In this article, we study how meritocratic systems and gender equality concerns are negotiated across different organisational spaces in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). Based on a case study of the organising of a tenure track system in a Swedish university, we suggest that the intersection of meritocratic processes and gender equality work can be analysed as a set of negotiated orders in these spaces. This fragmentation may imply problems for advancing gender equality agendas in relation to established notions of meritocracy but may also imply opportunities for change as existing organisational spaces can be reconstructed or new ones created. Our notions of fragmentation and negotiated orders thereby suggest that the current situation is both stable and legitimate and that re-negotiations need to involve reconstructions of the various spaces and not only interventions into them.

Many studies have focused on professional development within schools, while this article focuses on ICT (information and communications technology) professional development across schools. The aim of this article is to explore how the encouragement of communities and networks might contribute to ICT professional development across schools in close physical proximity. The study is based on a two-year action research project and interviews with the participants of a lead teacher community across five schools. Although the lead teachers and school leaders played a central role, ICT professional development was dependent on a complex interplay of different types of communities and networks, both within, across and outside the schools. This study illustrates how ICT professional development occurred in both expected and unexpected ways and emphasises the need for professional development to take account of the complex needs of teachers, rather than being a 'one size fits all'.

I denna text diskuterar vi tendensen mot en ökad instrumentalism i ledning och utövning av akademisk verksamhet i det svenska högskolesystemet. Med instrumentalism avses en inställning till akademiskt arbete som bygger på individualism, konkurrens, prestationsmätning, kortsiktigt nyttoskapande och formell regelstyrning. Instrumentalismen är en konsekvens av de ökade ambitionerna att styra och effektivisera högskolan, men riskerar – om den får gå för långt – att i stället erodera högskolans kapacitet att leverera det som önskas. Den instrumentella styrningen är sällan sammanhållen eller långsiktig, och den driver fram en akademisk kultur där de anställda fokuserar på sina individuella karriärer och på att på papperet leverera mot diverse prestationsmått. Den bidrar också till en ledningskultur där regelverk, mätsystem och detaljstyrning står i fokus snarare än gemensamt ansvarstagande, kvalitetsutveckling och byggande av tillitsfulla arbetsmiljöer som stödjer kunskapsintensivt arbete. I förlängningen hotas inte bara kvaliteten utan även det akademiska arbetets attraktivitet och högskolans roll som särpräglad samhällsinstitution. Vi föreslår ett alternativt förhållningssätt – akademiskt medborgarskap – och ger exempel på hur akademins chefer kan arbeta med att stödja detta i vardagsarbetet, i termer av relationsdrivande, ansvarsdrivande och kvalitetsdrivande ledarskap.

In current critical research on work life in the higher education sector, analyses often revolve around neoliberal managerialism as contrasted to traditional professional academic values (cf. Henkel, 1997; Deem, 2004; Ekman et al, 2017). Academics are both faced with expectations to uphold the integrity of academic values in their research and teaching, whilst at the same time performing and ’careering’ in accordance with managerialist reforms (Clarke & Knights, 2015).

Knights & Clarke (2014) analyse insecurity as a central aspect of identity in academics, conceptualizing academic life as a ‘bittersweet symphony’ populated by imposters (self- doubt and low self-esteem despite adequate performance), aspirants (under-recognised in relation to their inner sense of excellence) and existentialists (questioning the meaning of work and maintaining a sense of anxiety over their contributions to wider society). Another example is provided by Bristow et al (2017) who identify how early career-academics within CMS play on three narratives – diplomatic, combative and idealistic – by which they both resist and reproduce the ethos of business school neoliberalism in which they are embedded. Academics’ identity construction thus in different ways tend to position them as vulnerable selves (Cicmil et al, 2016), that is, as existentially exposed to the risks associated with projectified careers, macho-style management and a high degree of self-responsibility (Loveday, 2018).

In addition, a number of earlier studies has also pointed out the highly gendered nature of how academic work is organized, how recruitment and promotion processes unfold etc. (cf. (cf. Hush, 2001; Mählck, 2003; van den Brink & Benschop, 2012).

In this study we will focus on recognition practices (how recognition repeatedly tend to happen or not happen in local/cultural contexts, and thus also become the expectation on what may happen in future interactions) and their consequences for identity construction

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and sense of vulnerability thus seem central to advance the above insights. Recognition practices thus involve not only what and whom is recognized or not for something, but also in what settings certain practices are legitimate or not, and how they are publicly displayed in social interaction.

We suggest that

• recognition practices are an important yet under-researched aspect of academic

  identity construction processes

• recognition practices are gendered, i.e. we perform gender in our ways of

  - conferring and receiving recognition,- constructing what recognition may mean in different local/cultural contexts, - constructing when it is to be conferred/received or not,- constructing how it is appropriately played out how in social interaction.

• recognition practices tend to sustain vulnerability among academics, but in different ways for men and women.