Other substantive factors, present in the intention of managerialist narratives in higher
education, find support in two types of arguments, which constitute one of the pillars on
which this intention seeks to legitimize itself. On the one hand, the belief is widespread
that the higher education system and its institutions do not reform themselves as quickly
as the changes taking place in the surrounding environment; on the other hand, collegial
governance is connoted with traditional academic practices and structures, aligned with
corporate interests (Santiago & Carvalho, 2004). This positioning supports the rhetoric
about the irrationality and inefficiency of collegiality supported in the exercise of
professional power by academics.
In fact, managerialism combines political, institutional and organizational premises with
rational principles that seem not to be well organized but in which it is possible to detect
some coherence around notions of market, competition, individual choice, responsibility
and efficiency (Santiago et al., 2005). These authors consider that, in this context, there
is a feeling that managerialism influences higher education at different levels, in
particular at the level of strategies for reorganizing the system; management and
governance of institutions, including their institutional cultures and the individual
behavior of their professionals. These two levels influence the conceptualization of the
mission of institutions and also their final objectives, which play an important role in
mediating between political intentions and concrete institutional practices. The perception
of the different actors about the purposes and objectives of higher education constitutes,
in fact, the guiding framework of the decision-making process and, in this sense,
influences the strategies and policies of the institutions (Akanji et al., 2020).
In addition to being configured as a political and managerial tool for pressure on HEIs,
managerialism in general and the NGP in particular also find support within the academy
itself, since "(...) processes of accommodation emerge (...) that create some facilitating
conditions for the acceptance of pressures and their naturalization in and by academic
actors" (Santiago et al., 2005: 35). The reasons given by the authors for this are diverse.
Some are linked to the growth and development dynamics of higher education itself;
others are inherent to the difficulties of traditional HEI structures and forms of
government in dealing with outside pressures. On the other hand, this acceptance and
materialization is also rooted in the dissemination and fragmentation of scientific and
technological knowledge, as well as in the transformations of the representations of the
academic actors regarding the purposes and forms of organization of higher education
(Kozyrev et al., 2019).
However, the issue of the influence of the NGP on the IES métier does not gather
consensus and consists of two main distinct positions. According to David (2008), NGP
advocates proclaim the advantages of models that stimulate the competitiveness and
efficiency of HEIs regulated by the market, under supervision and with occasional
interventions by the State. This would aim to increase the quality of teaching, research,
technology transfer and the relevance of the services provided to the community. For
their part, opponents of these models allege the reduction of internal democracy in the
life of HEIs, the excessive subordination of HEIs to the logic of financial profitability,
devaluation and lack of freedom of research, including the risk of excessive institutional
control over teaching and research for commercial purposes.