The quality of working life of academics: A scoping review.

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JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE RESEARCH IN
ANTHROPOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY
Copyright © The Author, 2023
Volume 14, Number 1, Summer 2023
ISSN 2068 – 0317
http://compaso.eu
The quality of working life of academics: A scoping review
Elen-Silvana Bobârnat (Crivoi)
1
Abstract
This article aims to explore the scientific literature on the quality of the working life of
university teachers. For this purpose, a scoping review methodology was used, which
involved the systematic search of articles by relevant words on five databases. The
theoretical perspective is the Theory of Duality of Technology formulated by Orlikowski
(1992), so the analysis of the eligible articles was done following the three components of
the theory: institutional properties, technology, and human agents. The results reveal rich
literature regarding the intensive application of the neoliberal doctrine in universities and
the effects on the working life of teaching staff. The literature also addresses the issue of
systematically disadvantaged professionals within universities, such as women, early
career professionals, and minorities. Closely related to institutional properties, the position
of teaching staff as human agents is also analysed; most of the articles explicitly propose
measures at the institutional level and/or approaches at the individual level to reduce the
undesirable effects of the new public management. The subject addressed in a small
number of articles is technology, its relationship with institutional properties, and its
influence on the quality of the professional life of academics.
Keywords
Academics; Quality of working life; Neoliberalism; Technology;
1
University of Bucharest & National Scientific Research Institute for Labour and Social Protection,
Bucharest, Romania, elen.bobarnat@drd.unibuc.ro.

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Introduction
The commodification of tertiary education is a process that began thirty years ago
(Wilkinson and Wilkinson, 2023), but is still ongoing. The narratives that teaching staff
present regarding their professional life differ according to variables such as the size and
specificity of the universities, the field of study, and the priority areas of the university
(Ylijoki and Ursin, 2013; Hermanowicz, 2016), which reveals the favouring of some areas of
study (such as STEM fields) and activities (such as research activities) and the obsolescence
of others. Overall, the change in the objective of tertiary education from providing a public
good to maximizing profit by selling a private good has entailed the modification of the
entire tertiary education system: universities have gradually adopted business-specific
strategies (Luka et al., 2015; Hermanowicz, 2016), cost minimization became an imperative
and this was achieved including by outsourcing costs to students and teaching staff
(Jayasuriya, 2021), the organization of work in universities intensified and expanded in time
and space, and it became more standardized and modularized (Ivancheva and Garvey,
2022).
The transformations seem to negatively influence the quality of the working life of
academics because in countries such as Australia, Finland, and Great Britain, almost 45% of
teachers intend to quit their jobs (Padilla-González and Galaz-Fontes, 2015).
Technology in general and digitization in particular can be used as tools of the new
public management (Gill, 2014; Feldman and Sandoval, 2018; Collins, Myers and Glover,
2019; Zhou and Xiang, 2021; Antonopoulou and Dare, 2022) in the process of the
subsumption of the academic work to the capital (Hall and Bowles, 2016; Ivancheva and
Garvey, 2022). The penetration of technologies such as Big Data and artificial intelligence
in universities in the context of the deepening commodification of tertiary education is an
unexplored topic.
This article explores the scientific literature on the quality of working life of
academics. The research perspective consist on the Theory of Duality of Technology
(Orlikowski, 1992), so the analysis of the eligible articles was done following the three
components of the theory: institutional properties, technology and human agents.
Methodology
A scoping review methodology was used (Munn et al., 2018). A systematic search on five
databases – Web of Science, Wiley Journals, ProQuest, Scopus and Google Schooler – was
conducted in January 2023. The search was done in English. We searched for articles written
in English that use the phrases ("quality of employment" OR "decent work" OR "quality of
work" OR precarious*) AND (higher education OR academics) in the Abstract. Additional
inclusion criteria were applied to the ProQuest database to improve the relevance of the
results. Since Google Schooler does not have the option to search only in the abstract, the
body of the articles was searched. For this reason, only the first 15 pages of results were
included in the analysis, after page 15 the articles generated were irrelevant to the topic
studied. The time range set was 2008-up to date.

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Figure 1. Flow of article search and analysis
Source: Diagram made by the author
From the total number of articles identified, articles were excluded from the
analysis based on the following criteria: do not address any aspect of the quality of life of
university teachers, are written in a language other than English, books or book chapters,
articles for which full text was not found.
Results
The structural characteristics of the tertiary education system and the effects on the
quality of life of academics
Neoliberal doctrine in universities
Since the second part of the 20th century, the tertiary education system has been
permeated by the neoliberal doctrine that assumes the permanence and deepening of the
organization of social relations according to the free market model (Ashcraft, 2017; Mercille
and Murphy, 2017; Vernon, 2018). The knowledge economy, in which knowledge becomes
an economic good, legitimizes applying neoliberalism in universities (Courtois and O’Keefe,
2015). Tertiary education is transformed from a public to a private good, and the university
takes the form of a corporation (Luka et al., 2015; Hermanowicz, 2016; Ashcraft, 2017).
In the spirit of the neo-liberal doctrine, the new public management is gradually
replacing the traditional model of public administration. The new public management
involves "the application within public services of the principles of the market economy"
(Hodgins and Mannix-McNamara, 2021) and the stimulation of the "entrepreneurial spirit
of public services" (Santiago and Carvalho, 2008). Obtaining funds for academic and
Step 1. Search on the databses N = 1434
WOS = 518, Wiley Journals = 72,
ProQuest = 694, Google Schooler = 150
Step 2. Eligibility check by screening
titles and abstracts
N = 952
Duplicates removed
N = 482
Step 3. Eligibility check by going through
full-texts.
N = 346
Articles non-eligible after title and
abstract screening N = 606
Step 4. Analysis of eligible articles
N = 201

