Navigating from industry to higher education: Practitioner transitions to academic life
Abstract
In this paper, we entwine sympathetic concepts of liminality and workplace identity to capture processual, agential and emotional elements of transition for established professionals from other sectors taking up academic careers in a digitised UK business school. We undertake interpretative analysis of explicit and latent responses through three core themes exploring processes of transition, agencies of transition and emotions of transition through anonymised interviews conducted with 15 participants coming in from a variety of industrial and service roles. With a rationale of better understanding barriers and ambiguities experienced during times of transition, the paper considers perceptions of ambiguity and flux experienced by those undertaking second careers in the context of marketised higher education, arguing that coming in from a profession is complex and unsettling. The paper argues for greater institutional focus on improving perceptions of belonging, valorisation and recognition for those negotiating the ritual and contested space of transition, particularly in light of increasing collaboration between academia and practice and growing student numbers in this space. It concludes that in the light of continued policy decisions embracing rapid growth in apprenticeship and other practice-based degree programmes, university managers need active strategies to retain and develop those from industry and other professional backgrounds.
Key insights
What is the main issue that the paper addresses?
The paper examines issues of belonging and recognition for those transitioning into academic careers from industry or professional roles.
What are the main insights that the paper provides?
While universities have much to gain from insights and expertise provided by second-career professionals who transition in to academic life, active measures for integration and support are needed for their retention and wellbeing at work.
INTRODUCTION
Neoliberalisation and massification have accelerated UK higher education into sites of multiple contestations and tensions where traditional ‘borders’ (Thomas, 2019) of what is considered within the purview of universities are being continually challenged. This ratchets up debate around who learns, and who decides (Zuboff et al., 2019:260) legitimate avenues for learning. One such contestation is around increased commodification and financialisation of learning and the positioning of ‘student as consumer’ (see Bunce et al., 2017), creating conditions that move perceptions of education from public good to one of private economic value gained by an individual student.
This outlook is being consolidated further by the Office for Students (2022) regulatory framework extensions that shunt debate towards additional classifications calling for refreshed public value that explicitly aim to bind university compliance, measured student outcomes and ‘value-for-money’. These developments are rapidly changing conceptualisations of how, and by whom, public value in education might be constructed and who such valuations serve. This paper will therefore use the first of three conceptions of public value presented by Hartley et al. (2017:672) to help examine academic transitions in current UK higher education dialogues. In this specific case we explore the impact on external professionals who are recruited to ‘add value’ to business school teaching as part of ensuring both ‘relevance and interest’ for practice (Berggren & Söderlund, 2011: 379) and ‘industry-ready’ graduates (Obembe, 2023:103) in response to government policy agendas.
Questions about what is a university and which bodies are included in the recent umbrella term as education ‘service’ ‘providers’ (GOV.UK National Statistics, 2022) and what they are for in relation to economic gain have also been put up for debate by state and media outlets in the wake of applied innovations such as degree apprenticeships, alongside ever-increasing pressure on fees and funding models (Juster, 2024). The role of business schools and those who provide professional and management education has been at the forefront of such tensions, exacerbated by post-pandemic and post-Brexit demand for future workforce training. Management education is expected (Allen et al., 2022: 181) to prioritise the need for coping with and exploiting turbulence in a world where technological enhancement and artificial intelligence breakthroughs increase in speed and intensity.
Diversifications to student cohorts generated by explicit needs for national skills development are also intensifying parallel variations in the academic body as universities look for academics with industry credibility for applied programmes. While industry–university collaborations (Rybnicek & Königsgruber, 2019) are now normatively presented as an unproblematic good for economy and wider society (Dickinson et al., 2020: 290-1), state manipulation of such relationships in the form of taxation and metrics (such as via degree apprenticeship programmes) has important consequences for human actors working at this nexus.
Recent extensions of state interventions into what might historically have been perceived as independent university provision have also developed in a number of important ways. While macro-level tenets of New Public Management and associated challenges around the complex apparatus of increasing metrics, performance and surveillance in higher education have been well studied (e.g. Muller, 2018), forms and reach are not static. Media rankings of universities jostle alongside national schemes for assessing ‘excellence’ such as Research Excellence Framework (REF) and Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) (Office for Students, 2023), and operate in conjunction with inspection bodies such as Ofsted. Funded educational research has become increasingly ‘improvement’ orientated and focused on measured outcomes (Hordern, 2021). During an era that has promoted ideologies around consumer choice, individual entrepreneurship and innovation, such measures raise tensions and ambiguities about how the higher education sector might be governed and the ways it conducts its business in reference to the state. Foucauldian ideas of governmentality (Rose and Miller, 2013) stemming from successive higher education policies steer the way individuals and groups are directed to self-regulate via activities and procedures within institutions and the way they are governed, regulating freedoms of choice in particular ways.
