Page 123 - Through the gate of the neoliberal academy • Herschberg

department (SSH) of a Dutch university. All hiring committees were installed to hire an assistant professor for the department. The case study “is a research strategy which focuses on understanding the dynamics present within single settings” (Eisenhardt, 1989, p. 534). The large volume of data collected in case study research allows for a constant juxtaposition of subtle similarities and differences (Eisenhardt, 1989). At the same time, the rich and voluminous data can be daunting, which makes it hard to identify the most important relationships (Eisenhardt, 1989).
I was able to collect unique and confidential data through, which gave me the opportunity to study hiring processes over time (McKechnie, 2008b) and allowed for a close reflection of the actual actions of the committee members (McKechnie, 2008a). Contrary to “methods such as interviews, unstructured observation allows investigation of context and process in an on-going rather than episodic manner. It is effective for looking at interaction among individuals and between groups” (McKechnie, 2008c, p. 2). Observational methods can be prone to observer effect (or reactivity) (McKechnie, 2008a). Even though I have striven to be as unobtrusive as possible, my presence during the hiring processes could have unintentionally affected the behaviour of committee members. I, the observer, chose “what to observe and how to process and analyse that information” (McKechnie, 2008a), influenced by for example my age, gender, values, and expectations (Lockyer, 2008). As a result, I can have associated “meanings to the observed behaviour that are different from the meanings associated by the person(s) displaying the behaviour” (Lockyer, 2008, p. 2). I have attempted to reduce such effect by carefully writing down all conversations and by using the same approach during each hiring procedure. Also, the benefit of combining observations and a case study approach is that it leads to an “intimate interaction with actual evidence” that “often produces theory which closely mirrors reality” (Eisenhardt, 1989, p. 547).
Case description
The case study university is a mid-size university in the Netherlands. In the university, the hiring process for a tenure-track assistant professor starts when a position becomes vacant. A job description is created based on the tasks the assistant professor has to conduct. When composing the hiring committee, the main tasks the assistant professor will have to fulfil are taken into account. For example, the coordinator of bachelor programme will take part in the committee when the assistant professor has to do a lot of teaching in the bachelor programme. After the committee has been installed, the job description is advertised on academic job websites and distributed via mailing lists. Departmental policy prescribes that assistant professors are openly
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