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Critical Studies in Education

ISSN: 1750-8487 (Print) 1750-8495 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcse20

Micro-political practices in higher education: achallenge to excellence as a rationalising myth?

Pat O’Connor, Estrella Montez López, Clare O’ Hagan, Andrea Wolffram,Manuela Aye, Valentina Chizzola, Ornella Mich, Georgi Apostolov, IrinaTopuzova, Gulsun Sağlamer, Mine G. Tan & Hulya Çağlayan

To cite this article: Pat O’Connor, Estrella Montez López, Clare O’ Hagan, Andrea Wolffram,Manuela Aye, Valentina Chizzola, Ornella Mich, Georgi Apostolov, Irina Topuzova, GulsunSağlamer, Mine G. Tan & Hulya Çağlayan (2017): Micro-political practices in higher education: achallenge to excellence as a rationalising myth?, Critical Studies in Education

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17508487.2017.1381629

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Micro-political practices in higher education: a challenge toexcellence as a rationalising myth?Pat O’Connor a, Estrella Montez López b, Clare O’ Haganc, Andrea Wolfframd,Manuela Ayee, Valentina Chizzolaf, Ornella Michf, Georgi Apostolovg, Irina Topuzovag,Gulsun Sağlamerh, Mine G. Tanh and Hulya Çağlayanh

aDepartment of Sociology, University of Limerick, Limerick, and Geary Institute, University College Dublin,Dublin, Ireland; bDepartamento de Derecho del Trabajo y Trabajo Social, Universidad de Salamanca,Salamanca, Spain; cFESTA, University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland; dGender and Diversity Management/FESTA, RWTH, Aachen University, Germany; eIGAD and FESTA, RWTH, Aachen Germany; fi3 Intelligentinterfaces and interaction and FESTA, Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Trento, Italy; gDepartment of Philosophyand FESTA, South - West University “Neofit Rilski”, Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria; hFESTA, Istanbul TechnicalUniversity, Istanbul, Turkey

ABSTRACTExcellence has become a ‘hoorah’ word which is widely used inhigher education institutions to legitimate practices related to therecruitment/progression of staff. It can be seen as reflecting aninstitutionalised belief that such evaluative processes are unaf-fected by the social characteristics of those who work in them ortheir relationships with each other. Such views have been chal-lenged by gender theorists and by those researching informalpower in state structures. The purpose of this article is to raisethe possibility that excellence is an ‘idealised cultural construct’and a ‘rationalising myth’. Drawing on data from qualitative inter-views with 67 men and women, who were candidates or evalua-tors in recruitment/progression processes in five highereducational institutions (in Ireland, Turkey, Bulgaria, Germanyand Italy), it conceptualises and illustrates masculinist, relationaland ‘local fit’ micro-political practices that are seen to affect suchrecruitment/progression. Variation exists by gender and by con-textual positioning in the process (i.e. as evaluator/candidate).These practices illustrate the perceived importance of the enact-ment of informal power. The article suggests that the construct ofexcellence is used to obscure these practices and to maintainorganisational legitimacy in the context of multiple stakeholderswith conflicting expectations.

ARTICLE HISTORYReceived 25 April 2017Accepted 14 September2017

KEYWORDSCandidates; evaluators;excellence; local fit; highereducation; informal power;masculinist; micro-politicalpractices; rationalising myth;relational

CONTACT Pat O’connor Pat.oconnor@ul.ieAnonymised in for Review articleO’Connor, P., O’Hagan, C. (2016) Excellence in university staff evaluation: A problematic reality? Studies in HigherEducation 41 (11):1943–1957

Wolffram, A., Aye, M., Apostolov, G., Andovona, S., O’Hagan, C., O’Connor, P., Chizzola, V., Çağlayan, H., Sağlamer, G.,Tan, M.G. (2015) Perceptions of Excellence in Hiring Processes. www.festa-europa.eu

Present affiliation of Andrea Wolffram is Department of Sociology, RWTH, Aachen University, Germany.

CRITICAL STUDIES IN EDUCATION, 2017https://doi.org/10.1080/17508487.2017.1381629

© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

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Introduction

Excellence is often seen as the dominant logic in decisions about recruitment/progressionin higher education. Implicit in this is the idea that excellence is unambiguous, genderneutral and unaffected by context. Thus, it effectively perpetuates Weber's (1978) notionthat organisations and their evaluative processes are unaffected by the social character-istics of those who work in them and their relationships with each other. Effectively, thenit assumes that those involved are detached automatons, who make decisions solely basedon what purport to be universalistic criteria. Such views have been challenged by gendertheorists (Acker, 1990, 1998; Risman & Davis, 2013) and by those concerned withinformal practices and their relationship with state governance (Davis, 2017; Verloo,2017). This article is concerned with identifying the micro-political practices related torecruitment/progression in higher education institutions (HEIs). It raises the possibilitythat excellence in such contexts, as in many other aspects of higher education (EC, 2004,EU 2012; Kok & McDonald, 2017; Nir & Zilberstein-Levy, 2006), has become a ‘hoorayword’ (Whyte, 2005) which is widely used, entirely uncritically as an ‘idealised culturalconstruct’ (Meyer & Rowan, 1977, p. 342) and a ‘rationalising myth’ (Nielsen, 2016).