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research activities is going through a process of decentralization (Santiago and Carvalho,
2008). The direct intervention of the state in the financing of universities is substantially
reduced, and it is gradually replaced by indirect intervention through financial instruments
(e.g. student loans) (Jayasuriya, 2021). Thus, universities become dependent on private
funding from students, similar to the quasi-privatization of tertiary education (Schwartz,
2014). The lexicon of the free market penetrates the academic field (Hermanowicz, 2016),
the student becomes a customer (Dashper and Fletcher, 2019), and the teaching staff
becomes a kind of "academic entrepreneur" (Oliver and Morris, 2020). The relationship
between university/professor and student becomes a producer-consumer relation (Hall,
2018; Hodgins and Mannix-McNamara, 2021).
The new public management is applied through managerialism that consists of the
marketization/privatization of educational services, increased competition between
professionals, and excessive use of efficiency and effectiveness measurement, auditing,
and surveillance (Ashcraft, 2017; Hodgins and Mannix-McNamara, 2021).
In some regions of the world, the oppression of authoritarian state leadership
regimes (Sirat, 2010; Vatansever, 2018; Aktas, Nilsson and Borell, 2019; Biner, 2019; Tutkal,
2022) or the social instability (Sundar, 2018; Lima, 2019) added to the neoliberalism in
universities, which further reduced the independence of the academics.
The new organization of the tertiary education system creates the context for
academic precariousness. Academic precarity is an organizational practice (doing precarity)
that shapes the subjective experience of professionals in the field (being made precarious).
Reduced public funding for education and research, neoliberalism, market ideology and
meritocracy ideology, reduced availability of secure and well-paid jobs are reflected in
temporary work contracts and under-budgeted research projects, expectations of self-
resourced excellence, the prevalence of the quantitative performance criteria at the
expense of qualitative criteria, practicing fast-science culture etc. (Albayrak-Aydemir and
Gleibs, 2023). The intensification of competition for resources, students, and funding
sources proves its destabilizing effects, often leading to institutional bullying - repeated,
systematic behaviours whose intention is to undermine dignity, self-esteem, and health
(Archer, 2008; Hodgins and Mannix-McNamara, 2021). Low collegiality and work
relationships are among the main barriers to professional advancement (Santos, 2016) and
one of the main stressors for young people at the start of their careers (Allmer, 2018a).
Temporary and precarious work
The institutional austerity imposed by the application of market discipline in universities
has led to the outsourcing of education costs from the state to different social categories,
one of them being the teaching staff (Jayasuriya, 2021). The status of university teachers
has become precarious primarily through the erosion of traditional forms of employment
(Santiago and Carvalho, 2008; Ivancheva, 2015; Ashcraft, 2017; Doughty, 2018; Hodgins and
Mannix-McNamara, 2021). The situation is similar concerning the research staff (Papoulias
and Callard, 2022) or doctoral students (Rao, Hosein and Raaper, 2021). Permanent jobs
that have social benefits attached and increased job security are fewer in number, while

