The Nature Of Academic-Administrator Conflicts In Russian Universities

The article is a review of ideas and concepts explaining the nature of conflict between administrators and administrative staff. Analysis was conducted on the materials of both western and Russian universities, but the main conclusions are related to Russian universities. The aim of the article is to formulae practical recommendations in the field of conflict management at the Russian universities in the context of intensified corporatization processes and aggravated disagreement between different stakeholders inside the university. Results of the research can be used for formulating personnel policy of the university for forming or improving personnel management practice. Another beneficiary group includes representatives of higher education management representatives, implementing neoliberal ideology and able to improve efficacy of their activities and decisions. In order to achieve the stated aim authors analyzed a pool of works of both international and Russian origin describing the conflict of administrators (managers) and academics (researchers). The main reason behind conflicts was identified as the influence of neoliberalism: total spread of market mechanisms over public spheres and its consequences: managerialism when corporate instruments of management, efficacy measurement and regulation of basic production principles are actively introduced into universities, strengthening the power and influence of administrator group. The article presents additional explanations in more detail describing the conflicts: a) change of academic identity, its fragmentation and blurring; b) decrease of academic freedom as a result of strengthening the rights and authority of administrator subculture; c) peculiarities of organizational culture when transformation of organization relations results in the change of dominant culture type of combination of several subcultures and therefore values and norms of behavior. According to the authors’ position there can be different practical recommendations concerning overcoming organizational conflicts. Authors supporting managerialism position defend strength and suggest selecting staff according to necessary values, implement target personnel strategy in this respect. Authors describing the change of academic identify and decrease of academic freedom recommend searching cooperation ways, creating productive dialogue and see important role of university executives as actors who underline the importance of values of both conflicting parties. It is also suggested to search for mutual benefit that would level out mutual claims. These recommendations seem to be important in terms of their use in personnel management, regulation of organizational conflicts at the university. The article looks into the topic of conflicts between administrators and administrative staff which is seldom described in the works by Russian authors, demonstrating not only authoritative methods of solving the problem which is dominant in the Russian context - that is the main value of the article. Another interesting aspect is the appellation to the experience of research of similar problems at foreign universities which is also insufficiently studied by the Russian authors.