Page 39 - Through the gate of the neoliberal academy • Herschberg
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We perceive limitations in this literature on the ideal academic. First, existing studies tend to relate the ideal academic to senior (tenured, core) academics but not precarious (peripheral) academics such as postdocs. Generally, the ideal academic is constructed as an academic with a long track record of publications and external funding, which does not fit the career stage of early-career researchers. Second, most studies on the ideal academic treat this norm as similar across disciplines and across academic positions. An exception is the study of Bleijenbergh et al. (2013) who found that the image of the ideal academic is heterogeneous over academic disciplines and universities. Furthermore, Thunnissen and Van Arensbergen (2015), who took a broader look at academic evaluation by focusing on the definition of talent of academics at the early stages, found that the interpretation of academic talent – which we use here interchangeably with the ideal academic – depends on the position (i.e., senior academic or early-career talent) of the person being asked as well as academic discipline. However, no study to date has examined if the ideal academic is constructed differently when it concerns precarious project-based positions. Given the different nature of peripheral postdoc positions compared to core academic positions we examine if and how the ideal postdoc is distinct from the ideal academic.
2.4 Recruiting and selecting academics
The recruitment and selection of talent are considered key tasks of Human Resource Management (Ferris & King, 1991). Recruitment is the process concerned with identifying and attracting suitable candidates (Newell, 2005) and selection is the process of choosing one candidate out of the pool of candidates based on specific criteria (Van den Brink, 2010) and based on the ‘fit’ between the individual and the job (Newell, 2005). Therefore, these two HR functions are considerably different (Orlitzky, 2008). However, in academia, the role of HR professionals in recruitment and selection is relatively small (Farndale & Hope-Hailey, 2009). Thunnissen and Van Arensbergen (2015, p. 187) argue that this is because “managing academics, e.g. full professors, still consider themselves responsible and best equipped for selecting and managing their academic staff, and they accept little or no interference”.
Studies on academic staff evaluation have noted various relevant processes that make both recruiting and selecting opaque endeavours. An example of such opaqueness that can take place in recruitment is the process of scouting in which “applicants are actively invited to apply through the formal or informal networks which occur in closed – but also in some open – recruitment” (Van den Brink, 2010,
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