For Van den Brink (2010, p. 25) micro-politics refers ‘to the strategies and tacticsused by individuals and groups in an organisation to further their interests. . .. Itincludes a broad spectrum of ways in which people influence, network, collide, lobby,resist or use other personal strategies to effect or resist change or assert their owninterests’ (see also Morley, 1999). In this article, we are concerned with informal poweras reflected in micro-political practices. For Connell (1987, p. 61), a focus on practicesfacilitates an analysis of the ‘interweaving of personal life and social structure’. In thisarticle, micro-political practices have been identified in respondents’ accounts and referto actions, relationships or perceptions that are perceived as perpetuating the use ofinformal power in recruitment/progression.

There is evidence of the existence of gender-biased evaluations in academic contexts(EC, 2004; Husu, 2014; Nielsen, 2016; Van Den Brink & Benschop, 2012; Wennerås &Wold, 1997). Wennerås and Wold (1997) also identified nepotism (i.e. favouring protégés)in Swedishmedical research evaluation panels. Subsequent academic references to this havebeen rare: the assumption being that it does not or at least should not exist. There is alsoevidence of the use of logics (other than excellence) such as ‘local fit’ (Lynch, Gummell, &Devine, 2012) or ‘inbreeding’ (Vázquez-Cupeiro & Elston, 2006; Sanz-Menéndez, Cruz-Castro & Alva 2013; Montes López, 2017). This article reformulates and illustrates theseconcepts drawing on existing research by the authors of this paper on fiveHEIs: one each inBulgaria, Germany, Ireland, Italy and Turkey (Wolffram, Aye, & Apostolov et al., 2015).Wolffram et al. (2015) used a largely Bourdieuvian perspective to analyse constructions ofexcellence in these contexts, while O’Connor and O’Hagan (2016) highlighted variation inthe content of excellence and described evaluative practices in one HEI.

The focus is on faculty appointments/progressions in science, technology, engineer-ing and mathematics (STEM). The concept of progression includes promotion invol-ving competition against other candidates as well as evaluation against specific criteria.The STEM area is a predominantly male area, with women making up only 13% ofthose at Grade A (full professorial level) in the EU 28 as compared with 21% across alldisciplines (EU, 2015). Thus, the overwhelming majority of those at full professorial

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level in STEM (and overall) are men, although some variation occurs between thecountries in which the case study HEIs are located (Table 1).

This article raises questions about the cumulative impact of micro-political practicesin challenging assumptions about the gender-neutral nature of bureaucracies and theirrelevance of personal and political considerations to the evaluative processes involvedin recruitment/progression. Although at first glance this appears radical, it reflects theidea that evaluations are ultimately cultural processes. As Van den Brink and Benschop(2012, p. 509) argue, ‘academic evaluations are not simply technical endeavors intendedto measure the quality of academics; instead, they are political endeavors that involvenegotiations between multiple actors’. Similarly, Lamont (2009, p. 19) suggests that‘Evaluation is by necessity a fragile and uncertain endeavour’ that of necessity involvesparticipants’ ‘sense of self and relative positioning’. If evaluation is affected by micro-political practices, it has potentially profound policy implications. It challenges the basison which evaluative decisions are actually made and hence potentially the legitimacy ofsuch evaluative processes in HEIs.

Theoretical framework

Myths are particularly important in institutions of higher education since legitimacy insuch contexts is problematic because there is no clear definition of success andconsiderable pressures as regards public accountability (Deem, Hilliard & Reed,2008). Multiple stakeholders, including the state, the taxpayer, industry, civil societyand students, have very different and unreconciled expectations of higher education,and this makes the evaluation of success very difficult. In that context, ‘success dependson legitimacy acquired from conformity to macro-cultural myths’ (Hallett, 2010, p. 54;Scott & Meyer, 1983). Legitimacy is maintained by the enactment of meaningfulmaterial practices (Boltanski, 2011) which underpin such macro-cultural myths.

Early neo-institutionalists such as Meyer and Rowan (1977, p. 54) suggested thatorganisations must ‘maintain the appearance that the myths actually work’. WithDiMaggio and Powell (1983), ‘new institutionalism’ became identified with an emphasison legitimacy (Tolbert & Zucker, 1983) and was mainly concerned with the macro-level. This article draws particularly on ‘inhabited institutionalism’ with its focus on

Table 1. Drawing on EU (2015) data.