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temporary forms of work become the most frequent work opportunities available
(Brownlee, 2015; Allmer, 2018a; McCartney and Metcalfe, 2018; Stringer et al., 2018; Rose,
2020). Initially considered a situation specific to the professional debut, temporary
employment tends to become a "continuous present", a "permanentization of
temporariness" (Gill, 2014; Bone, 2019; Wang, 2020). Job stability becomes the
responsibility of the employee, ceasing to be the shared responsibility of both the
organization and the employee (Herschberg, Benschop and van den Brink, 2018).
Temporary university employees are in a particularly precarious situation. In order
to continue their activity in tertiary education, academics move from one city to another,
from one university to another, where teaching positions are available (Stoica et al., 2019;
Vallelly, 2019). They accept multiple part-time, fragmented jobs (Allmer, 2018a) and work a
significantly higher number of additional hours than their colleagues in permanent and full-
time positions (Frei and Grund, 2020).
The status of these employees is precarious under several aspects: they benefit
from limited institutional resources, and are only partially entitled to benefits and social
insurance, additionally, they are excluded from the institutional decision-making process
and are marginal to professional social networks and (O’Keefe and Courtois, 2019). During
the pandemic, the limited access to information resources was exacerbated for this
category (Willson et al., 2022).
Job instability leads to income insecurity (Courtois and O’Keefe, 2015; Allmer, 2018a;
Kouritzin et al., 2022). Increased wage inequalities between temporary and permanent
positions are a characteristic of the countries where neoliberalism is intensively applied in
universities, such as the United States and Great Britain (Angermuller, 2017) or Australia
(Bergami, 2022).
The general context of insecurity, characterized by the stagnation of wages, the
reduction of social security, and the possibility of professional advancement (Ryan and
Bhattacharyya, 2016; Santos, 2016; Bozzon et al., 2017) also affects personal aspects of the
lives of contractual employees, their decisions regarding housing, friends, children, family,
and life (Bone, 2019; Wang, 2020; Alderson et al., 2022; Spina et al., 2022).
Exploited through an unethical strategy called cruel optimism, young professionals
relate to aspirational professional identities, hoping that their effort and dedication will
lead to fulfilling these aspirations (Bone, Jack and Mayson, 2018).
Job insecurity affects to different degrees the categories of professionals in the
field and the disciplines of study. Women, ethnic and racial minorities and the humanities
and social sciences concentrate a considerable proportion of temporary posts (O’Keefe
and Courtois, 2019; Rose, 2020), but this is discussed more fully in another section of the
paper.
Ironically, simultaneously with the work precariousness in universities, there was an
increase in the number of professional administrators (professional administrators), who
impose themselves as the new ruling class of neoliberal universities (Schwartz, 2014).
Power and autonomy are transferred from teachers to managers, and technology and
digitization are tools of the new public management (Collins, Myers and Glover, 2019).

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The COVID-19 pandemic has increased financial pressure on universities and
accelerated the trend toward institutional austerity, leading to an acceleration of fixed-
term employment, budget cuts, layoffs, and even the closure of some educational
institutions in the United States (Jayasuriya, 2021; Hordósy and McLean, 2022). The
situation has been even more destabilizing in countries such as Australia, where a large
proportion of university income is due to foreign students (Jayasuriya, 2021).
The neoliberal practices in universities reduced the demand for academic work.
Concomitantly, the European Union's policies increased the supply of academic work by
promoting the participation in doctoral studies (Carvalho, Diogo and Vilhena, 2022).
The tyranny of performativity and The Rule of Excellence
The tyranny of performativity represents another imperative of the new organizational
management (Hodgins and Mannix-McNamara, 2021). To access institutional resources and
permanent positions, academics must prove their excellence in as many aspects as
possible: publishing in the most visible scientific journals, obtaining funding for research,
innovation in education, etc. Conjuring dominant models of success in advance leaves little
room for individuality, understanding past and present circumstances that lead to
outcomes, and reduces equity and social justice (Bunn and Bennett, 2020). Since excellence
in all aspects is an unrealistic expectation, and institutional conditions for professional
advancement are increasingly limited (for example, the reduced availability of permanent
jobs), teachers often face unsuccess (Santos, 2016). Although from the perspective of
neoliberal ideology success should increase the motivation for work, these greedy
institutions of excellence at minimal costs (Rogler, 2019) lead to the use of various
adaptation strategies: some of the employees resort to extreme dedication and
commitment, the culture of extended hours becoming the norm, others adopt the strategy
of negotiation without challenging the status quo, carefully choosing tasks and benefits
(Bone, Jack and Mayson, 2018), some prioritizes research to the detriment of teaching
(Archer, 2008; Grüning and De Angelis, 2022; Mula et al., 2022), while others adopt
opportunistic behaviours or become discouraged, cynical and isolate themselves from the
professional network (Tulubas and Göktürk, 2020; Hodgins and Mannix-McNamara, 2021;
Anabalon Schaaf, 2022).
The Rule of Excellence refers to relationships that are established through the
"progressively competitive application of managerial and audit technologies to assess
research productivity and quality (e.g., performance reviews, journal rankings, citation
indexes)" (Ashcraft, 2017) and can be considered an aspect of the tyranny of performance
standards. This rule proves its shortcomings: the prestige of the journal becomes more
important than the topic addressed and turns into a proxy for the quality of the articles,
quantitative criteria take precedence over qualitative evaluation, the area of studied topics
is narrowed to publish in journals with visibility, etc. (Eacott, 2016; Ashcraft, 2017). In other
words, the shiny results (shiny things) are valued at the expense of other important
themes, but less visible (Hermanowicz, 2016).