The influence of these environmental conditions impacts upon individual identities in the workplace. Corresponding micro-level implications for life in an educational gig economy (Collins et al., 2022), subject to a proliferation of artefacts of control (Knights & Clarke, 2014: 339), suggest that the changing nature and emotional burden of being a professional in this fluctuating space is becoming ever more nuanced. Turbulence has inevitably brought ambiguities to what might have been historically considered settled roles within education. These include a rising group transitioning in as credible and necessary specialists from a variety of industrial and public service backgrounds, identified in some texts as ‘pracademics’ (Dickinson & Griffiths, 2023: 2) and brought in explicitly as universities respond to wider political agendas. Here, the authors point to a rise in institutional gaming activity that helps meet government targets alongside a genuine need for seasoned industrial professionals that convey professional workplace ‘know-how’ to students emerging into an insecure, challenging economy. Their contributions and industry experiences are required defenders for business schools in the wake of critique that workplace ‘competence development and learning’ have been downgraded (Alvesson, 2013: 84) and in response to the ‘persistent problem of learning transfer from classroom to workplace’, identified by Nicolini and Korica (2024: 2). And, while the ideal surrounding the term, identified by Clegg (2006: 335) as a ‘marriage of practice and academic reading’ might still be in place, there is only limited output so far on how this particular group continues to survive and thrive in increasingly metricised higher education spaces. Further recent complexities in entering teaching have also been noted post-pandemic, with the university moving the majority of provision online.
This article therefore aims to make three contributions to a changing field, as established professionals are called into business schools in service of national skills development. Firstly, we explore workplace identity processes undergone in the liminal phase of transitioning from industry, and how individuals attempt to mobilise existing and adapted identities, values and beliefs in a digitised business school setting. Secondly, we discuss negotiations and tensions in exerting professional agency and control at the transition, and finally, emotional burdens experienced by individuals as they traverse to belonging in higher education.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Transitioning
There is a rich and detailed empirical literature on the processes of navigation into the ecology of higher education and associated identity work, although much of it is focused on students. The processes and emotional journeys by which individuals navigate into and through education and onward towards careers is generally accepted as ‘central to empirical and theoretical developments in educational research’ (Jones et al., 2023). Interest in students’ educational trajectories has also been driven by mass participation, also known as ‘massification’ (Tight, 2019), aimed at maximising higher education contributions towards a more skilled workforce and economic growth (Hayes, 2019: 6). A focus on topics such as engagement (Kahn, 2014) and a need for inclusive pedagogies (Stentiford & Koutsouris, 2021) have been championed as necessary for delivering equity of experience in a world where students are positioned as consumers, requiring graduate attributes to succeed and benefit from their personal investment.
While many recent outputs focus on transitions for undergraduates, such as Thomas (2019: 10), the validity of her perennially politicised question of ‘who belongs in higher education’ is highly pertinent for other readily identifiable occupational groups. These include doctoral candidates moving in a series of transitions from student status to fully fledged academics (Billot et al., 2021), academic consultants, sessional lecturers and zero-hours contract workers (McGloin, 2021; McCulloch & Leonard, 2023). The sector also operates on a continuum of academic role-types designated from ‘research’ to ‘research and teaching’ alongside hybrid academic roles classed as ‘teaching only’ who may/may not have any designated research time.
Associated widening participation debates, have however, brought welcome attention on how transitioning is understood by different, identified, social groups (see e.g. Banerjee & Myhill, 2019). Experiences of non-traditional students here are particularly important in relation to contestations around expanding higher education. This is in relation to both early and on-programme support and eventual student outcomes. In the case of the former, Hensby and Naylor (2024) highlight the consequences of new inhibitions and scale problems in creating and developing meaningful staff–student interactions when mass participation is achieved. In terms of impact on areas such as quality of provision and graduate employability, Tight (2019: 101) uses his systematic review to note how despite growth in student numbers, elite systems of higher tariff universities remain ‘more or less intact’. Other groups of students may not achieve enhanced social mobility or graduate employment premium promised.
That widening participation theme of ‘belonging’ (Read et al., 2003) also generates relevant insights into transitioning for social and economic groups historically under-represented in higher education. For example, Crozier et al. (2019: 932) discuss a ‘Janus position’ of an insider/outsider role for the processes of identity deconstruction and reconstruction for working-class individuals as they make or appropriate space for themselves to challenge their perceptions of a monolithic culture in their institutions. While these insights are focused on student belonging, they have applicability for transitioning staff who may not have a traditional academic background and feel tensions between their vocational expertise and academic credibility. Wood et al. (2016: 243) note such individuals to be ‘often insecure’. The situation for those recruited into teaching-only tracks is discussed by Hunter and Carr (2023: 141), who note contracts generating ‘second class’ citizenship in the academy. Whether as social, economic or designated occupational outsiders, processes of social and intellectual integration appear to be as pertinent for academic transitioners as students in Tinto's (1975) seminal study for matching institution and individual.
