part0019

I remember having a discussion some years ago with a (very senior) university administrator. The situation was that we were preparing to interview for a new lecturer post. After there was much talk of race and ethnicity considerations, I proposed that race should not be an issue, and the senior administrator’s response was ‘What about unconscious bias?’, and this was followed by a discussion of all the processes and determinations that might be occurring in the unconscious part of our minds. I knew I had lost him at that moment and that he was submerged in that PC-laden value system that has pervaded so many of our institutions. The chief problem with buying into this PC agenda is that it wastes time and effort on explorations of imaginary/unreal landscapes such as my (or anyone else’s) subconscious. This talk of the subconscious reminds me of the film Awakenings , in which Robert De Niro plays psychiatric patient Leonard Lowe. At one point in the film, a psychiatrist asks Lowe if he is aware of all the unconscious hostility he’s exhibiting. His reply was to ask, not unreasonably, how, if it’s subconscious, he could be aware of it.

As mentioned above, there is a tendency, particularly at many of the post-1991 universities, for academics to not be engaged in research. As discussed, I believe that this is detrimental to the institutions concerned. There is also a tendency for departments, faculties, and even institutions to be run by managers rather than academics – I refer to this phenomenon as the march of the managers. I have had direct experience with how academics tend to run pre-1991 universities while managers are more prevalent at other institutions. Having been puzzled as to why this was the case, I asked a member of (non-academic) staff at one of the universities why she thought this was occurring. She said that she thought managers were being employed in senior roles at her university because there was a belief that academics would not have the skills needed to run the institution successfully. However, this comprises another example of how certain people hold beliefs that are not supported by a shred of evidence. In fact, in this case there is considerable evidence to the contrary. A well-researched, detailed, and comprehensive scientific study of research universities (i.e. institutions that aim to do research as well as teaching) in the USA and UK has shown that those that are led by academics perform better than those that are not (see Socrates in the Boardroom by Amanda Goodall). Despite this, universities continue to appoint middle managers instead of senior academics to their executive roles, since they prefer to follow their hunches rather than being directed by what the available data indicate.

Robert De Niro as Leonard Lowe in the film Awakenings ; De Niro received his fifth Oscar nomination for his portrayal. (Drawing by the author.)

Having said all this about managers, I should also say that management is, of course, a challenging and important task and a very necessary one. Certainly, in my university career I have appreciated that there is a tremendous amount of management and administration required just to maintain one of the important activities, such as teaching, and I am very glad and appreciative of the fact that there are people around who are capable of it and willing to do it. One of these people has a sticker on his desk where I saw the above quote: ““Being a manager is easy. It's like riding a bike except the bike is on fire and you are on fire and everything is on fire and you're in hell.” I had to chuckle. And so much for middle managers in higher education, but what about managers in industry?

The UK has, sorry to say, a problem with management. Simply stated, many managers in the UK are not particularly competent technically and do not have a good understanding of the technologies their companies are supposed to be employing/developing. In fact, it might even be that this applies to the majority of managers in the UK – and possibly also the USA. Why is this the case? I suggest that it has to do with the concept popular in the UK/USA that management is a discipline in and of itself. Many years ago, while I was doing a masters’ degree in manufacturing at Cranfield University (back in the 1980’s – now I’m feeling old!), I noticed that on the campus there was a school of management offering degrees in the subject. A couple of years later, I mentioned this establishment to a colleague who suggested that I probably had never met a company manager with a degree from such an institution – my response was to say that I had never met such a manager with a degree from any institution! At a different time, I met a manager of a company who asserted that he ‘had a degree from the university of life’. Don’t we all? I couldn’t help thinking that he also needed a degree in the subject related to the products his company was producing. The arguments that can be made here are similar to the ones expressed earlier in relation to university leadership; specifically, it would be best if those leading a company were experts in an area closely related to the product or service their company is marketing. I don’t think we all have to be geniuses to understand this – those with an in depth knowledge in an area highly relevant to a company are in the better position to anticipate and deal with issues that the company may face, than those who do not have such knowledge. It’s common sense really. This managerial problem may also go a long way to explain why short termism is so often observed in the way British companies operate, with all the attendant lost opportunities for market dominance and long-term profitability. Consider how many brilliant ideas for new products British inventors have come up with over the years; here I will name just a few that come immediately to mind: jet airliners, programmable computers and the World Wide Web, military tanks, vacuum cleaners, the jet engine, and milk chocolate (with the latter being by far the most important, in my view). In most of these (and many other) cases, the invention was British, but most of the commercial development and consequent long-term profitability, was generated, or is now located, in another country. Often this is the result of a British company being set up to commercialise the invention and then, once some sort of success is demonstrated, being immediately sold to investors in another country (usually the USA). What I am suggesting is that this short-termism and inability to appreciate or at least fully realise the long-term commercial potential (which is where the bulk of return on investment usually lies), is a consequence of the companies concerned being led by executives who do not have a real passion for their products and determination to be involved in the products reaching their full potential. And what is the reason for this? It may in part be due to a tradition of wishing to see short-term returns on investment, but I believe a major factor is that if the executive concerned does not have an in-depth knowledge relevant to the product then it is not easy for them to fully appreciate the potential scale of its long-term development and exploitation, as well as making it less likely for them to have the passion and belief in the product that is so necessary for success in an increasingly competitive and global marketplace .