Name of country(abbreviation)

National HEGlass CeilingIndexa (EC,2015b)

National: Proportionof women at GradeA overall (EC, 2015b)

National proportion ofwomen at Grade A innatural sciences (EC,

2015b)

National proportion ofwomen at Grade A in

engineering andtechnology (EC, 2015b)

Bulgaria (BG) 1.4 (1.25) 31.7% (26%) NAd (NA) NAd (NA)Germany (DE) 1.45 (1.34) 17.3% (14.6%) 11.6% (9.8%) 7.6% (5.9%)Turkey (TR) 1.25 (NA) NA (28%) NA (25.7%) NA (19.1%)Ireland (IE) 1.43 (1.46) 28.2%c (26.5%) 20.7% (NA) 15.9% (NA)Italy (IT) 1.76 (1.73) 21.1% (20.1%) 21.6% (19.8%) 10.4% (9.5%)

aThe higher the score, the thicker the Glass Ceiling; bEC (2015) gives both 2013 and 2010 figures. Both are included:2010 in brackets; c21% of those at (full) professorial positions in Irish HEIs are women (3 years average 2014–2016inclusive: HEA, 2017); dNA: not available. G. Irvine (personal communication, 2017) has accepted that the figuressubmitted to EU (retrospectively calculated for 2010 in EU 2015) were incorrect.

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‘social interaction and local meaning’ and extends its focus on ‘intra-organisationalgendered politics’ (Hallett, 2010, p. 66). It thus extends old and new institutionalismand looks at intra-organisational micro-political practices. Poggio (2010, p. 432) hasstressed the situatedness of practices, i.e. the extent to which they are ‘actualisedthrough social interaction and are embedded in situated contexts’, with Risman andDavis (2013) identifying cognitive biases and ‘Othering’ in these contexts. In focusingon micro-political practices in HEIs, we are concerned with informal power-relatedpractices. Martin (2003, 2006) has differentiated between the dynamic aspect of suchpractices at an interactional level, and those aspects that have become consolidated intocultural stereotypes. In this article, micro-political practices refer to actions, relationsand perceptions which reflect the operation of informal power and which are seen toimpact on academic recruitment/progression. It includes ‘intra-organisational genderedpolitics’ as well as micro-politics involving other informal power bases, such as relation-ships with particular powerful individuals and/or perceived ‘fit’ with a wider group ofpower holders.

It is widely accepted that managerialism is an increasingly common ideology inhigher education and one involving a focus on individualism, competition and enter-prise (Lynch, 2014; O’Hagan et al., 2016). It has been suggested that excellence ‘can beconceptualised as a component of the ideological apparatus’, involving ideas about howformal structures and decision-making systems ought to be reshaped in this newmanagerialist context (Santiago & Carvalho, 2012, p. 513). The implicit normativeassumption in the focus on excellence is that decisions about recruitment/progressionare or should be meritocractic. In Scully’s (1997, p. 413) terms, a meritocratic system is‘a social system in which merit or talent is the basis for sorting people into positionsand distributing rewards’. However, Van Arensbergen, Van Der Weijden and Van DenBesselaar (2014, p. 218) noted that although decisions about the best and worst researchapplications were reasonably clear cut, differences in the middle were frequently verysmall, culminating in ‘rather arbitrary’ decisions affected by the context (example by thecomposition and behaviour of the evaluators).

In many western societies, women are devalued as women: this phenomenon beingreferred to by Connell (1987) as men’s patriarchal dividend; by Bourdieu (2001, p. 93)as women’s ‘negative symbolic co-efficient’ and by Ridgeway (2011, p. 92) as ‘a statusinequality – an inequality between culturally defined types of people’. This differentialvaluation extends beyond individual men and women to ‘institutionalized’ patterns ofinterpretation and evaluation that constitute one [i.e. women] as comparativelyunworthy of respect or esteem’ (Fraser, 2008 p. 58). Gender-biased evaluative assess-ments by men and women have been identified in experimental studies in the UnitedStates where increased transparency reduced but did not eliminate the preferentialtreatment of applications purporting to come from men (Foschi, 2004, 2006; Moss-Racusin, Dovidio, Brescoll, Graham, & Handelsman, 2012). Double standards in theevaluation of professorial candidates have also been identified (Van den Brink &Benschop, 2012). Wennerås and Wold (1997) found similar processes operating inthe evaluation of research applications (see also Husu, 2014). The evaluation of thequality of the researcher has been shown to be particularly likely to be gender biased(Van Der Lee & Ellemers, 2015). Such gender bias is reflected in and reinforced by

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processes such as stereotyping (Martin, 2006) and homosociability (i.e. the tendency toselect people like oneself: Grummell, Lynch, & Devine, 2009).