While there is ongoing value in studying the above and other groups who may feel as other in higher education, this paper focuses on transitioning journeys made by established professionals who move across the academic continuum; their emotional journeys and liminal experiences traversing this space. This might be into traditional academic roles, or through aims to reclaim positive identity work from their ‘othered’ status as non-traditional academics via their unique contributions and links to practice, or sense of failure at not being ‘real’ academics. Such individuals undergo liminal experiences—perhaps of challenge and loss or anxiety and doubt (Winkler, 2018) at giving up previous seniority or expertise. This idea of transitions also might convey a positive journey from one professional role to another; to having moved as expert practitioner to academic specialism. Some may attempt to master both roles as an expert, or regulate and manage elements of each through institutional control mechanisms (Alvesson & Wilmott, 2002: 621). Whatever the journey, the dichotomous position of dual-status during the ritual process between established professional and academic colleague is a messy business of identity negotiation as theorised below.
Identity and liminality
In terms of conceptual understandings of identity work undertaken at times of ‘in between’ (Ibarra & Obodaru, 2016: 48), this paper engages with literature on transitions occurring in occupational and work-related contexts, rather than related to wider life experiences of our respondents. While the two are linked (Ashforth, 2000, xiii), our focus is on the common ground of work-based transition for all our interviewees, rather than the pantheon of other social identities and communal rituals inhabited throughout our everyday lives. This is a rich area for study, as noted by Ibarra and Obodaru (2016: 48), who highlight the growth of ‘in between’ sentiments ‘as people start to shed an old role without yet having clarity about the new’.
Academic interest here has largely followed the contemporary employment landscape, evolving away from traditional understandings of professional identity as fixed and immutable as produced by assumptions of ‘fairly stable views of the organisation and the self’ (Sveningsson & Alvesson, 2003: 1164). Fragmented contexts of current employment relations present in a networked, gigged, economy generate a need for more fluid, portable conceptualisations of identity work. This may be for occupations that are inherently liminal such as consultants (Czarniawska & Mazza, 2003) or contractors (Petriglieri et al., 2019), or when transitioning between professions. Such analyses are compatible with conceptions of governmentality, where individuals learn to regulate their self-narratives, in order to present as ‘appropriate’ (Alvesson & Wilmott, 2002: 619) and holding correct ‘forms of expertise’ and ‘special competence’ (Miller and Rose, 2008: 12) to their organisations. Hence, ideas around social and occupational ‘rites of passage’ and perceptions of the self and self-regulation at times of change and transition are part of a rapidly burgeoning interest in that ‘nexus between liminality and identity change’ (Tansley & Tietze, 2013).
Beech (2011: 285) explicitly links identity constructions in organisational life as a dialogic co-construction between an individual and their institution, where the focus is on an interplay between internal discourses of self-identity and those of the surrounding social structure. His analysis takes implicit framings presented by Sveningsson and Alvesson (2003) on themes of fragmentation, struggle and integration as they impact managers’ identity work in a changeful context and explicitly integrates them into conceptualisations of liminality undertaken by individuals at work. Beech considers three practices: experimentation (where disidentification from a previous role is a first step towards a desired self); reflection (questioning the self and others); and recognition (which Beech constructs as an emotional response and acknowledgement that things are different).
Meantime, the concept of liminality is currently inhabiting its third iteration. Developed through the anthropological tradition in The Rites of Passage, van Gennep [1909] (1960) studied ritual and ceremonial activities offered by societies to individuals as part of their adjustment through phases from one social state to another. While the ethnographic study of initiations such as for funerals and betrothals and their classifications have necessarily evolved in our industrialised, secular societies, the ‘phenomenon of a transition’ (van Gennep, 1960: 182) remains observable across many human activities including at work. Three analogous phases were distinguished (p. 11); separation, transition and incorporation. In its second iteration, this transition or liminal state was developed and extended by Turner (1969: 95), who considered the suspension ‘betwixt and between’ social states, offering both individual and collective perspectives on liminal practices as well as the impact on individuals in helping them understand their life phases.
Finally, we have a current phase of a liminal turn as presented by Söderlund and Borg (2018: 882) in their systematic review of a concept recently rejuvenated in management and organisational studies after ‘being ignored by the social sciences for well over half a century’. While acknowledging that conceptual development has moved away from the ‘carefully guided’ (Ibarra & Obodaru, 2016: 48) rituals of van Gennep's original study, their paper notes the value and versatility of using liminality in understanding people at work. They argue that the process itself implies ‘identity pressure’ through changing work contexts, offering its rationale as describing ‘individuals’ transitioning between different states, situations and professional identities (pp. 884–885). Their review differentiates between individual and collective levels of analysis alongside determining three popular themes for current scholarly work on liminality—process, position and place—while noting other underexplored areas including the liminal experience, ritualisation and temporality.
