance given to them by the organization (Deem, 2001; Morrison & Robinson, 1997). In the traditional Fordist world of work, there was a balance between employee expectations for career mobility and advancement in return for employee commitment to the organizations goals (McInnis, 2012). However, given the increasing asymmetrical relationship between employers and employees in a post-Fordist workplace (due to work restructuring, insecure labor markets, and an acute distinction between core and periphery workers), the balance between employee and employer expectations has shifted profoundly (Lynch et al., 2012). As Maguire (2003) contends “in the past the psychological contract was characterised by employees exchanging cooperation, conformity and performance for tenure and economic security” (p. 90). In a post-Fordist workplace, tenure and economic security are neither guaranteed nor seen as desirable by employers. This then necessarily has an impact on the nature of the psychological contract in the contemporary workplace (Robinson et al., 1994).
More recently, McInnis (2012) defines the psychological contract in academia “as the implicit and explicit promises two parties make to one another.” For example, an employer might promise his or her employee the provision of job security, and the employee might promise to the employer hard work and loyalty. The contract is termed psychological because it reveals the perceptions of the relationship and the promises involved by both parties (Maharaj, Ortlepp, & Stacey, 2008). In contrast, the traditional psychological contract offered employees stability, predictability, and growth; alternately, due to the changes in organizations, the present psychological contract reflects poor job security. Moreover, cognizant that the terms of the new psychological contract have not yet been clearly established, employees are certain of one firm responsibility that they have which is to continuously create opportunities to meet their own security needs (Akhtar & Long, 2015; Ehrlich, 1994).
Organization and employees bear the brunt of the continuous changes in the complex business environment, therefore altering and transforming the psychological contract to what it presently is today (Osterloh & Frey, 2000). Successful adaptation to the continuous changes in the complex business environment necessitates organizations to develop new strategy interventions. This could mean that organizations may put in place strategies that would require more manpower for successful implementation or more capital and less manpower. Consequently, this alters their behaviors (Dirks & Ferrin, 2002; Ring & Van de Ven, 1994).
In the current business environment, the new psychological contract is viewed as a more “adult” contract rather than the paternalist traditional psychological contract (Eisenberger et al., 2001; Lessner & Akdere, 2008). In the new psychological contract, both employee and organization move into an “adult” contract where mutual beneficial work is a priority. With regard to worth of an employee, he or she is responsible for determining their own worth whereas with traditional psychological contract determined by their organization (Lessner & Akdere, 2008). One of the major characteristics of the new psychological contract is that of the duration of employment in the organization. There are high levels of short-term employment; therefore, employees are expected to maintain their networks as well as form multiple working relationships to prepare for undesirable outcomes such as a retrenchment (Lessner & Akdere, 2008; Schoorman et al., 2007; A. Theron, 2011).
Table 1 represents some of the most important characteristics of the psychological contract while illustrating the differentiation between the new and the old psychological contract in relation to these characteristics. For example, the first characteristic of “employer input” shows that time and effort was a key input under the old psychological contract, whereas this has transitioned to “valued knowledge and skill” under the new psychological contract (A. Theron, 2011). This differentiation implies that the old psychological contract emphasizes quantity of work being the key input for employers, while quality of work is most important to employers of the new psychological contract.
Methodology and Analysis
Paradigm and Approach
An interpretivist paradigm and qualitative approach was used to collect and make sense of the data. Qualitative research allows the researcher to focus on answering questions that are related to “how” and “why” questions as well as concentrate on contextual factors that are related to the study (Baxter & Jack, 2008). A qualitative approach also allows us to discover the processes and socio-cultural contexts that shape human behavior (Creswell & Creswell, 2017; Merriam & Grenier, 2019). This study wanted to uncover how NM contexts influence behavioral patterns of academics in terms of their psychological contracting behaviors. The narrative that emerges from the interview data provides access to the lived experiences of the participants interviewed for this study. Quantitative studies dominate work on psychological contracts, a consequence of which is that scholars have limited access to the more subjective experiences of academics experience of psychosocial contracts (Koh, Ang, & Straub, 2004; Shen, 2010). Further quantitative studies provide fragmented data rather than a holistic and in-depth assessment of participants and their contexts(Chinyamurindi, 2016). Our rationale for this study was to provide rich, deep, and holistic data, hence the choice of approach and design.