It has been suggested that logics ‘prescribe what constitutes legitimate behavior’ andprovide ‘taken-for-granted conceptions of what goals are appropriate and what meansare legitimate to achieve these goals’ (Pache & Santos Insead, 2013, p. 973). Excellence isonly one possible logic. Relational and local bases for allocating resources are in anambiguous position. Wennerås and Wold’s (1997) identification of nepotism provokedconsiderable concern. However, sponsorship, although basically similar in having arelational basis, has a much more positive overtone, suggesting as it does the ‘normal’grooming by senior men of junior men (through recommending them for positions andcreating opportunities for them). Such processes, given the cultural devaluation ofwomen, are likely to be gendered. There is also a taken-for-granted popular acceptancein many organisations of logics related to familiarity and loyalty reflected in conceptssuch as ‘local fit’ (Lynch et al., 2012) or ‘inbreeding’ (Vázquez-Cupeiro & Elston, 2006).Although they are officially disapproved of, micro-political practices involving themoften persist at a departmental or faculty level where they are depicted as having acertain legitimacy. Again, given wider cultural processes, they are highly likely to begendered.

Methodology

Case studies provide an opportunity to examine particular contexts in detail (e.g.Buzzanell & D’Enbeau, 2009; Lewis & Cooper, 2005) and, in this situation, enable acontextual understanding of evaluative practices related to recruitment/progression,with a specific focus on excellence. This study drew on data from 67 academics inscience, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) in HEIs in Bulgaria,Germany, Ireland, Italy and Turkey and was carried out as part of a wider EU-fundedproject. Respondents were roughly evenly divided between men and women (32 womenand 35 men).

HEIs globally have become subject to similar pressures arising from the transnationalflows of higher educational policy imperatives, with their stress on international rank-ing and other metrics (Deem et al., 2008; O’Connor, 2014; O’Hagan et al., 2016). HEIshigh international ranking is typically associated with a strong focus on research outputin international peer-reviewed journals. However, it is by no means clear that interna-tional policy pressures translate down into decision-making about recruitment/progres-sion in HEIs. Indeed, since the recruitment process is frequently ‘owned’ by adepartment, the possibility of micro-political practices impacting on it cannot beeliminated. All but one of the universities included had a low international ranking(see Table 2), although they all have aspirations as regards strong research performanceand would be unwilling to identify themselves as purely teaching institutions. Theprofessoriate in all five of the HEIs was male dominated: both overall and in STEM.However, the proportion of women in the (full) professoriate, both overall and inSTEM, was highest in the Bulgarian and Turkish HEIs: reflecting national trends inthese countries (see Table 2).

The focus of the project was on STEM: a predominantly male area internationally.The organisations selected are similar in ways, although there is also some variation

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between them. Four of them are public universities: with implications for expectedobjectivity and transparency in the allocation of public resources. All four included afocus on STEM and all but one (i.e. the German HEI) were ranked relatively low on theQS global ranking system (Table 2). They varied in age, size and the salience of STEM.Two of the four HEIs were large old institutions, with a predominant STEM focus. TheTurkish university is one of the oldest and largest of the state technical universities with30,000 students and 2300 staff and includes 13 faculties, the majority in science andengineering. The German university is also one of the oldest and largest technicaluniversities there with over 40,000 students and 9200 staff, and with six of its ninefaculties in science and engineering. Two others were relatively new, much smallerpublic universities, with a less dominant focus on STEM. The Irish one, although it wasestablished in the 1970s, only acquired university status in the late 1980s. It has roughly13,000 students and 1300 staff, with science and engineering being one of four faculties.The Bulgarian university with 14,000 students and 1000 staff was founded as a branchof an older university in the 1970s. It has a College of Technical Science and the Facultyof Mathematics and Natural Science is one of its seven faculties. The Italian organisa-tion is an outlier in that it is a very small non-profit research organisation with sevenresearch centres divided into research units. It operates as a research foundation intechnology, science and humanities. It provides funding to 88 PhD students and has482 staff. Its inclusion facilitates an insight into the extent to which micro-politicalpractices exist outside the public university system.

The intention was that evaluators and candidates would be chosen from three recentrecruitment processes in each organisation: the evaluators being members of recruit-ment/progression boards and the candidates those assessed in such contexts. Forvarious reasons, including confidentiality, this focus on three recent recruitment pro-cesses only occurred to a limited extent, i.e. in the Italian and to some extent theGerman and Irish organisations. Two recent progression rounds as well as a recruit-ment process were included in the Irish case study, with interviews with applicants inother competitions (i.e. candidates) and board members (i.e. evaluators) also beingincluded (Table 2).

The data are mainly drawn from semi-structured, qualitative interviews and a smallnumber of focus groups. Semi-structured interview guides facilitate an understanding of thedepth and complexity of people’s accounts, acknowledging both subjective and objectiveelements. Interview guides were developed and agreed among partners. Candidates wereasked ‘What criteria were used to assess candidates?’; ‘Do you think these criteria signifyacademic excellence?’ and ‘Are there other skills or qualities a candidate could possesswhich would signify academic excellence?’. Members of recruitment/progression boards

Table 2. Organisational and respondent characteristics (at time of interview: 2012–13).