Current conceptualisations of liminality also leave room for continuous states of unfolding and becoming, which allow us to consider both more positive aspects of researcher development and growth and difficulties and insecurities generated through short-term, ill-defined or precarious positions (Glover et al., 2024). Unfolding (Ybema, 2020: 65) considers perceptions of individuals’ life and work events connected through their understandings of ‘sequential encounters’ and subsequent self-narratives which ‘sustain particular meaning over time’ (Hernes & Obstfeld, 2022). While events may produce incremental and perhaps less-noticed changes to workplace identities (Ibarra & Barbulescu, 2010: 147), Ybema et al. (2011: 22) note two situations where individual actors are in a state of knowingness and recognise transformational change. This may be either as a transitional liminality from one ‘identity position’ to another (such as from professional to manager) or where individuals remain in both workplace categories for a time, as a form of ‘perpetual in-betweenness’. This state of ‘persistent ambiguity’ (p. 24) is noted by the authors as an oscillating role where individuals must ‘cast and recast themselves … for different audiences at different times’ (p. 25). Both situations may be relevant for transitioners from industry to higher education in the current marketised context.
The notion of becoming, while applied to a wider organisational context by (Clegg et al., 2005: 162), concerns ‘ongoing change … of identity’. Explicitly coupled with learning, for the authors it implies a ‘journey on the edge’, an ‘exploring’ ‘that may lead to the emerging of new yet unknown competencies’. In relation to the higher education sphere, Gale and Parker (2014) frame management and support for individual student transitions through three conceptualisations: induction (period of adjustment); development (from one student and career identity to another); and becoming (rhizomatic, perpetual movement of subjective experience). This final category of becoming opens on the idea of transitions being continual rather than sequential, with changeable selves subject to continued ‘subjectivity and flux’ (p. 745). Their paper calls for greater explorations between educational research, transitions and recent social theories around the impact of late modernity and acceleration of change (Bauman, 1991) affecting individuals. In relation to teaching transitions specifically, Stephens (2019: 268) raises some important questions about becoming-academic from a cultural studies perspective, engaged in identity work as an ‘act of reflection’ and, in Deleuzian terms, as ‘a fold’ (1993) that enables changes to preceptions or affective possibilities.
Conceptualisations of academic identity as continually in flux also have resonance with the work of Fischer and Dobbins (2023: 10), who consider academic identity tensions in relation to technological enhancements and digital learning. Their paper explores the way management educators will need to embrace multiple identities of securities through subject expertise as well as vulnerabilities in acquiring ‘novel and differentiated content in the area of new cutting edge technologies’.
In summary, dovetailing the context of transition into the massified and neoliberalised higher education sphere alongside personal accounts of identity work undertaken provides a productive tool for exploring interactions between former industry professionals and their institution. The aim in the empirical work is therefore to explore the conditions placed on human labour in this situation and render the self-regulation, personal reflection and emotional journeys of these individuals more visible.
Research design
This paper explores interviews with 15 lecturers employed in one pre-1992 higher education institution (HEI) Faculty of Business and Law who self-identified as ‘transitioning’/‘transitioned’ to academia from successful careers elsewhere and conducted by an independent researcher. This faculty currently offers work-based learning qualifications in management and policing, alongside traditional degree study programmes. Our participants were self-selecting individuals identified as coming into academia as a second career from a professional background and who responded to a call made to the 191 holders of academic roles (i.e. teaching/teaching and research/academic management contracts) in the school. While we have not used the term ‘pracademic’ as the significant hook in this study (acknowledging the variety of teaching and research roles now undertaken by these sampled individuals and wishing to avoid accidentally homogenising their experiences), we chose our participants based on the definition set out by Obembe (2023: 103) of an academic with prior industry/public service/third sector experience. Six participants had previously worked in policing (reflecting the HEI as a provider of policing apprenticeships) and the remainder had worked in a variety of management/professional roles elsewhere. There were nine female participants and six males. Two participants identified as BAME, three did not disclose their ethnicity and the remainder identified as white. Our youngest participants came from the 31–40 range, and the four oldest were in the 60+ category. Respondents varied in career stage from recent transition to teaching lecturer to full professor. These were categorised as follows: three participants had less than 2 years’ experience in higher education, three had between 3 and 5 years since transitioning, five between 6 and 10 years, and four had left their professional roles over 10 years previously. Where participants’ perceptions of transitioning may be related to length in service or seniority of role, this is noted in the text.
Interview questions were finalised during group discussions following initial piloting. Finalised questions were organised in four blocks to capture motivations, experiences and constructed meanings of transitioning to academia, as well as that ‘inner conversation’ initially framed by Archer (2000) and developed by Clegg (2006: 333). Block one asked participants about themselves and motivations for joining academia, while the remaining blocks concentrated on temporal frames that helped convey transition journeys; i.e. ‘prior experience’, ‘present practice’ and ‘future practice’. As the dataset was collected by an independent researcher ‘outside’ the lived institutional experience of the employed researchers, full immersive reading to actively shape patterns and meaning was required (Braun & Clarke, 2006: 88). Ethical approval had been granted by the relevant HEI committee based on an application that engaged an independent researcher to conduct the interviews, and that all transcripts were fully anonymised before passing to the team.
