Page 59 - Through the gate of the neoliberal academy • Herschberg

SELECTING EARLY-CAREER RESEARCHERS 57
(2014) found a discursive shift in European higher education research publications from a focus on student access to higher education to an emphasis on management, performance and excellence. The pursuit of excellence influences both university governance and the daily practices of researchers (Butler & Spoelstra, 2014).
This study uncovers how global discourses are translated into local contexts, by studying the dynamic interaction between macro-discourses, formal organisational policies and actual practice in staff selection and focus on how selection committee members take the context into account in their application of selection criteria. In line with Pringle and Ryan (2015), and Panayiotou and colleagues (2019), it is argued that studying the interplay between macro-, meso- and micro-levels can demonstrate discrepancies and tensions between the various levels. Insight into these tensions allows for a better understanding of the complex field, in which academic evaluators manoeuvre and how inequalities are produced.
Of relevance to this research are previous studies that theorise how individuals respond to the neoliberalisation of the academy (Anderson, 2008; Field, 2015; Teelken, 2012). These studies reveal a complex picture of individual responses, which show how people are not passive recipients and take a stance when confronted with institutional pressures. This study has distinguished between consent as the active adherence and participation in enforcement of rules (Burawoy, 1979), compliance as the acquiescence to rules and resistance as taking an active stance against the rules (Ashcraft, 2005; Kärreman & Alvesson, 2009). This distinction between consent, compliance and resistance informs the analysis of selection committee members’ various responses to macro-discourses and university policies.
3.3 Methodology
Research design
The research question requires a case-study approach, as this allows for a detailed study of a particular context (Bryman, 1989), and provides an opportunity for generating theoretical insights, as a result of contrasting findings (Bryman & Bell, 2007). Case studies help to achieve the research aim to gain a contextual understanding of the effect of macro-discourses of internationalisation and excellence on recruitment and selection criteria for tenure-track assistant professorships in two departments of a university in the Netherlands. The assistant professorship tenure-track central in this study typically starts with a temporary appointment, to become a permanent assistant or associate professor appointment upon a positive evaluation after 4/6
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