New article (open access): In our paper, Bjørn Stensaker (Oslo) and I argue that the ongoing restructuring of universities is characterized by a convergence of bureaucratic and strategic management logics, ultimately creating a 'strategic bureaucracy': .

Many thanks to the colleagues from uni IT who are doing weekend shifts and who were just able to help me quickly resolve an issue. I'm impressed.

What do you want to know?.

Oh the fun of working on a spreadsheet offline and then the work computer suddenly forcing an update on you and shutting down and restarting without notice. .

RT @DrPeterBentley: Full professors (Level E) are now ~14% of all academics, and combined with A/Professors, are ~25%. Excluding casuals, s….

Just published: In our book chapter, we analyse some of the key academic workforce trends in Australian HE since 1994. One surprising finding is the growth in the size of the professoriate (e.g., Level E roles growing from 7 to 14% of the FTE workforce):

RT @ElgarPublishing: NEW: Research Handbook on Academic Labour Markets by Glenda Strachan. FREE chapter: More info….

Q: Why are there so few scholars dedicated to researching research policy in Australia? And there is not a single research centre in Oz on this afaik. This seems quite surprising also given the strong concern about research performance & university rankings in this country.

Our full paper on 'strategic bureaucracy' whose key findings are discussed in Future Campus can be accessed here (open access):

Nice to see today's edition of 'Future Campus' discussing our new paper on the rise of 'strategic bureaucracy' in university governance:

RT @JensJungblut: Our research group "Policy, Bureaucracy, and Organization" @UniOslo_SVfak will have its first seminar of the semester nex….

@UniOslo_UV.

I have just been invited to contribute to the 'Journal of Fungi', to their special issues on 'Personalized Mycology', based on my previous publications and expertise. Tempting as I really like to eat mushrooms, and the publication fee is only CHF 2.6k, bargain!.

If you're in the area, you may be interested in attending next week's workshop (11 July) here in Essen, Germany, on the administrative burdens in the national university systems of Australia, Czech Republic, and Germany. For more details see:

We will unpack these an other points in much more detail in a range of publications we are currently working on. The first paper will focus on views of academic staff (about to be submitted) and the second paper will focus on the views of professional staff (in preparation).

Less than 1% think the opposite trend has occurred (academics now spending less time on admin). Also, close to 75% of participants (both academic & professional staff) think that unis overall have become less efficient administratively over the time they worked in the sector.

We ran a survey last year asking staff at Australian unis about their experiences of admin burdens in the workplace. 580 staff from 37 unis participated. Alarmingly, a large majority of participants (91%) think that academic staff now spend more time on admin than they used to.

It think it's been ages since I have received proofs for an article of mine from one of the major publishers that weren't a mess in some respects at least. But I guess that's not a surprise really.

Many thanks to CWTS in Leiden for inviting me to talk about the issue of administrative burden at universities next Friday at 3pm CEST. As part of this, I will present some of the key findings from our admin burden survey conducted across Australian universities last year.

@andrewjnorton @DrPeterBentley @BretlynB - maybe you have any idea about this?.

I had look at the 2023 Australian HE staffing stats the other day. Anyone has an idea why the headcount sums for academic staff add up differently if looking at rank (Table 2.2) or role focus (2.3), for example? The differences is around 1k staff.