Transcripts were coded using a thematic analysis in NVIVO12 to establish the main axes for analysis, before revisiting and iteratively re-coding to check congruency with study aims, demonstrating how participants constructed temporal narratives of their journeys from industry to academia, and how they explored ambiguities and tensions in transition and addressed them over time. Our approach to data adopted a social constructivist perspective, focused on processes undertaken by our respondents, their emotional reflections and how these were projected within purposeful conversation with the researcher. Through analysis we were able to reflect on the things our respondents sought to ‘accomplish’ (Bryman & Bell, 2007: 536) in their talk. As noted by Ybema (2020: 57), by adopting this perspective, we did not see our participants’ identities as fixed and objective, or pre-given, rather manifested through their language choices, engagements and reported behaviours in their workplace context. We therefore considered identity shift and (re)consolidation through participant discourses and metaphors of transition and change (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980), enabling us to trace claimed, compromised and rejected social and workplace definitions and identity regulations (Alvesson & Wilmott, 2002). Our three thematic axes drawn from the data funnel responses firstly through more mechanical concerns in relation to the formal rite of passage that calls for identity development and secondly through negotiating problems and tensions, before finally examining emotional burdens of transition. They are as follows: Processes of transition (which discusses the liminal phases our respondents navigate in becoming a ‘proper academic’, R10), Agencies of transition (which explores the push–pull of different agentic tensions experienced by and enacted by our respondents) and Emotions of transition (which considers perceptions of stasis and change as our participants cope with the consequences of new workplace identities).
FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
Processes of transition
In this section we discuss the socially constructed and normative expectations and identity regulations circulating around processes experienced by those transitioning into academic life from a professional background. Recognising that this transition involves iterative explorations, ‘between social and self-definition’ (Ybema et al., 2009: 301) framed through professional discourses of expected ‘academic’ behaviour, affiliations and university routines, we saw these processes towards becoming academic as a continuum depending upon the relative experience of the respondent.
Some types of academic transition appeared fairly explicit and were experienced as expected processes in a variety of ways; these included induction and working in defined groups such as module teams. These institutional structures of ‘appraisal, socialisation and training’ (Bardon et al., 2017: 942) aided self-regulation and working towards coherence of an appropriate identity for the new workplace. They tended to be presented by respondents in a positive and unproblematic way, e.g. ‘being included on projects has … been rewarding’ (R10) and, ‘departmental plans … it's been about putting on programmes … with sessions and events’ (R02) and were more commonly discussed by recent transitioners (those with less than 2 years’ service). Gaining skills in digital teaching was also approached in a straightforward fashion.
Through undergoing these processes we saw our transitioners experiment (Beech, 2011) with first iterations of teaching routines and expected jobs in induction activities, marking and student casework, etc. Being ‘on the ground’ (R03, R09, R10 and R11) at the teaching interface appeared as a place of initial anxiety before being accepted (sometimes via reflection and questioning of themselves and others) as a place of temporary stability before the next challenging event. The next steps identified by respondents included moving into organisational projects (R09) or the research and scholarship arena (R10) or writing module materials (R03).
I pursued a PhD in sociology to legitimise my experience and expertise. (R12)
For those individuals, undertaking the PhD was seen as facilitative to the process of becoming an academic: ‘you're kind of half in and half out’ (R01). Other validatory awards were also seen by most respondents as an important process of transitioning to and through formal HE teaching phases and as a required part of forming this professional identity. Many respondents had taken time to gain one or more form of Higher Education Academy award (Fellowship, Senior Fellowship or Principal Fellowship), PGCE or other visible professional marker, e.g. ‘member of the CMI’ (R10). They took care to inform the researcher of these standings. Newer transitioners without were very keen to gain recognition: ‘okay, I need to be heading towards that … benchmark’ (R07), ‘I've signed up’ (R09). Mid-career-phase recognitions, such as external examining (‘gives you a professional fillip’, R01) or later-phase journal editorship were also seen as ‘influential’ and ‘gave me an awful lot of kudos’ (R03). In this way transitioners sought ‘acknowledgement, recognition and confirmation of the self’ (Bardon et al., 2017: 957) through securing designated awards the industry considers necessary or important.
