Flexible Delivery in Australian Higher Education and its Implications for the Organisation of Academic Work

Abstract

This doctoral research explores the implications for the employment relationship of the intersection between employment relations and customer relations. The context for the research is Australian higher education - specifically those university workplaces which are strongly market focused and where resourcing is inadequate to meet customer expectations. Traditionally, serving one's customer has meant providing goods or services (as requested by the customer) and doing so with courtesy (as defined by social custom). The customer was clearly outside the traditional employment relationship between employer and employee, although a focus of its output. However, in the context of post-Fordist production systems and post-modern values including the rise of consumption, there has occurred an intersection of product and labour markets which has led to changes to the employment relationship and the labour process. The thesis answers the questions: In higher education, does the student-as-customer have significant influence on the organisation of work? If so, does this constitute a reconfigured model of the employment relationship? The rationale for re-examining the employment relationship in the context of changing consumption patterns lies in the search for more extensive explanations of factors which influence the labour process with the suggestion that consumption is of increasing relevance for industrial relations theory and practice (see for example Heery 1993; Frenkel, Korczynski, Shire and Tam 1999a). The growth of a culture of consumption and changing consumption patterns are symptomatic of change which is central to the Australian economy as a whole and to higher education in particular (Usher, Bryant and Johnson 1997; Scott 1995a). In this context the doctoral research explores the social relations involved in the process of Australian higher education as a service encounter. It examines the implications for the organisation of work in particular, and the traditional bipartite employment relationship in general (between employer and employee although it is noted that the state has a peripheral role), of the student's newly constructed status of customer. The research focus is on flexible delivery which is seen as a key strategic response by higher education institutions to meet their perceptions of their customers' needs and wants. Flexible delivery is a pedagogy, a marketing tool and a form of work organisation and is a fertile domain within which to seek the intersection of employment relations and customer relations. In keeping with the labour process ethnographic tradition, this research employs Burawoy's (1991) methodology of Extended Case Method. This doctoral research raises critical issues related to the incongruence between current Australian national research ethics regimes and long established ethnographic methods employing participant observation. The practical consequences of the national research ethics regime for empirical research are explored in the concluding chapter. The data identifies that university managements' preoccupation with customer relations has undermined the traditional employment relationship between employing institution and academic. While the academic employee in the service encounter is engaged in the primary relationship of the bipartite employment relationship, management's incorporation of the student-customer into formal organisational processes which may lead to control over the organisation of work, potentially brings into being a tripartite employment relationship between employee/employer/customer. In such a model, customer relations is no longer merely the output of the employment relationship but a process within it, with customers acting as management's agents of control. This thesis introduces the concept of the customer as partial-employer. The thesis findings challenge the current management paradigm of customer focus as a 'win-win' situation. In Australian higher education customer focused strategies have emerged from managerial assumptions about student-customer needs and wants, specifically those of flexibility and value-for-money. The unintended consequence of these assumptions on the academic labour process has been a significant shift in the balance of power between academic educator and student at the level of the service encounter, with the subjugation of traditional academic authority to the power of the consumer in what has become a market relationship.