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Intensification and extensification of work
In the institutional context characterized by the reduced availability of decent jobs, the
increase of competition and the sovereignty of standards of excellence, the work of
academics intensifies and expands at the same time (Gill, 2014; Ashcraft, 2017; Allmer,
2018b; Hodgins and Mannix-McNamara, 2021). Regarding the intensification of work, in
order to increase productivity, the universities rely on accelerated time regimes, in which
being efficient every moment becomes the norm and total dedication is an imperative
(Conesa Carpintero and González Ramos, 2018). The extensification of work occurs both
temporal - overtime work, on days off and holidays - and spatial. Spatial extensification of
work refers to the use of atypical spaces for work, such as cafes, dining areas, etc. The
spatio-temporal division between professional life and family life is blurring (Allmer, 2018a;
Mitchell-Eaton, 2021) and the temporalities of work change (Bozzon et al., 2017). The
extension of work in universities also occurs due to the inclusion by academic work of
activities that traditionally do not belong to academics, such as building the university's
brand (Dhanpat, 2016; Hodgins and Mannix-McNamara, 2021).
Digitization is an important factor in the extensification of work since it allows the
creation of a new "space" dedicated to working - the virtual space. The culture of
presenteeism is deepened by the possibility of working online even in previously
inaccessible conditions (for example, sick leave), giving birth to a new forms of
presenteeism – virtual presenteeism (Hadjisolomou, Mitsakis and Gary, 2022).
Emotional health
The new academic context is characterised by the reduction of the institutional resources
available to teachers (Ryan and Bhattacharyya, 2016; Santos, 2016; Bozzon et al., 2017) and
their overload with tasks and responsibilities (Ylijoki and Ursin, 2013; Hermanowicz, 2016).
Thus, teachers experiencing insecurity, anxiety, stress, and professional dissatisfaction
(Gill, 2014; Knights and Clarke, 2018; Loveday, 2018b; Teixeira, Marqueze and Moreno, 2020)
is not surprising. Young professionals are even more vulnerable. They report stress, fatigue
and even exhaustion, irritability, frustration, disillusionment, depression, anger,
discouragement, blockage, and hopelessness (Courtois and O’Keefe, 2015; Allmer, 2018a;
O’Keefe and Courtois, 2019). The COVID-19 pandemic has amplified these emotional states
among academics (Oldfield et al., 2021; Stewart et al., 2021; Bitter and McCrea, 2022).
Paradoxically, for employees with a temporary employment contract, overload is a
predictor of commitment at work (Pace and Sciotto, 2020), which can create the conditions
for burnout according to prior cited research. But for most of the academics the increased
state of vulnerability and the decreased state of resilience (Ferris, 2021) favour the
abandonment of the academic career (Padilla-González and Galaz-Fontes, 2015). The
decision to leave is associated with emotions of anger, fear and even shame (McKenzie,
2022), being considered a personal failure. Not establishing a connection between their
own performance and the institutional or economic context in which they live and work,

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temporary workers internalize failure, attributing it to a lack of personal qualities and
insufficient work (Loveday, 2018a; Robson, 2023).
Professional identity and job satisfaction
The reduction of institutional resources, the increase of pressure to work and perform, the
internalization of new roles not traditionally specific to teaching staff in universities shape
the professional identity of academics, especially of the young professionals (Crozier and
Woolnough, 2020). Undesirable effects of the new organization are the erosion of the
social prestige and professional autonomy in the effort to "please customers" (Knights and
Clarke, 2018; Chhaing, 2022). The academic self is at risk of deterioration (Hodgins and
Mannix-McNamara, 2021), and the professional identity of teachers is characterized by
restlessness (Knights and Clarke, 2018; Nordbäck, Hakonen and Tienari, 2022).
The transformations of the tertiary education system affect academics unevenly.
Some of them present progressive narratives referring to the possibilities of mobility and
their agency within the institution. Due to their position in strategic departments of
prestigious universities, to which substantial institutional resources are directed especially
for carrying out research in visible fields such as STEM (the teaching activity being
secondary), these professionals enjoy a so-called immunity from institutional pressures,
having the possibility to decline unfavourable requests; they report high job satisfaction
and have positive attitudes towards work (Ylijoki and Ursin, 2013; Hermanowicz, 2016).
Less work satisfaction and less favourable attitudes are reported by professionals
in medium-sized universities, which divide resources between teaching and research, and
by professionals in teaching-based universities; they present a regressive narrative
regarding recent institutional changes citing insecurity and overload (Ylijoki and Ursin,
2013; Hermanowicz, 2016).
Gender, racial, ethnic discrimination and the intersectionality of vulnerabilities
The gender, the race, the position in the institutional hierarchy, the type of work contract,
the migrant status, having disabilities are all predictors of the quality of professional life
and of the attitudes towards work (Punia and Kamboj, 2013; Bahrami and Habibzadeh, 2017;
Jovanović, 2018; Touhouliotis, 2018; Waterfield, Beagan and Weinberg, 2018; Luczaj, 2022;
Remennick, 2022; Trbovc et al., 2022).
The activity of feminist organizations and their visibility in the media exerted
pressure for the implementation of gender equality policies in universities, which narrowed
the gap in women's access to leadership positions (Ruggi and Duvvury, 2022). However,
this did not completely solve the issue of gender equality in access to academic leadership
positions, nor the issue of gender equality in universities in general.
Women are more often nominated to leadership positions in unfavourable
institutional contexts (glass cliff) (Peterson, 2016). Women are still under-represented in
permanent positions with normal working hours and are over-represented in precarious
jobs (Stringer et al., 2018). Furthermore, women stay longer in temporary contract