CountryAge and ranking

(QS, 2017)

Percentage of women at(full) professorial level

overall

Percentage of women at(full) professorial level in

STEM

Number ofrespondents(M and F)

Status:Evaluators;candidates

IE New: 500–50 32 0 7 M; 7 F 6 E; 8 CDE Old: 146 12 10 6 M; 7 F 5 E; 8 CIT Research foundation 0 0 10 M, 4 F 9 E; 5 CBG New: Unranked 39 25 8 M; 10 F 5 E; 13 CTR Old: 651–700 35 35 4 M; 4 F 4 E; 4 C

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were simply asked ‘How do you define academic excellence?’. Micro-political practices werenot a specific focus but emerged spontaneously in response to a variety of questions such as‘Has gender affected your career progression in a positive or negative way?’; ‘When you lookback over your career what do you see as the critical points?’; ‘Is there any difference in thecareers of men and women in the university?’. Interviews averaged one hour and wereundertaken, tape recorded and transcribed by local researchers. Qualitative data analysissoftwarewas not available in all five languages, somanual data analysis was undertaken. Theinitial framework used was derived from Bourdieu’s field theory (Wolffram et al., 2015).Evaluative practices were identified in a content analysis of the Irish data and this frame wasdeveloped and then used across the other case studies. Respondents are identified in the textby a code which indicates the country in which they were employed (Turkey – TR; Bulgaria– BG; Germany – DE; Italy – IT; Ireland – IE), gender (male, female), contextual position(evaluator or candidate) and unique identifier number (starting 00). Identifying character-istics, including hierarchical position, are omitted in the interests of confidentiality since theproportion of women in such positions was low. No attempt is made to focus on nationalvariation since only one organisation was included from each country. Furthermore, somerespondents had not been born in that country: reflecting cross-national patterns ofacademic mobility that have been widely documented.

Micro-political masculinist practices

Masculinist micro-political practices include cognitive bias (the devaluating of womenas women) reflected in double standards in evaluating their CVs or contributions(Moss-Racusin et al., 2012; Van Den Brink & Benschop, 2012), implicitly genderedstereotypes (Martin, 2006; White, 2014) and gendered homosociability (i.e. the ten-dency to select people like oneself: Grummell et al., 2009). References to such mascu-linist micro-political practices were common in respondent’s accounts, albeit withslightly different nuances.

Gendered cognitive biases were reflected in perceptions of the differential evaluationof the social contributions by men and women. Occasionally, this related to predomi-nantly male progression boards, where women’s voices were seen as marginalisedbecause they were women:

It’s not what the woman says or what the man says. It’s the fact that it’s coming from [aman or a woman]. Its gendered . . . the person listening to it will automatically associate apositive connotation to whatever the man says and a less positive, less, just put it that way,to what the woman says. (IE, female candidate, 08)

References to gendered cognitive biases were also made by women in other HEIs: ‘Ofcourse there is the danger that a woman is evaluated more critically just because of thesocial discrepancy, that she is given a less favourable assessment. That happened also tome a couple of times for sure’ (DE, female candidate, 12): ‘They prefer men even if theachievements of the candidates are equal’ (BG, female candidate, 16). Cognitive biaseswere also occasionally reflected in stereotypes focusing on women’s value as commu-nicators rather than scientists. In this as in other studies (Currie, Thiele, & Harris, 2002;O’Connor, 2014), women emerged as more likely to refer to such gendered processes,although some women (as in Rhoton, 2011) claimed that no gender discrimination

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existed. A female Turkish respondent, drawing on gender stereotypes, suggested thatresearch was an appropriate job for women: reflecting a historical endorsement ofacademia as a suitable career for (middle class) women (see Healy, Özbilgin, &Aliefendioğlu, 2005). She implies however that even in that context, managementmight potentially be more problematic:

We, as women, are much more patient and patience is what a researcher needs in thelaboratory. Yes, I believe that I am very much suitable to be a scientist as a woman. Icannot guess if I will face with any problems in the future arising because of mygender. Maybe if I become a dean, I might face such problems. (TR, female candi-date, 19)

The implicit equation of power with masculinity was also reflected in the transfer ofthe image of the man as the head of the household to an organisational context by amale evaluator who equated a man’s location at the head of the table with leadership:

if you see someone at a meeting sitting at the head of the table: if it is a man he is theleader, if it is a woman you think she’s is something else. It is difficult to get rid of theseculturally entrenched ideas and prejudices. (IT, male evaluator, 04)

Thus, even if the woman occupies a similar physical location, it was seen as having adifferent resonance: implicitly echoing her subordinate position in the household.