I don't have a professor that I can research with … I'm not part of the research community … I'm falling between the cracks. (R05)
Here we saw respondents feeling as other in the research academic space. R10 discussed fencing around the teaching-only academic role she had been recruited for—‘we're not able to develop’—and having to, ‘place myself in positions’ to ‘learn from those who are more knowledgeable … have more experience’ before being able to take on research. In these situations, respondents appeared to be in a state of long-term incompleteness, negotiating what Winkler and Kristensen (2021) refer to as ‘perpetual liminality’. Having committed to leaving behind visibility and professional standing from their previous roles, they found themselves tending to be ‘constantly facing student needs’ rather than undertaking ‘more desirable aspects’ (R10) of academic life, which were named as module lead, module and programme design and production, and research and scholarship. R06 described their role as ‘very glorified administrator’, and ‘overwhelmed with the amount of non-challenging work’. However, it can be argued that some respondents may have had rose-tinted expectations around levels of service-work here, depending upon their career stage. Owing to there being little formal recognition or appreciation by institutions, such undervalued but crucial activities such as committee representation or teaching administration are labelled as ‘academic housework’ by Heijstra et al. (2016), and while undertaken by all academics, become more negotiable with seniority. In their study, ‘jobs that nobody sees but that you are expected to do’ (p.773) tend also to disproportionately fall on women and newcomers, which may include more recent transitioners. It is also the case that the volume of such tasks has grown since the advent of the audit cultures of New Public Management, and with increasing student numbers.
orI just finished the marking guidelines … nobody said yet these are dreadful (R01)
I used to have people come and observe my teaching. (R11)
and both R05 and R07 who underlined their ‘vast amount’ of subject knowledge and ‘large networks of contacts’ gained before academia.feedback from both the client and external independent … made me feel good about the work,
Respondents actively engaged in processes of sensemaking (Weick et al., 2005), defined here as extracting cues from the social context to construct plausible narratives to help align past, current and future selves. Such emotionally regulated behaviour of letting go and moving on in work-related identity is expressed by Conroy and O'Leary-Kelly (2014) in four narrative phases as individuals journey from a past-orientated ‘who I was’, through to a present and near-future ‘who they are’ and ‘who they are becoming’ together with a final frame of who they want to become. However, their approach suggests a linearity in professional transition, which appears inconsistent with the lived experiences of our respondents. Journey and spatial metaphors of reported ‘drifting’ (R01) or ‘boxing in’ (R03) indicated emotional discomfort at moving (or remaining stuck) in different phases of academic work, particularly for solely teaching roles. The findings therefore appeared closer to those of Scanlon (2011: 13), who problematises this idea of ‘becoming’, opting instead for iterative cycles of ‘ongoingness’ in professional identity formation.
Agencies of transition
In this section we note respondents considering themselves both as active agents in the workplace and as recipients of agency (and lack of agency) enacted by others, which provided cues for reflection and action.
Our initial opener of ‘tell me a bit about your professional background’ saw many interviewees framing responses through a dialogic construction of triggers that began their transition to academic life. Separation (van Gennep, 1960) activities from previous work included single reasons or combinations of exogenous crises such as redundancy (R1, R10) and/or endogenous decisions that personal change was necessary or desirous. For example, R06 reported that stresses from their previous career led them to evaluate transitioning to academia as ‘an identity I could take on’, whereas R14 led with needing ‘a new challenge’ as they were ‘bored with what I was doing’. Many of these initial narratives demonstrated active agency of identity reconstruction and identity work (Beech, 2011) as the interviewees stamped their starting points on the discussion, taking care to underscore an acquired previous professional status to the interviewer, e.g. ‘I was a legal executive in a former life’ (R10) or ‘I trained as a social worker’ (R4).
the university is investing in me as a … future leader. (R09)
I was able to hit the ground running … lots of the people I work with coming from practice are really good at just turning their hand to a lot of different stuff … its yeah, crack on with it. (R09)
Participants who used metaphors (see Lakoff and Johnson, 1980: 44) that conveyed movement (‘jump in’, R01; ‘moving on up’, R04) appeared to springboard their own agency to thrive through uncertainty during the ‘liminal phase’ (Turner, 1969). These were often positive frames, referring to transition as a ‘catalyst’ (R07) and embarking on an academic ‘journey’ (R09), or even ‘a quest’ (R10). In these circumstances, we noted that participants were not only attempting to actualise themselves as academics, but actively managing the process of enacting useful elements of their previous selves (Obodaru, 2017: 524). For example, R12 (who had been a professional fundraiser) spoke extensively around the university environment where they now had ‘opportunity’ to show their skills to ‘innovate’, exchange knowledge and ‘inspire future generations’.
I'm aiming for promotion … want to gain more exposure to traditional academic activities like leading on grant writing. Finding a suitable mentor or buddy … is part of my preparation strategy. (R15)
he knows things or people that can help me do what I want. (R07)
in my practitioner role … I was more fluid and could move around different ecosystems and contacts quite easily. (R11)
Constraint on research time was often experienced as a barrier in transitioning by respondents whose expectations on joining the academy were misaligned with their experiences.