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arrangements compared to men (Courtois and O’Keefe, 2015). Women publish fewer
articles than men (Jameela, Moynihan and Witham, 2021).
The barriers in women's professional life are diverse. The intensification and the
extensification of work give rise to so-called accelerated male time regimes. This work
regime disadvantages women (Conesa Carpintero and González Ramos, 2018; Poggio,
2022), especially mothers (McKenzie, 2022) who traditionally have household and caring
responsibilities beside paid work. The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected
university women (Walters, Bam, Armand, and Tumubweinee, Philippa, 2022) by increasing
the workload of caring for children and other dependent family members. From a metric
point of view, during the health crisis, women's performance decreased (Mavin and
Yusupova, 2020; Oldfield et al., 2021; Bartkowiak et al., 2022; Dunn et al., 2022; Kriger,
Walters and Jansen, 2022), although the volume of work performed by them has increased
considerably.
In the neoliberal university, the distribution of unpaid work, especially the work of
raising and caring for children is considered an aspect that must be managed at the
individual level (Nikunen, 2012; Santos, 2016) and treated superficially by public policies
regarding gender equality (Ivancheva, Lynch and Keating, 2019; Ruggi and Duvvury, 2022;
Villar-Aguilés and Obiol-Francés, 2022).
It is not just the traditional private roles that influences women's professional
success, but the competing professional roles too. On the one hand, permanent
reconfirmation of professional skills is expected from women, on the other hand they are
expected to take over more administrative activities, which reduces the time allocated to
teaching and research activities (Santos, 2016).
Masculinity as a model of success and the social networks built around it are
another obstacle to women's professional development. Practices and characteristics
considered masculine, such as self-confidence, self-centeredness and competitiveness
represent the stereotype of success (van den Brink and Benschop, 2014; Veelen and Derks,
2020). Formal and informal networks are built around this successful model. Through a
mobilization of masculinities (mobilizing masculinities) these gendered social networks are
activated when looking for a new team member or when negotiating new responsibilities
(van den Brink and Benschop, 2014; Santos, 2016). Thus, women seen as deficit men have
fewer professional opportunities comparative to men (Morley and Crossouard, 2015). The
perception of not matching this model of success (lack to fit) leads to decreasing
identification with the profession, reducing work engagement and perceived
effectiveness, burnout, and the intention to leave the profession (Veelen and Derks, 2020).
Universities in the Anglo-Saxon space are still dominated by Caucasian identity
(whiteness), where academics belonging to ethnic and racial minorities are marginalized
and exposed to microaggressions (Lander and Santoro, 2017; Oliver and Morris, 2020;
Arday and Jones, 2022; Schofield, 2022). Teachers who belong to ethnic and racial
minorities feel hypervisible and invisible at the same time (Lander and Santoro, 2017; Oliver
and Morris, 2020). They must continuously prove that they meet the performance
standards in the field. Language skills are often considered an indicator of professional
skills and are subject to evaluation and criticism (Lander and Santoro, 2017). The body

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(posture, gesture, clothing, etc.) also becomes an indicator of integration. Feeling that they
are outside bodies who risk being considered unsuitable for the professional context in
which they find themselves (failure to fit), people belonging to this group, especially
women, engage in a permanent activity of self-observation and self-disciplining one's own
body to conform to dominant cultural landmarks (Oliver and Morris, 2020). The surveillance
by others and the need for constant reaffirmation of their integration makes professionals
feel hypervisible. At the same time, these people feel that their presence and performances
are often invisible or marginalized (Lander and Santoro, 2017; Oliver and Morris, 2020).
Teachers' practice of student assessment reproduces gender and racial stereotypes,
reduces teacher autonomy, and increases the workload for teachers who belong to
disadvantaged groups (Smele, Quinlan, and Lacroix, 2021).
Sometimes the situation of employees belonging to ethnic or racial minorities is
paradoxical: while their presence gives the university the status of an institution that
encourages diversity, these professionals are deprived of access to permanent positions,
assimilated social benefits, guidance in teaching work, etc., the result being their alienation
from the university (Miller et al., 2019). The lack of institutional support is compensated by
women with migrant status (double outsiders) through agency, entrepreneurial spirit, and
professional connections (Sang, Al-Dajani and Özbilgin, 2013).
Technological development in universities
Technology as a tool for subordinating academic work
Technology, especially digitization, which is the most widely used technology in
universities, has transformed all aspects of teaching and research work (Woodcock, 2018).
The use of technology in universities is not neutral, but strongly rooted in the culture of
surveillance and managerialism. Combining digitalization, Big Data and artificial intelligence
may transform universities into data-driven corporations (Antonopoulou and Dare, 2022).
Thus, digitization is understood as a potential tool of managerialism in the process of
auditing, measuring, and controlling the work of professionals in the academy (Gill, 2014;
Feldman and Sandoval, 2018; Collins, Myers and Glover, 2019; Zhou and Xiang, 2021).
Currently, the workforce in the tertiary education sector is undergoing a process of
being subsumed by capital (Hall and Bowles, 2016; Ivancheva and Garvey, 2022). In this
process, technologization and institutional transformations are used to reorganize work
so that it generates as much added value/capital as possible (Hall and Bowles, 2016).
Digitization has permeable the boundary between the working life and the personal
life of academics (Zhou and Xiang, 2021), so that work expanded in the space and the time
previously dedicated to personal life (Hadjisolomou, Mitsakis and Gary, 2022; Ivancheva
and Garvey, 2022). Digitalization also favoured he intensification of work, by facilitating
indirect ways of monitoring, control, and evaluation (Woodcock, 2018).
The division of academic labour, especially the clear division between teaching work
and research work helps with the subsumption by the capital of the academic work
(Ivancheva and Garvey, 2022). The teaching work was standardized and modularized

