Research Selectivity, Managerialism, and the Academic Labor Process: The Future of Nonmainstream Economics in U.K. Universities

This paper reports the results of empirical research designed to explore the impact of research selectivity on the work and employment of academic economists in U.K. universities. Research selectivity is seen as part of the general trend toward "managerialism" in higher education in both the U.K. and abroad. Managerialism based on performance indicators and hierarchical control has been contrasted with collegiate control-based or informal peer review. However, analysis of the academic labor process has idealized collegiate relations at the expense of professional hierarchies and intellectual authority relations. We argue that in the U.K., there has evolved a mainstream economics which is located within a well-defined neoclassical core. We find that the existence of lists of core mainstream journals which are believed to count most in the periodic ranking exercise poses a serious threat to academic freedom and diversity within the profession, institutionalizing the control which representatives of the mainstream exercise over both the academic labor process and job market. In this way, managerialism combines with peer review to outflank resistance to new forms of controlling academic labor at the same time as reinforcing disciplinary boundaries through centralized systems of bureaucratic standardization and control.