I felt utterly swamped by my workload … a constant battle to make space to do my own research. (R02)
In these circumstances, respondents described themselves as ‘drained’ (R07, R06) by work that ‘is hard and challenging’ by a ‘vampiric’ (R01) organisation and workplace culture. Here the ‘dialectic of belonging and not belonging’ noted by Cunliffe and Karunanayake (2023: 1) as part of wider organisational ecology centred strongly around managing student metrics vs. time for their own projects appeared explicit in newer participant reflections. Outsider perceptions about research time potentially available to academic staff may also have been an issue here for transitioners. Increasing short-termism and work intensification (Leathwood & Read, 2022: 759) in universities causes difficulties for negotiating more open-ended activities such as research projects away from teaching and marking. More experienced staff recognised the condition, acknowledging that lack of autonomy ‘in terms of their own module’ (R03) was an unfortunate casualty when working at scale as student numbers rose, noting how new recruits can become ‘very demoralised’, lacking the energising effect of direct student contact and sometimes leave.
Therefore, while we did note in some cases the ‘fragmentation’ of previous professional selves reported by Wood et al. (2016: 232), we did not consider the agency of transitioning lecturers to be ‘illusory’, as lack of autonomy and acceptance of their lot in the teaching environment appeared subjectively driven by individual circumstances and not a necessary requirement of their rite of passage to academia. Instead, while they did experience barriers and frustration, previous identities acted in meaningful valorisation of purposeful activity as noted by Obodaru (2017: 547).
Emotions of transition
Many respondents chose to discuss emotional aspects of their journey into teaching. These responses to transitioning were varied owing to the ‘inherent uncertainty and ambiguity of change’, (Söderlund & Borg, 2018; 886).
you have to be able to command a room … to have the confidence. (R02)
we have all … had proper jobs and we relate to [each other]. (R01)
disappointed to find that academic collaboration wasn't as common as I had thought, finding the environment quite isolating. (R15)
There wasn't anybody … cause we are all new … so no, I haven't had an induction (R08) and
Because we're short-handed, I didn't have time to go wandering around … learning things … can you just please do it? (R01)
In terms of reflection on transitioning to academic life, responses were nuanced, and individually dependent. Some participants seemed to find describing their transition to an interviewer as cathartic, implying reflection was not necessarily an activity they gave too much time to. This was often indicated by strong valedictory or struck affirmations to questions ‘Oh God, I've got no idea what this is’ (R09) and ‘oh God, it's rubbish, isn't it?’ (R01). Others wanted the interviewer to understand that reflective practice was a positive and affirmative part of their identity they brought with them, ‘it's important for me … that time to reflect’ (R08).
we're not honest enough with some people to say stick to research. (R07)
For longer-serving respondents (those with over 10 years’ academic service), emotional responses often took on temporal aspects, particularly where liminality might be considered prolonged (Söderlund & Borg, 2018: 897) or iterative, such as where transitions had been multiple (such as being promoted or shifted sideways through different roles in the institution). Their reflections were often considered through the prism of identity fit and comfort within their current role alongside their awareness of how they had become accustomed to, and potentially controlled by, organisational values, structures and ways of being. For example, R13 reported a series of ‘changes and fluxes’ over years of service which made it ‘challenging to maintain professionalism’ in the face of institutional upheaval, external demands and moving targets. The emotional upheaval here can be contrasted with R03, who appeared to have zig-zagged upwards through a series of ‘alienated’ managerial roles through to an ‘absolutely loved’ position as a researcher and professor. For R01, age and experience appeared as a defining factor in harnessing individual agency, recording an achieved sense of stability and recognition in an academic role: ‘less people trying to say you are not [one] of us … since I became an old bat’.
In regard to the final aspect of phases identified by Beech, recognition was therefore strongest amongst those transitioners who had held more than one post since joining a university. For R14 this came through promotion to senior lecturer, which ‘affirmed the value of my role’, whereas R10 noted that ‘even journal articles being published’ or ‘speaking at an international conference’ were a mark of reward and validation of achieving academic status, despite it being ‘a rare occurrence because you simply don't have time’.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
While our places of higher education and varying pathways of academic life continue in a state of high flux, the impact on and emotional burden carried by individuals who contribute to student learning will be complex and uncertain. We understand that combined backdrop influences of managerialism, state interference and changes in and increases to the student body have brought in fresh ways that business school academics understand their roles as teachers, institutional project managers and researchers. Empirical material here has contributed to understandings around one segment of the profession, that of second-career academics, and how they have coped with later entry into this charged environment. From our data, we have mapped three aspects of their transition, through processes, agencies and emotions experienced, and note the following main insights.
Firstly, in terms of drawing together transitioning insights from our participants, some clear commonalities of experience emerged. Respondents judged the process of transition between practice and academic life to be emotional, messy and littered with tensions. Impostor syndrome and negative feelings of timidity or not being good enough raised questions about whether a traditional (what Dickinson et al. (2020: 291) call a ‘career academic’) pathway has become over-valorised or erroneously fantasised over as an ideal state, rather than reflecting the continuum of necessary contributions to a successful modern university operating in marketised conditions. While institutionally valued practitioner skills offered ‘relative stability’ (R12) to respondents, lack of institutional steer and time available for them to gain a full suite of academic range left them feeling insecure, lacking in purpose in and around teaching work, and feeling the need for repeated identity revisions and affirmatory ‘badges’ and validations rather than being self-actualised.