Research Design
A qualitative exploratory research approach was used. The rationale for this was that this design has been useful in previous qualitative designs of the ways employees experience their working lives (Chinyamurindi, 2016; Koh et al., 2004). This approach further allows researchers access to the lived experiences of participants and the ways in which participants interpret those experiences. Our study is focused on how academics experience and ascribe meaning to their psychological contracts under new managerialist conditions; therefore, such a design is appropriate.
The use of this methodological design provided a richness of data which enabled us to gain some provisional and exploratory insights into how academics are experiencing their psychological contracts under NM practices (Babbie, 2013; Creswell & Creswell, 2017). The results are not meant to be generalizable but rather be suggestive and provide a snapshot of this social phenomenon that could inform the design of future large-scale studies that want to explore the changing nature of psychological contracts in diverse workplace contexts (Sewpersad, 2015).
Entrée and Establishing Researcher Roles
Ethics approval was obtained from the universities of the researchers as well as the university that employed participants. This also makes transparent the research process, contributing to the credibility of the study.
Informed consent was sought from participants who were fully briefed via email and in person about the purpose of the study and how any outputs of the study may be used for research or teaching purposes. Participants were informed that they could withdraw from the study at any point. Interview transcripts were also made available if they requested them.
Strategies to Ensure Data Quality and Reporting
Four steps were taken to ensure data quality. First, a pilot study was conducted using three participants from the study site. The pilot study assisted the researcher in refining the interview schedule. This process was iterative and questions on managerial elites and new managerialism were refined. This was also a way of ensuring the trustworthiness of the study (Assarroudi, Heshmati Nabavi, Armat, Ebadi, & Vaismoradi, 2018; Sewpersad, 2015). Second, rich and thick descriptions of the interview data were created. This allows readers to decide on the scientific merit of the data collected (Creswell, 2009). Third, a full documented audit trail of the study is available to future researchers who wish to replicate the study or apply it to different contexts. Finally, intercoder reliability was achieved as two coders were involved in coding the data independently (Babbie, 2013; Sewpersad, 2015). As part of the audit trail, all interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed verbatim. Transcripts were then emailed to participants for their feedback. These are essential data quality strategies as demonstrated (Bell, Bryman, & Harley, 2018; Bell, Kothiyal, & Willmott, 2017).
Population and Sampling
The total number of elements in the population for this study is 70 academics from the rank of senior lecturer upward. Given the qualitative nature of the study, a nonprobability sampling approach was used. The sample was purposefully arrived at based on the following criteria:
They had to be a permanently employed academic at UoT and experienced both pre- and post-merger organizational transformation of the University of Technology (UoT).
They needed to be employed in one of the eight academic departments that UoT gave the researcher access to.
The positions of academics interviewed ranged from lecturers to Heads of Departments. Each interview lasted between 60 and 90 min and 15 academics were interviewed (Table 2).
Characteristic of the Sample of the Study.
Pilot Study
A pilot study was conducted using three participants from UoT. The pilot study assisted the researcher in refining the interview schedule. This process was iterative and questions on managerial elites and new managerialism were refined. This was also a way of ensuring the trustworthiness of the study (Assarroudi et al., 2018).
The final sample consisted of 15 academics. All the interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed verbatim. Transcribed interviews were not treated as text, but as reflections of realities of those being studied.
Trustworthiness of the data was achieved through sampling the pilot interview schedule. Rich and thick descriptions of the interview data were created. This allows for readers to decide on the scientific merit of the data collected (Creswell, 2009). A full documented audit trail of the study is available to future researchers who wish to replicate the study or apply it to different contexts. Finally intercoder reliability was achieved as two coders were involved in coding the data independently (Sewpersad, 2015).
Data Collection and Analysis
Thematic analysis was used as the focal data analysis method to examine the data obtained through in-depth interviews. This is a well-established and accepted way of analyzing qualitative data (McCormack, 2000). Even though thematic analysis is open to a range of interpretations in the literature, this study adopted Braun and Clarke’s (2006) typology of thematic analysis to structure the analysis and interpretation of the interviews. The interviews needed to tap into the various dimensions of psychosocial contract and psychological contract breach. With this in mind, the interviews were semistructured, with questions designed to elicit responses on how psychological contracts for academics had changed over time. Interview questions were linked to the research questions for the study. For example:
Research Question 1
How were the initial psychological contracts of academics formed?