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through the learning platforms such as Massive Open Online Courses – MOOCs, which also
created the context for applying algorithmic management and some forms of precarious
work (Ovetz, 2021; Ivancheva and Garvey, 2022).
Currently, learning platforms such as those developed by Harvard and MIT do not
constitute a disruptive innovation because they are not a direct competitor to universities,
do not have a higher performance than classical universities, and their financial viability is
not proven; in the future, however, they may attract masses of students from classical
universities (Weller and Anderson, 2013; Al-Imarah and Shields, 2019).
Technology as a tool for increased performance and connectivity between
academics
At the opposite pole are the studies that analyse the potential of digital platforms to
increase the comparability of authors' scientific results and the beneficial influence on
work productivity (Amjad et al., 2016), and their potential for connecting academics (Dean,
Harden-Thew and Thomas, 2017).
Teachers as human agents
The quality of life of teaching staff in universities
Studying the quality of life of academic teaching staff is one way of understanding the
transformations in the academic profession, especially when the changes are analysed in
relation to the properties of the tertiary education system. Some of the articles examine
the theoretical framework of the concept of quality of life of university teachers in
universities (Jain and swami, 2013), others measure this concept in specific contexts
(Tsheola and Nembambula, 2014; Fernandes et al., 2017; Suong, Thanh and Dao, 2019;
Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Azman and Abdullah, 2020; Abbasi, Yasmeen and Sajjad,
2022; Henríquez-Mendoza et al., 2022; Sardi and Carvalho, 2022; Srinivasaiah, Swamy and
Nanjundeswaraswamy, 2022).
Contrary to the assumption that continuous performance measurement and
competition are conducive to professional development, teachers in tertiary education
appear to be motivated by the intrinsic meaning of their work (Schrijver, Brady and Trockel,
2016). Autonomy in decision-making, clarity of role expectations and transparency of
managerial decisions, fair compensation, working conditions, institutional support, and a
pleasant, professional climate, as well as job stability are important for the quality of the
working life, motivate academic teaching staff and increase commitment in their work
(Tabassum, Rahman and Jahan, 2012; Bos et al., 2013; Taher, 2013; Dorasamy, 2015;
Stankovska et al., 2017; Mudrak et al., 2018; Khanna, Dasmohapatra and Yadav, 2019;
Osibanjo et al., 2019; Rizki, Supriyati and Akbar, 2019; Romero-Caraballo, 2019; Subbarayalu
and Al Kuwaiti, 2019b, 2019a; Mohammadi and Karupiah, 2020; Mudrak, Zabrodska and
Machovcova, 2020; O’Neil and Gopal, 2021; Verma and Sharma, 2021; Nikkola and
Tervasmäki, 2022; Tuasikal, Perwana and Suhud, 2022). Decent work stimulates work
dedication for university teachers (Graça et al., 2021; Kashyap, Nakra and Arora, 2021), and

