News
| 14.12.2022

Doctoral thesis: It's time to recover the humaneness in academia

Academics in management and organization studies today have been driven into focusing predominantly on building a CV and developing networks, securing funding and producing articles published in high-ranked journals, all of which supports the university’s competitive position in global rankings. As a result, we see academics who neglect their own life in terms of material, emotional or familial sustenance, and social relations. Instead, they devote all their time to precarious work.

“As academics in management and organisation studies, we are supposed to be finding answers on how to manage organisations and solve global problems. However, we seem to be unable to manage ourselves and our own organising”, Anna Dziuba observes in her doctoral thesis.

In the thesis, Dziuba explores how scholars of management and organisation studies could preserve a sense of self in the context of various tensions originating from the fact that universities and business schools become more similar to private firms. They are expected to demonstrate quality, efficiency and effectiveness through the production of publications, which puts research quality in danger.

“My research is also relevant for academic management, in order for them to understand the self work required of their researchers. It is important to also offer resources to assist in completing the self work”, Dziuba points out.

As all humans, researchers are under the influence of many actors aiming to fashion their self, such as families, schools, religious and workplace organisations, and society as a whole. “Freedom is not when we have nothing to lose. Instead, it’s realizing that reality is constructed and our own responsibility in creating it”, Dziuba says.

According to Dziuba, we need a deeper understanding of the connections between what we do in the workplaces and what the world outside calls for, and to what it demands answers.

“Hopefully, with this understanding, we will start to notice how we ourselves participate in constructing an environment that either helps or hinders addressing important questions, how far we can go with the approaches we chose in looking for the answers, and how far the world can go with academia and science as we craft it today”, Dziuba summarizes.

The dissertation is available here.
Coping with Managerialism and Instrumentalism in Academic Work: Acquiring Emotional Competence, Developing Creative Ideas, and Finding Meaning

Doctoral defense of Anna Dziuba: Monday, 19 December at 12:00 EEST at Hanken School of Economics and in Teams.
Link for participating in the defence via Teams

Opponent: Jukka Rintamäki, Assistant Professor, Aalto University School of Business.
Chair: Janne Tienari, PhD, Professor, Hanken School of Economics.