Title: Coping with managerialism: academics' responses to conflicting institutional logics in business schools

Authors: Katariina Juusola

Addresses: Ajman University, Ajman, UAE

Abstract: This article discusses the implications of conflicting institutional logics guiding business schools and builds a conceptual model on how such conflicts manifest in academics' identity work. Four coping strategies for conflicting institutional logics by Pache and Santos (2010) known as compromise, avoidance, defiance and manipulation are discussed in how academics have developed coping strategies to manage their identities. Various coupling strategies are identified as part of academics' identity work mechanisms in how they simultaneously accommodate and resist some of the practices and goals of conflicting institutional logics. Along with this process, academics are found not only to engage with traditional coupling processes (decoupling and selective coupling) but also with two new types of couplings, mental decoupling and manifest decoupling, which are used for developing and maintaining a dual identity to manage the conflicting demands of institutional logics.

Keywords: business school; managerialism; institutional logics; academic logic; market logic; identity work; coupling strategies; loose coupling; decoupling; selective coupling.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMIE.2023.127783

International Journal of Management in Education, 2023 Vol.17 No.1, pp.89 - 107

Received: 24 Jan 2022
Accepted: 01 May 2022
Published online: 16 Dec 2022 *