52.
The interplay of public and private sector dynamics in higher education has impacted not only on the roles and identities
of academic staff, but also on those of professional staff, who often have the task of bringing together, and achieving congruence
between, activities that are geared towards the public good and also towards more commercially oriented enterprise. In this
context, a new cadre of “blended professionals” has emerged, whose roles include initiatives associated with the social responsibilities
of institutions to their communities, as well as more market-oriented, income generating projects (Whitchurch
2008,
2009). This paper reports on case material relating to a sub-set of these staff, working specifically in the area of Community
and Business Partnership, and on the impact of their work for traditional management structures and relationships. It will
be argued that, although unlikely to be acknowledged in formal accounts of the university such as organisation charts or institutional
plans, these staff are responsible for providing and maintaining a framework that holds together more publicly oriented strands
of activity, such as widening participation, with more privately oriented strands, such as enterprise. In so doing, they make
extensive use of multi-professional team- and networking with a range of colleagues, both inside and outside the university,
not only helping to re-balance their institutions, but also to protect them against undue organisational fragmentation and
bureaucracy. They therefore contribute to an increasingly ‘mixed economy’ of broadly based portfolios of activity. The implications
of these ‘public/private’ spaces and activities for professional identities are explored in the context of institutional management.
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