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teamwork leads to better results than individual work (Ebadi and Schiffauerova, 2016).
Excessive work, strained relationships with colleagues, and salary represent stressing and
demotivating factors and favour the resignation of university teaching staff (Conklin and
Desselle, 2007; Teixeira, Marqueze and Moreno, 2020). Authoritarian leadership and lack
of institutional support reduce young professionals' loyalty to the institution and their
ambition to professionally advance (Allmer, 2018a).
Objectifying the experience of teaching staff in universities and the call to action
Publications that objectify the structural characteristics of the tertiary education system
and the effects on the working life of academics are ways of contesting the new order.
These publications draw attention to the undesirable effects of the new public
management and managerialism on professional life: increased competition to the point
of institutional bullying, job insecurity, and precarious incomes, the commodification of
education and the effects on the professional identity of teachers, the use of unfaithful
proxies for the evaluation of research work such as quantitative evaluation and the
prestige of journals at the expense of qualitative analysis of publications, the narrowing of
research areas towards visible topics and the neglect of less visible but equally important
themes, the systematic disadvantage of women, of professionals at the beginning of
careers, of minority persons, of persons with disabilities and even of fields or subjects of
study considered specific to women, etc. (Gill, 2014; Ashcraft, 2017; Burkinshaw and White,
2017, 2017; Maistry, 2017; Doughty, 2018; Bono, De Craene and Kenis, 2019; Steinþórsdóttir
et al., 2019; Oleschuk, 2020; Rose, 2020; Hodgins and Mannix-McNamara, 2021).
Self-reflexive scientific works that describe the personal experience of teachers
facilitate the reader's emic understanding of the experience of university professionals
(Cummins, 2005; Kern et al., 2014; O’Flynn and Panayiotopoulos, 2015; Gill, 2016; Ashcraft,
2017; Williams, Christensen and Occhino, 2017; Hofmann, 2018; Jagannathan and
Packirisamy, 2019; Dick and Painter, 2020; Di Niro, Muslera and Walker, 2020; Gedro et al.,
2020; Oldfield et al., 2021; Stewart et al., 2021; Oliver and Morris, 2022; Schofield, 2022). The
urge to reflect jointly in scientific papers on the concepts of precariousness, resilience,
shared responsibility, and solidarity represents a form of challenging the neoliberal
university (Stoica et al., 2019). The works aim to create discursive space for topics not yet
addressed or insufficiently addressed (Lundström and de los Reyes, 2021), which can
contribute to the formation of collective identity and the organization of a response
(Vatansever, 2022).
The objectification of the impediments encountered by teaching staff is followed
by calls for activism (scholarly activism) (Murphy, 2015; Rhoades, 2015; Birdsell Bauer, 2017;
Schwaller, 2019; Sadlier, 2021). Outside the academic space, teachers, especially those at
the beginning of their careers, have organized themselves in action groups and trade
unions with a presence in the media, on social networks, and even in the legal actions
(Hughes and Bennett, 2013; O’Flynn and Panayiotopoulos, 2015; Oldfield et al., 2021;
Aranguiz, 2022). Literature and art are also used for this purpose (Crimmins, 2016; Henry,
2018; McConnell, 2018; Manley, 2022).

Bobârnat (Crivoi) / The quality of working life of academics
101
The concrete proposals to improve the quality of working life of academics are
organized on several levels. The first level is that of public policies or institutional policies.
Some of them refer to gender unbalances in universities: the upgrade of the institutional
norms, the support at the institutional and community level of female teachers who have
children and those at the beginning of their careers, the reconsideration and clarification
of expectations regarding the performance of these categories of professionals (Oleschuk,
2020), the transparency of evaluation criteria and the abandonment of the binary,
reductionist perspective in the evaluation of academic work (Eacott, 2016), the
implementation of policies to balance private life with work life and anti-discrimination
policies, the introduction of the gender perspective in research and teaching activities
(Ramos and Lechuga, 2015; Poggio, 2022). Other proposals target the category of fixed-
term employees from universities and professionals at the beginning of their careers:
institutional policies for remunerating these employees for the extra work, the opportunity
to be included in paid projects and professional development courses and mentoring,
changing the way hiring them as permanent employees (McAlpine et al., 2017; McComb,
Eather and Imig, 2021). In this context, the role of human resources specialists from
universities is emphasized, they have the responsibility to make the academic situation
known and to actively contribute to the creation of a conducive professional environment
through proposals for public policies and human resources management strategies
(Qudah, Davies and Deakin, 2018).
Actions at the individual level are also formulated. Among the proposals is the
creation of "spaces" to relax and challenge norms through alternative publishing, art, and
the use of the concepts of care and qualitative assessment (qualculation) (McHardy, 2017).
Other proposals aim to reduce the danger of alienation by appealing to a logic of thinking
and working together (thinking collectively) because, for the university field, ideas and
innovation are valued through collaboration (Tian, 2019). Feminist collaboration between
people at different stages of their professional life is also possible (Mullings and
Mukherjee, 2018; Breeze and Taylor, 2020). The approach challenges the neoliberal logic
that postulates competition as the engine of the upward professional trajectory and also
challenges the dualism of precarious/privileged versus non-tenured/incumbent. Using an
anti-oppressive feminist discourse in pedagogical practice (Black feminist pedagogy)
represents another way of contesting the neoliberal university (James‐Gallaway and
Turner, 2021). It is also discussed the importance of the ethical behaviour of administrators,
full professors, and supervisors who, through individual practices, reinforce, challenge or
mediate the mechanisms that make the work of early career professionals precarious
(Bone, Jack and Mayson, 2018; Touhouliotis, 2018; Smithers et al., 2022).
Other resistance strategies consist of organizing reading groups and professional
learning and support networks, conferences, educational seminars, workshops (O’Flynn
and Panayiotopoulos, 2015; Dean, Harden-Thew and Thomas, 2017; Sheridan et al., 2020;
Ahmed et al., 2022), women's support networks in higher education, such as Athena SWAN
(Scientific Women's Academic Network) and OWHE (American Council on Education and
its Office of Women in Higher Education) (Baltodano et al., 2012; Tzanakou and Pearce,
2019).