Preprepared questions that related to Research Question 1 were as follows:
i. Can I start by asking you where you worked and what you did, before you came to work here?
ii. Why did you choose to come to work here?
iii. What did you expect the job to be before you got here?
Each interview was recorded and transcribed. After reading each transcribed interview, a summary or vignette of the interview was written. Then a longer narrative of each interview was written up. This was Level 1 of the analytical process. The longer narrative captured the ways in which academics narrated their psychological contracting behaviors and breaches. This assisted in identifying common patterns, consistencies, and themes across the interview data. This is a well-established strategy when working with interview data (Thornhill, Clare, & May, 2004). Once this first level of generating meaning and themes was completed, a second level interpretive process occurred. This involved reducing the high number of themes to a smaller number. This is a method of qualitative data reduction advocated by Braun and Clarke (2006). The process is iterative (McCormack, 2000).
Findings
The key findings from the analysis will be presented as (a) shifts in the nature of the employment relationship, (b) self-monitoring through performance management systems, (c) the construction of students as clients.
Adapting to Shifts in the Nature of the Employment Relationship
The changing nature of the employment relationship between academics and the university was a recurrent theme that emerged in all 15 participants’ narratives. First, participants were reflexive and varied in their assessment of the changing nature of the employment relationship, demonstrating that organizational restructuring would necessarily change the legal contractual relationship as well as the psychological contract of academics with their employer.
P1 shows this reflexivity in the exemplar quote below: I think that we must not be so precious about these developments. Yes, on the one hand it is a culture shock but that is how the world of work is changing and we are no exception. There are different ways in which it [new managerial practices] can happen but. However it happens it cannot be the usual way of going about our profession. For new and younger staff this will be their only experience of academic work. (P1)
Second, the majority of narratives of participants (
Senior staff (as expressed by their rank) also expressed narratives of how neo-liberal philosophies of new managerialism can be a form of organizational learning that rewards hard workers and “separates the slackers from the pack.” A common thread through the narratives was the repeated use of the words “efficiency and productivity.” This may be an outcome of these terms used in official human resources policy documents of the university as well as indicative of the preferred lexicon of management. Participants seem to have internalized the vocabulary and some participants conflated it to achieving a form of organizational distributive justice.
Narratives suggest that where efficiency and productivity are taken to mean a form of organizational justice, more accountability in the use of public funds, and a means of reducing the power of administrators, then there is support for new contractual relationship between academics and the university.
Self-Monitoring Through Performance Management Systems
A second theme to emerge from the interviews was that of a shift toward NM tools such as performance management systems that are predicated on self-monitoring behaviors. This articulates with a defining feature of new managerialism, that is the use of performance indicators to control and shape employee behaviors. Furthermore, it resonates with a shift from “fair pay for good work” to performance-based pay or “high pay for high quality work” dimension of new psychological contracts in NM workplaces. All participants reported research production as the main source of anxiety in the new performance management systems.
As Participant 4 suggests, . . . well this is the norm nationally now isn’t it, we get incentivised to produce certain outputs like articles and so on. So the culture has shifted, I feel people are more insular now since they have to focus on their performance targets. I don’t know anyone who has been fired for not producing as yet but yes I myself am more conscious of how I spend my time and on which activities. If its not part of my targets then I don’t do it. We never had this system before but the work got done. But I often don’t sleep because I worry about my performance reviews. I am close to retirement and I am not research inclined, so it’s been tough for me. (P4)
Participants 9, 13, and 15 indicated that prior to the merger and the introduction of NM practices, academics remained relatively autonomous in their work design with no pressures to “produce research outputs” or to demonstrate quality teaching as part of their employment contract. These measures may have taken place as a part of individual decisions to be promoted to their next academic ranks but was not formalized in any human resources management policy.
Most participants (
Construction of Students as Clients (and Academics as Service Providers)
A third theme to emerge from the narratives of participants is the NM idea that constructs students as clients and “core products,” and by implication, academics are service providers. This also resonates with the narrowed scope of the new psychological contract. Participants expressed discomfit in being rendered this new identity of service provider as well as having a client identity imposed on students.