The stereotypical (monastic) image of a scientist was seen as having implications forwomen (White, 2014), with the assumption that the life style of a scientist excluded anykind of family life:

Everything is based on the assumption that a person should be available 24 hours a day,seven days a week, 365 days a year . . . the present work model does not take the familyaspect of a person’s life into account. And this is terrible for both men and women . . . thisappeal ‘you should be the best’ which means that you are not supposed to have a personallife. (BG, male candidate, 14)

Although this respondent suggests that this stereotype impacts on both men andwomen, women were seen as having the main responsibilities in the domestic area,effectively limiting the time they had available to undertake paid work: ‘it is expectedthat a mother has more to do with her children and the family when the children aresmall’ (DE, F, C, 02). This becomes particularly acute in the context of the legitimacy ofa long hours culture with the expectation that paid work can and indeed shouldlegitimately include the whole 24 hours. Other respondents referred to this: ‘You arenot judging the quality of what they do within the 39 hour week, you are judging whatthey do twenty four-seven. And some people more so women than men, have less timeto devote twenty-four-seven’ (IE, female evaluator, 07). This issue has been of longstanding concern to the EU in the context of work/life balance.

In summary, micro-political masculinist practices were referred to by respondents inall five HEIs. Women were more likely to refer to cognitive biases and men tostereotypes which implicitly reflected gendered power. Both men and women endorsedthe monastic image of the scientist and its tension with family life: while recognisingthat given the allocation of domestic and caring responsibilities, this impacted more onwomen. References to these practices were most likely to be made by female candidates:a pattern that may be related to the fact that men (as in all hegemonies) were less likely

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to refer to masculinist practices. Men were also more likely to be evaluators because oftheir greater access to senior positions.

Micro-political relational practices

Universities, like other organisations, have an informal structure which is revealedthough the daily practices, relationships and behaviours of members of the organisation(Morley, 1999). Such relationships have often been referred to as nepotism or cronyism.These are widely seen as unacceptable. Sponsorship is seen in a very different lightalthough it also has a relational base with Ibarra, Carter, & Silva (2010) suggesting thatwomen are under-sponsored. Influential informal relationships with powerful otherswere referred to in varying degrees by all respondents. In the absence of a clearobjective definition of excellence, relationships between candidates and evaluatorswere seen as crucial in affecting outcomes:

What matters most are the close relations of a candidate with jury members. Yes, I knowthat they sign a declaration that there is no conflict of interests, but it does not necessarilymean that they have no friendly relationships. . .. It’s the most difficult task to assess thework of a friend . . . since there is always an emotional aspect that produces a bias. (BG,male evaluator, 05)

Respondents from the Turkish university raised the question: ‘Will you be able to selecta candidate that you do not like?’ (TR, male evaluator, 03). They also recognised thatalthough official criteria were laid down at national level, the jury could interpret theofficial criteria to favour one applicant over another: ‘Although the criteria for promo-tion are clearly defined by the Council of Higher Education, it all depends on how thejury members interpret those criteria’ (TR, female candidate, 44). Deviations fromobjective criteria were perceived by evaluators as facilitated by the ambiguity surround-ing the concept of excellence and the perceived need to include subjective elements:

Of course, measurable parameters must not be denigrated and neglected, but they are to betaken with a grain of salt. . .. When I have to judge a candidate I first consider themeasurable parameters, but then, in order to achieve a reasonable judgment, I have toadd subjective parameters to my consideration. (IT, male evaluator, 07)

This male evaluator does not suggest that these processes are gendered. However, whenthere is a move away from objective criteria, the possibility of gender bias is difficult toeliminate. Hence, although it was recognised that it was necessary to meet the relevantcriteria, the importance of having an influential sponsor in such a context to ensure afavourable outcome was stressed. In the Irish organisation, ‘paying forward’ and creat-ing bonds of indebtedness was normalised:

If you’ve nobody on the other side of the table fighting your case, you’ve no chance . . . Youarrange [that] through [favours], you know. . . . Because . . . when they pick up the phoneand ask you to do something you do it. And you do it not just once you might do it fiftytimes. So, when your application goes in you’d expect them to support you. (IE, malecandidate, 23)

Much was made particularly by the Bulgarian and Irish respondents, of the importanceof relationships with those in power in impacting on success in recruitment/

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progression: ‘Most often the successful candidate . . . is a protégé of the institutional ordepartmental management’ (BG, male candidate, 12). Respondents from the GermanHEI referred to the importance of powerful sponsors, who they described as ‘relativelyruthless in placing their own people’ (DE, male candidate, 07). They saw age as well asgender as defining features of influential sponsors, referring to ‘a squad of older men, toput it frankly, who are in a position of power . . . If you want to get into that as ayounger person, you have to . . . become visible’ (DE, female candidate, 12). TheGerman women, like their Italian and Irish counterparts, disapproved of this deviationfrom more objective criteria:

I think the issues that are only based on professional skills are very attractive for women –the honest work. But when it comes to this power issue, which is present today . . . I think alot of women are deterred by it, also disgusted. (DE, female candidate, 16)

Other studies have shown that women tend to be more ambivalent about ‘playing thegame’ (Davey, 2008) possibly because they are less clear about the ‘rules’ in maledominated structures or see themselves as less culturally valued and less able to leveragerelational support in such contexts. For the Bulgarian men particularly, micro-politicalrelational practices were perceived as unrelated to gender: ‘Gender of the candidatesdoes not matter at all. What only matters is whether your boss, the head of thedepartment, your dean, or someone else at the top favours you or not’ (BG, maleevaluator, 05). Overall, men are more likely to be in senior positions, and, givenprocesses such as homosociability, they are more likely to have strong relationshipswith those in power. They are also less likely to be aware of gendered processes thatfavour men. It is possible that such processes are gendered, although most men may notperceive this.