Journal of Comparative Research in Anthropology and Sociology, Volume 14, Number 1, Summer 2023
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Barriers to contesting precarious structures
Academics, especially those with a role in the organization and development of
universities, are human agents who through their own actions, confirm or challenge the
structures of dominance (Roxå and Mårtensson, 2017). Through reduced reflexivity
regarding the new institutional context, the reiteration of institutional practices, the
defence of the existing system in order to maintain one's own position, the
encouragement of "alternative" universities, symbolic violence, etc. teachers legitimize the
new organization of the tertiary education system (Roumbanis, 2019; Albayrak-Aydemir
and Gleibs, 2023). Studying how teaching staff gets involved in challenging the new order
reveals the fact that the internalization of success, only partial awareness of the extent of
the phenomenon of precariousness in the academy, the conviction that the trend is
irreversible, the risk of losing the professional positions and the more advantageous
working conditions of the established academics compared to young professionals
constituted barriers in their involvement in the delegitimization of precarious structures
(Schwartz, 2014; Bono, De Craene and Kenis, 2019).
The behaviour of contesting the vulnerable normative structures has strong
implications, as it increases the pressure on teaching staff, who on the one hand challenge
this structure, and on the other hand must reach academic performance standards
(Wright-Mair and Museus, 2023).
Conclusions and discussion
The quality of working life of academics is studied in most articles in relation to the
neoliberal doctrine, and the undesirable effects of this context on university work are
generally highlighted. Technologization in universities is analysed closely with the new
public management, for which it can become an effective tool for monitoring and
controlling work. A considerable number of articles expand the discussion not only on the
necessary measures to be taken at the system or institution level, but also on the actions
that university teaching staff can undertake at the individual or collective level to reduce
the undesirable effects of the intensive application of the new public management in
universities.
Education becomes from a public good to a predominantly private good, and
universities gradually take the form of enterprises and assume their specific goals. The
work of university teachers is changing. First, it begins to include new activities, not
traditionally specific to academics: marketing and branding activities for universities. Then
the work intensifies and extensifies at the same time. Digitization is a powerful facilitator
of the expansion of work in space and time by creating a new space dedicated to work -
virtual space - which can be accessed at almost any time and from almost any location.
Digitization also facilitates work intensification through the possibility of thorough
monitoring, control, and evaluation of the activity. Another characteristic of digitization
that allows the intensification of work in universities – an aspect not discussed in the
analysed articles – is the speed with which the exchange of information is carried out.

Bobârnat (Crivoi) / The quality of working life of academics
103
Didactic and research work is information-based and done mainly through collaboration.
The revolving window of information itself generates a certain intensity of work.
The intensive application of the financial efficiency in universities, together with the
increase in the supply of work in universities as a result of EU policies to improve
participation in doctoral studies has undesirable effects on job stability and income: an
increasing proportion of academics are employed with precarious forms of work, and the
income the gain is below the limit of a decent living.
The organization of the tertiary education system under neoliberalism transform
not only the work itself but also the relationships between colleagues, which change from
collegial relationships to competitive relationships and even institutional bullying.
The professional identity is also transformed, from the traditional image of a
university teacher to the open refusal of this identity.
This context affects the emotional health of teachers who report anxiety, anger,
hopelessness, etc. Anxiety is an emotion specific to precarity (Standing, 2011) and the
subsumption of work by capital (Hall and Bowles, 2016; Ivancheva and Garvey, 2022).
Not all categories of professionals are equally affected. Professionals whose main
activity is research, specialized in the STEM fields, adopt a discourse favourable to the
transformations in the tertiary education system. Professionals in fields that are not
considered a priority, women, ethnic and racial minorities, and professionals at the
beginning of their career are the most affected by the undesirable effects of applying the
new public management in universities.
The relationship between technology and the quality of life of university teachers is
little studied, especially the effects of the application of technologies such as big data and
artificial intelligence.
Acknowledgement
This work was developed under the Nucleu Programme, National Plan for Research, Development
and Innovation 2022-2027, supported by the Ministry of Research and Innovation (MCI), project
number PN 22_10_0202
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Elen-Silvana Bobârnat (Crivoi) is a senior researcher in the Department of Social Policies
of the National Scientific Research Institute for Labour and Social Protection and a
doctoral student in Sociology at the University of Bucharest. She has over 5 years of
experience in conducting empirical research using qualitative and quantitative
methods, being involved in projects in the field of social exclusion of disadvantaged
groups (elderly people, children, women, young people and homeless people) and
social inequalities. She is co-author of a book regarding the social inequalities in
Romania (book under publication), book that covers the topics of social inequalities on
the labour market, redistributive policies, and social inequalities in education. Her
doctoral thesis regards the quality of working life in the context of technological
adoption on the Romanian labour market.