As articulated by Participant 2, . . . so the student is a client now, does this mean that the client is always right? Where did they get this idea from of making us service providers. It’s not the right context to use these words. Everyone is a client now, so they even tell us that we academics are clients to human resources for examples. I don’t know . . . it creates a culture of entitlement amongst students once they are called clients.
When probed about how these new identities of students are conveyed in practice, participants indicated that it is articulated in both latent and overt ways. For example, they report that university documents speak of “student centeredness” as a short hand for the idea of “student as client,” and that these two ways of speaking about students are often used interchangeably at academic meetings. Students are also to be viewed as products and outputs that are quantitatively measured.
Findings from the third theme indicate a marked difference in the ways academics interviewed interpreted the policy of student centeredness, and the ways in which academic managers interpreted the same concept.
Discussion
Three key themes were discovered from the in-depth interviews with participants that are suggestive of the ways in which the psychological contract is being experienced in new ways by participants under NM practices. These three themes are
Adapting to shifts in the nature of the employment relationship,
Self-monitoring through performance management systems, and
Construction of students as clients and academics as service providers.
Overall, based on the interview data, the study attests to there being shifts in the ways that academics experience their psychological contracts and adapt to NM practices. This is supported by the literature of similar contexts at other universities both locally and globally (Tipples & Jones, 1998; White, 2013). Participants in this study appear to be more reflexive and less homogeneous in their assessment of NM practices than most extant studies that tend to view all NM practices in higher education as negative (Grummell, Devine, & Lynch, 2009). On one end of the spectrum, the reflexivity expressed by the participants in the interview data shows that NM practices potentially has a positive influence on psychological contracts if these practices can advocate or catalyze for a form of organizational justice, accountability, and organizational learning.
On the undesirable side of spectrum, participants saw NM practices influencing the psychological contract through processes of deprofessionalization, deskilling, and loss of autonomy of work processes. The undesirable influence on the psychological contract are well documented in the literatures, specifically studies that examine the practice of NM at higher education institutes in the industrialized world such as Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and New Zealand (O’Donohue, Donohue, & Grimmer, 2007; Selmer, Andresen, & Cerdin, 2017; Thomas, Ravlin, Liao, Morrell, & Au, 2016). The literature on emotional well-being, emotional labor, and psychological contract breach as a consequence of NM supports the thematic findings from participant interviews. The sociology of professions literature is one of many literatures that examine the ways in which new managerialism breaches psychosocial contracts of professionals in terms of their career identities (Ruggunan, 2013). Professional identity as an academic according to participants requires autonomy and NM practice are eroding this autonomy.
Concomitant with this is the latent theme of conflict between two different narratives of new managerialism influence on the psychological contract. On one hand, academics perceive their psychological contracts being breached through processes of deprofessionalization, while academic managers see the potential of new positive psychological contracts rooted in appeals to organizational justice and organizational learning. This creates an environment that encourages collegial conflict. It highlights the idea that psychological contracts also exist among peers and need not always be employer initiated or controlled (Penfold & Ronnie, 2015). NM practices potentially create competition among academics in an internal labor market that has limited access to resources and rewards.
Meyer’s (2002) study of secondary and tertiary education adoption of NM practices, however, provides some evidence that new managerialism need not be a unilateral form of corporatization but may contain important elements of organizational learning. He argues that . . . ongoing changes in education management are better understood as instances of organizational learning in response to the limits of bureaucratic organization in turbulent environments. (P108)
His analysis supports the narratives expressed by academic managers that also view NM policies as a form of organizational learning. He also challenges the idea that knowledge producing sectors such as universities are or should be immune to global turbulent change. He argues instead for a rethinking of the “university as a sacrosanct space.” Hui & Rousseau (2004), in one of the few large-scale studies on psychological contracts done outside the industrialized world, demonstrates that psychological contracts do influence organizational citizenship behaviors and organizational learning but such influence depends contextually on the socioeconomic and political context of the country and organization. The theme of organizational learning is not dominant in the psychological contract or NM literature nationally or globally. Theoretically and empirically, as work develops in this area, shifts toward a more nuanced concept of new managerialism may occur.
Tipples and Jones (1998) argue that our society is becoming increasingly contractual at both the legal and psychological levels. The challenge to human resources scholars and practitioners is to discover ways in which we can create greater “congruency” between employees and employer’s expectations of such contracts. Such congruency can enhance and shape employee and employer well-being.
