Knowledge management in realist perspective: A critical analysis of university change

Universities are confronted with new demands for change. In short, this transition can be described as a transition from a European state-financed Humboltian tradition emphasising free research and self-government to a postmodern tradition introducing strategic management, marketisation, performance measurement and privatisation to both research and teaching. In this transition university employees often find their roles, values and obligations challenged with more alien values and diverse obligations. Replicating concepts from management theory universities present strategic plans in order to cope with problems of transition and the question investigated in this paper is whether such plans will support such transitions and solve the dilemmas or whether they will fail or even work against the original intended goals. This is explicated through an analysis of a proposed strategic plan from a nearby university. This analysis draws on a theoretical framework of reality that emphasises the values of the actors involved. The paper concludes that the proposed strategic plan could, if in part, support this process of transition, but in the plan there is no indication of what action should aid the employees in this transition. In the language of the theory of reality the plan is “abstract” and not “real” as it does not show the employees what (new) values they should live by – instead, they are presented with some supposed facts and a new logic – a market logic that works contra to the logic of enlightenment that these employees know from their pasts. The paper concludes that as a KM exercise, the proposed strategic plan is of little help in realising its intended goals.