In summary, individual relationships with those in powerful positions were seen byboth candidates and evaluators, and by respondents in all five organisational contexts,as important in affecting evaluations of the excellence of the candidates. Men were morelikely than women to refer to these relational practices. Male evaluators were particu-larly likely to refer to them, arguably reflecting their experiences and the perceivedlegitimacy of these practices. Such practices can alternatively be seen as nepotism orcronyism: with relationships, rather than any objective assessments of the applicants’merit, being crucial.

Micro-political practices: ‘local fit’

The focus here is on micro-political processes operating in the local context ratherthan through an individual influential relationship. The ‘inbreeding system’ whichhas been identified in Spanish HEIs is an extreme example of this (Cruz-Castro &Sanz-Menéndez, 2010; Sanz-Menéndez, Cruz-Castro, & Alva 2013; Montes López,2017; Vázquez-Cupeiro & Elston, 2006). ‘Inbreeding’ reflects an unofficial andunwritten rule that each new member of the department should be selected fromthe members of the internal dominant group. This unofficial convention and theorganisational culture that has created it ensures that most academic careers arespent in the same university (Cebreiro & San Segundo, 1998). The most valuedattribute is to ‘be a good colleague’ with the odds of getting tenure within

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three years being paradoxically increased for every additional year taken to get thePhD and with geographical mobility being inversely related to tenure (Sanz-Menéndez, Cruz-Castro & Alva 2013; Cruz-Castro & Sanz-Menéndez, 2010).Cruz-Castro and Sanz-Menéndez (2010, p. 36) found that the odds of gettingtenure three years after a PhD ‘are more than double for male researchers thanfor their female counterparts’ (34% vs. 16%). They also found that such odds wereparticularly high in predominantly male areas such as engineering. Thus, inbreed-ing appears to be a mechanism for directly and indirectly perpetuating maleadvantage.

The importance of ‘local logics’ (Grummell et al., 2009) or ‘departmental fit’ is aless extreme variation. Such micro-political practices are also facilitated by vaguenesssurrounding the concept of excellence: ‘I have never come across an exact definition,a scientific one, of this term. Maybe the Nobel Prize . . . but . . . how many NobelPrize winners are there?’ (BG, female candidate, 16). Thus, effectively, it was open toevaluators to prioritise specific elements which might facilitate the recruitment oflocal candidates that ‘fitted’. This was sometimes stated explicitly by evaluators:‘scientific excellence is not what we are looking for; we primarily seek someonewho can meet the needs of our department’ (TR, female evaluator, 40).Departmental ‘fit’ was also referred to by the Irish respondents. The departmentalneeds were differently defined in different contexts. Roth and Sonnert (2010) high-lighted the problems that emerged from a lack of management skills in researchorganisations. In the Italian HEI, management skills were seen as particularlyimportant:

It is not always the candidate with the highest impact factor that best serves the centre. Itmay very well be that at a given time it is more important to choose the candidate with thebest managerial skills . . . it is not sufficient to bring heavy scientific luggage. One also hasto have soft skills in order to appreciate and to create value from different humanresources. (IT, male evaluator, 02)

In that context, the respondents were all full-time researchers whose jobs depended onfunding: ‘The economic crisis today requires that a good researcher is also able to findthe funding to finance his research’ (IT, male candidate, 10). Most respondents in therelatively high ranking German university also referred to the importance of funding: ‘Isee tendencies that university boards really want external funds’ (DE, male candidate,08). Others from the German HEI (the most highly ranked of the universities) pre-sented a more broadly based construction of excellence, including teaching, researchand management:

We also had applicants that were considered to be among the top scientists in thefield

field worldwide, but we did not invite them [for interview], because we came to theconclusion that they are not able to lead a group . . . scientists who may be really goodindividually, but are not able to build a group or lead it, that are not able to give a properlecture, . . . well, they are out of the question. (DE, male evaluator, 01)

German and Turkish respondents referred to a tension between departmental prior-itisation of fit and broader university logics. Thus, there was a suggestion that thevaluation of teaching was not officially supported, although it was depicted as important

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to the department: ‘It’s not only publications we are doing here. We are educatingstudents.. . . We are teachers . . . But such abilities are not part of the hiring legislation’(TR, female evaluator, 01). In the Irish university, women’s concern with teaching wasseen as hindering their career progression:

Women are wasting their time doing the right thing. . .. They are more committedlecturers; they are more committed to the peripherals than men: looking after thestudents, being more diligent with lecture preparation . . . and all those other areasthat give them no brownie points when it comes to promotion. Not quantifiable. (IE,female evaluator, 06)

Constructions of excellence related to teaching and language skills were referred to byrespondents from the Bulgarian and Turkish universities. Insofar as women havetraditionally been seen as more likely than men to be committed to teaching (Sax,Hagedorn, Arredondo, & DiCrisi, 2002), the inclusion of teaching is potentially helpfulto women as a group. In the Bulgarian university, language skills were also seen as veryimportant in addition to scientific expertise: ‘the first is excellent knowledge of his orher scientific field. The second one . . . is the good command of the foreign languagewhich is acknowledged and used in his or her particular research field’ (BG, maleevaluator, 02). Given women’s greater facility with languages (Burman, Bitanc, & Booth,2008), such a criterion also potentially implicitly advantages women as a group.

Because of the vagueness surrounding the definitions of excellence, criteria could inpractice be moulded to facilitate local candidates. In all five of the organisations, fit wasreferred to, although there was variation in the implicit gendering of the criteria. Menwere more likely than women to refer to ‘local fit’: reflecting other evidence that womenare more likely to focus on objective criteria. It was clear that in some cases ‘local fit’was prioritised over institutional requirements. This could facilitate the appointment ofmediocre people or those who exemplified departmental as opposed to institutionalpriorities (e.g. teaching rather than research). Evaluators were more likely than candi-dates to refer to the micro-political practice of ‘local fit’: arguably reflecting their greaterexperiences in an evaluative context and the perceived legitimacy of ‘fit’ as a criterionfor recruitment/progression.

Summary and conclusions

In contexts where public universities are exposed to the conflicting expectations ofmultiple stakeholders and to increasing pressure as regards accountability, a concept ofexcellence which is immune from relational, contextual and gender bias is very attrac-tive. The vagueness of this concept potentially facilitates its use as a ‘rationalising myth’(Nielsen, 2016).

Micro-politics (Lumby, 2015) and practices (Martin, 2003, 2006) have been seen asimportant in understanding the operation of informal power in organisations. It hasbeen recognised that such practices are difficult to change, infused as they often are withcultural stereotypes and supported by wider organisational and societal structures. Thekey contribution of this article lies in the identification and illustration of three micro-political practices involved in recruitment/progression in HEIs. Respondents perceivedall three micro-political practices as existing in all HEIs. ‘Local fit’ was not seen by male

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respondents in the Bulgarian HEI as inevitably favouring men. This, together withlimited references to masculinist micro-political practices in the Turkish HEI, may bepartly related to the fact that these organisations had the highest proportion of womenin (full) professorships in STEM (and indeed the highest proportion of women in [full]professorships overall: Table 2).

Four of the five organisations were public universities. The broad similaritiesbetween the patterns emerging across all five organisations as regards micro-politicalpractices suggest the importance of informal power – regardless of variation in size, ageor the salience of STEM in the organisation. However, since all but one of theuniversities had relatively low rankings (Table 2), further research is needed to explorewhether these micro-political practices also exist in highly ranked universities. Theinclusion of a research foundation suggests that these practices are not peculiar touniversities, although this also needs to be further explored.

Women were generally more likely to refer to masculinist micro-politics, and menmore likely to refer to relational practices and to ‘local fit’. It appeared that a focus on‘fit’ could facilitate the appointment of mediocre people and/or the recruitment ofpeople who exemplified departmental priorities which were in tension with the officialorganisational ‘logic’ (Pache & Santos Insead, 2013).

References to these micro-political practices varied between candidates and evaluators:with candidates being more likely to refer to masculinist micro-political practices andevaluators to ‘local fit’. Female candidates were most likely to refer to micro-politicalmasculinist practices and male evaluators to those related to ‘local fit’: arguably reflectingtheir different positioning in relation to recruitment/progression in male dominatedmasculinist structures. On the other hand, candidates and evaluators were equally likelyto refer to relational practices: arguably reflecting the perceived legitimacy and importanceof individual relationships with powerful sponsors. These practices sit uneasily with afocus on purportedly objective criteria of excellence, unmediated by relationships, genderor context. It is possible that excellence is being used as a legitimating logic, obscuringthese micro-political practices. Although it is widely accepted that evaluation is a socialprocess, a focus on micro-political practices raises challenging issues for HEIs.

There are considerable limitations arising from the use of case studies and from thereliance on qualitative data. Nevertheless, the identification of micro-political practicesraises questions about the impact of the relational, gendered and local context in whichevaluative decisions are made. It raises even more fundamental questions about theextent to which evaluations of excellence can ever transcend micro-political practices:practices which are arguably likely to be gendered.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding

This work was supported by the European Commission: [Grant Number 287526].

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ORCID

Pat O’Connor http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3465-5390Estrella Montez López http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8226-7504

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