Performance management predicated on self, peer, and manager monitoring is acknowledged widely by the literature as a key feature of new managerialism. This widespread corporate practice has insinuated itself in universities globally, most notably in the United Kingdom and the United States. A key theme in the literature is that knowledge and creative work should not be subject to the same performance management systems used to measure tangible outputs in traditional manufacturing and service sectors (Madjar, Oldham, & Pratt, 2002). Participants in this study suggested that they are being performance managed on research output but either do not have the skill, interest, or view the university as having a sufficient community of practice regarding research.
These perceptions breached psychological contracts of academics creating a high level of anxiety manifested by lack of sleep, obtrusive thoughts, excessive worry, and a disruption of career identity. It was not clear from the interview data, neither specifically mentioned by participants whether they thought that the universities’ attempts through training programs were sufficient to “reskill” them as publishable researchers. The effectiveness of traditional performance management systems in the corporate sector is increasingly being met with empirical data that demonstrates it may actually be a counterproductive tool in motivating staff and shaping behaviors (Abrahamson, Berkowitz, & Dumez, 2016; Cappelli & Tavis, 2016; Kallio, Kallio, Tienari, & Hyvönen, 2016).
Nonetheless given the national and global priorities accorded to research productivity, an approach that emphasizes the collective as opposed to the individual in a performance management system may be a more productive policy intervention. For example, rewarding the development and sustainability of communities of practice in research may achieve greater congruency between the goals of the organization and that of academics. The literature on collective versus individual performance management in the creative or knowledge work industries is not conclusive. Work by Walumbwa, Wang, Lawler, and Shi (2004) and Meneghel, Salanova, and Martínez (2016) shows, however, that with well-thought-out interventions and designs, collective performance management can result in positive organizational outcomes and well-being (and hence congruency) for employers and employees.
Performance management systems can be useful, developmental and constructive when applied with creativity and nuance. These elements (creativity, collective goals through communities of practice, nuance sensitive for rank, ability, and skill) can mitigate the anxiety produced by psychological contract breach and disruptions in career identities of academics (Tipples & Krivokapic-Skoko, 1997; Tipples & Verry, 2006; O’Neil et al., 2010).
The literature also demonstrates that a global trend to construct students as clients is part of a trend toward commodification of higher education (Saunders & Blanco Ramirez, 2017). This commodification is borrowed from a professional services model that provides more than semantic description of students (Crespo-Gonzalez, Garcia-Cardenas, & Benrimoj, 2017). The empirical and theoretical critique against this conception of students is becoming widespread in the higher education literature. However, data from the interviews suggest that the rationale for the introduction of a professional services model was to introduce more formalized accountability toward students in the system. Language is more than semantics and assumes a discursive power even when words are meant to be used as superficial descriptors only. A more productive way to describe students as evidenced by the literature may be to think of students as junior partners in the system, and maybe full partner at PhD and postdoc level (Armstrong, 2003; Bailey et al., 2001; Tight, 2013).
Limitations
The sample size is small when compared with large-scale quantitative studies but is acceptable for an exploratory qualitative study such as this. Notwithstanding these limitations, the study is useful in showing that qualitative studies of psychological contracts and new managerialism can reveal rich, thick, and complex findings not always possible with forced response data collection instruments.
Conclusion
In an increasingly contractual society that is experiencing rapid shifts in the nature of work and workplaces, psychological contracts are necessarily changing under NM practices. Both the popular and scholarly literature have provided a mostly homogenized view of new managerialism as being negative in a higher education sector. However, the findings from this small-scale study are suggestive that while negative outcomes of these practices have profound consequences for employees, there are potential opportunities for NM practices to create more equitable, skilled, and accountable workplaces.
Footnotes
Ethical Clearance
Ethical clearance to conduct the study was obtained from the University of KwaZulu-Natal Ethics Committee (HSS/0411/051M).
Authors Contributions
S.R. was the project leader and responsible for experimental design and project design. R.S. performed the experiments. R.S., S.R., and K.S.B.N. analyzed data and prepared manuscript under the supervision of J.K.A. SR, K.S.B.N. critically edited and improved the manuscript. All authors read and approved the manuscript.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