We can then summarise that professional disruption challenged our participants to perceive their established and reified practitioner expertise in new ways. Taken-for-granted-beliefs were destabilised and (re)building reputation became a problem to be negotiated that many found difficult and emotionally burdensome. While none struggled with the technical aspects of teaching online, many felt anxiety around collaborating and developing good practice in this space. In all cases, we noted participants as knowing they were in a transitional period, fitting Turner's (1969) development of liminality as sometimes voluntary, self-aware acts of process that include a performative nature. In this way we saw artefacts and markers of success such as article publications as evidence of metacognition in our respondents, as they planned their learning and self-regulated wherever possible towards activities they knew would be judged as valuable by academic peers and the wider organisation.
Secondly, and more specifically in relation to liminality, while much of the analysis here is focused on becoming-academic (Stephens, 2019) and ongoingness (Scanlon, 2011), transition could then also be seen as a process of loss (Borgstrom et al., 2023: 4) and unbecoming of previous professional identity. Such responses echoes ‘negative practices marking an isolation’ referred to by van Gennep (1960: 146–7) in relation to funerary rituals. For van Gennep, the next steps to reincorporation for those suffering such losses are through series of post-liminal activities as an individual is gradually (re)introduced to society. However, emotions around socialising also appeared fraught, as we also noted a sense of struggle in sustaining that ‘dual sense of self as both practitioners and academics’ noted by Dickinson et al. (2020: 291) as individuals sought to retain knowledge and skills that had led to their initial recruitment into higher education.
Thirdly, we noted that much of the identity work undertaken was context-specific and conducted in relation to the wider institution. By a series of processes, whether through holding individuals in teaching-only roles (such as through fencing off academic development) or imposing excessive workloads or overwhelming numbers of student contacts, the institution succeeded in either actively or passively regulating transitioners workplace identities (Alvesson & Wilmott, 2002). In this sense, little has improved for individuals from Clegg's (2006: 336) appraisal of the university as a ‘deeply ambiguous space’ for those transitioning in from industry, where ‘what counts’ shifts owing to national policy. Given increasing numbers of ‘pracademics’ attached to work-based and industry programmes of late, possibilities from exerting individual agency may become increasingly limited. The challenge for university managers will be to exert active strategic planning that enables these individuals to thrive as part of a varied community, rather than feeling as add-ins. This is particularly so in light of policy designs that further push areas such as degree apprenticeships (see Lester (2024)). In this way, we noted that the institution, focused as it was on marketised student outcomes and extraction of value in relation to metrics, had little interest in considering additional facets of expertise or potential contributions from individuals recruited from practice.
A lack of performance-related feedback and reliance on managers and mentors, alongside the arbitrary ways in which mentoring or collaborating individuals were to be found by participants also demonstrated a (potentially wilful) lack of institutional grasp of transitioners’ specific needs beyond general academic development. Attention to the elements required for belonging would be invaluable for transitioners going forward, and an important step in retaining such individuals to academia. This is especially so with the growth in practitioner-led programmes such as apprenticeships or other forms of professionally accredited higher education, alongside expected further increased state interference in a higher education sector widely understood to be under immense financial pressure (see e.g. Williams, 2024).
As such, transitioners’ ‘dialectic[s] of belonging/not belonging’ (Cunliffe & Karunanayake, 2023: 28) shed fresh light on a university's relationships with different groups of academic staff, using reflections generated from their (formerly) external gaze to question the processes, agentic options and emotionality experienced by individuals as part of identity (re)construction. Their insights are valuable, as these individuals have unique perspectives generated from working elsewhere. Giving them the time they need to develop as academic staff would necessarily involve reducing and simplifying both workloads and targets; however, recommendations for supporting individuals in transition going forward are part of required sector changes for a more sustainable future. This could include a closer fit between frontline academic staff and increasingly remote policy decisions based on numbers and metrics rather than actual experiences of teaching and learning and other campus activities.
We recognise that this study is focused on a business school specific environment, and that conditions for transitioning may vary, whether in longer-standing work-based learning programmes such as nursing or more recent innovations such as Solicitor Apprenticeships (see Hood & Simmonds, 2022). However, given the numbers of practitioners moving, and likely to move, into higher education with the expansion of work-related programmes, we consider that the analysis above may be applicable to consider the experiences of those transitioning as lecturers into other faculties in a university, although further investigation will be required.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors would like to thank the reviewing team, and Rebecca Stimpson for her support.
FUNDING INFORMATION
This project was funded by The Open University Scholarship Centre for innovation in online Legal and Business Education.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT
The authors report no conflicts of interest.
ETHICS STATEMENT
Ethical approval (OU/HREC/3617BAXTER) was granted by the relevant HEI committee based on an application that engaged an independent researcher to conduct the interviews, and that all transcripts were fully anonymised before passing to the team.
Open Research
DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT
Data available on request due to privacy/ethical restrictions.
