Sowa, F., Staples, R., and Zapfel, S. (eds.) (2018) The Transformation of Work in Welfare State
Organizations: New Public Management and the Institutional Diffusion of Ideas
London: Routledge.
Chapter 11
New managerialism as an organisational form of neoliberalism
Kathleen Lynch and Bernie Grummell
This chapter demonstrates why new managerialism is not a neutral management strategy but
rather a political project, borne out of a radical change in the spirit of neoliberal capitalism
(Boltanski & Chiapello, 2005). It shows how it operates as an ideological configuration of ideas
and practices that is instituting new orthodoxies in the running of public education in Ireland,
aligning it more closely with the organisational logic and practices of the private market system.
Although united by its ideological re-configuration towards market-place logic, managerialism is
realized differently across countries; it is shaped by the historical antecedents and the specifics of
nation-state politics. Drawing on three empirical studies1 undertaken by the authors on the
impact of managerialism across primary, secondary, further and higher education (Grummell,
2014; Lynch, Grummell & Devine, 2015; Lolich & Lynch, 2016) the chapter explores the
cultural and political specifics of managerialism across the education sectors in Ireland. It also
explores the resistance to market norms, the counter-hegemonic actions of educational mediators
within the machinery of the state and across the community (Lynch, 1990; Fitzsimons, 2017a).
Globalisation, trade and marketing public services
To understand the role of new managerialism in reframing education policy and practice, it is
important to locate it in the wider political economy of neoliberal capitalism. Neoliberalism is
governed by the principle of the small cheap state, where welfare is a personal responsibility and
the state operates as a regulatory body in the market system (Harvey, 2005, pp. 70–81). The role
Sowa, F., Staples, R., and Zapfel, S. (eds.) (2018) The Transformation of Work in Welfare State
Organizations: New Public Management and the Institutional Diffusion of Ideas
London: Routledge.
of the state is to facilitate the development of markets for entrepreneurial entities and citizens. As
neoliberalism is at once an ideology and a form of politics and set of practices (Peck, 2010), the
commercialisation of what were hitherto public services is but one part of the neoliberal project.
The changing relationship between the services, manufacturing and agricultural sectors in a
globalised capitalist economy has contributed significantly to attempts to commercialise public
services. The investment returns from manufacturing declined significantly in rich capitalist
economies in recent decades, for a range of complex reasons, not least of which is the emergence
of a large, non-unionised labour pool for manufacturing in South East Asia. Agriculture, already
a relatively minor player in employment terms in Western and Northern economics, could not
provide alternative forms of employment to manufacturing, especially in the existing context of
heavily regulated agribusiness and international trade agreements for agricultural products. The
focus shifted to trade in services, including trade in some or all of particular public services. The
goal of transforming public services into marketable service was part of the ideology of the
General Agreement on Trade and Services (GATS) agreement, (Robertson, Bonal & Dale, 2002;
Tomasevski, 2005), and, more recently, of the as yet unratified Transatlantic Trade and
Investment Partnership (TTIP) agreement. The rationale for making education a tradable service
was articulated by Merrill Lynch in The Book of Knowledge in 1999; it was defined as a service
that presents major new profit opportunities for investors (Moe, Bailey & Lau, 1999).
Multilateral agencies, including the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
(OECD) and the World Bank, and political institutions such as the European Union (EU), played
a key role in promoting the marketisation of education and the related knowledge-economy
ideology as they exercised increasing normative influence over national education policies from
the 1990s (Dale, 2005; Figueroa, 2010; Lingard & Rawolle, 2011; Sellar & Lingard, 2013). The
Sowa, F., Staples, R., and Zapfel, S. (eds.) (2018) The Transformation of Work in Welfare State
Organizations: New Public Management and the Institutional Diffusion of Ideas
London: Routledge.
cultural shift was especially evident in higher education (Jessop, 2008). World Bank reports,
Constructing Knowledge Societies 2002 and The Challenge of Establishing World Class
Universities, 2009 consolidated the market-led view of higher education in particular. While the
power of multilateral agencies often operates indirectly, as through the ‘Open Method of Coordination’ within the EU, or expert ‘advice’ from the World Bank or the OECD, such advice is
often a thinly disguised ‘surveillance’ procedure promulgating a new market instrumentalism
under the guise of ‘independent’ expertise (Henry et al., 2001). Control may be exercised as
‘soft’ power in education; it is real power nonetheless (Lo, 2011). The scope of scale of
European Union (via structural funding and research frameworks) and OECD influence on Irish
education policy is not always clear. However, the close alignment between Ireland’s strong
policy focus on creating a knowledge-based economy rather than a knowledge-based society over
the past 20 years is living proof of that influence (Loxley, Seery & Walsh, 2014; Fleming,
Loxley & Finnegan, 2017).
Managerialism as a neoliberal project
A managerialist approach to governance provides a unique type of moral purpose and regulation
to public service organisations: efficiency and effectiveness are prioritised at the expense of
more broadly based moral and social values related to social rights, care, trust and equality. This
has the ultimate impact of defining human relationships in works in transactional terms, as the
means to an end, the end being high performance and productivity (Lynch, 2010) Managerialism
reduces first-order social and moral values to second-order principles; trust, integrity and
solidarity with others are subordinated to regulation, control and competition. When
managerialist practices achieve hegemonic control within organisations, they parasitise and
Sowa, F., Staples, R., and Zapfel, S. (eds.) (2018) The Transformation of Work in Welfare State
Organizations: New Public Management and the Institutional Diffusion of Ideas
London: Routledge.
weaken those very values on which the organisation depends. While few would question the
value of efficiency, in terms of maximising the use of available resources, the difficulty with
managerialism is that it does not just prioritise efficiency, it suppresses other organisational
values so that they become incidental to the running of the organization (Ball, 2012). The net
effect of the devaluation of moral purposes, in and of themselves, is that public services, such as
education, are increasingly defined as commodities to be delivered on the market to customers
who can afford to buy them. They are no longer defined primarily as capacity-building public
goods that are governed by rights protected by law at national and international levels.
While managerialism is implemented in different ways across cultural and economic contexts,
within the public sector, one of its primary objectives is to inculcate market values and practices
in systems and processes (Clarke, Gewirtz & McLaughlin, 2000, p. 7). It is operationalised
through a narrative of strategic change, realised through the linguistic reframing of
organisational goals in output and performance terms (Holborow, 2015). It literally changes how
we speak about education: the nomenclature of the market is adopted with references to clients,
customers and efficiencies, rather than citizenship and social rights2. Power is also exercised
through a practical control technology that challenges established practices among professionals
(Deem, 2004). The process of managerialism involves a dualistic reformulation of control
through the decentralisation of authority to line managers combined with retention of power at
central level. Given its market logic, more casualised contractual employment arrangements also
tend to be a feature of new managerialism (Clarke & Newman, 1997; Chandler, Barry & Clarke,
2002). Once operationalised in state bureaucracies, these changes have profound implications for
the purpose and operation of the welfare state, including education, which this chapter explores
with respect to Ireland.
Sowa, F., Staples, R., and Zapfel, S. (eds.) (2018) The Transformation of Work in Welfare State
Organizations: New Public Management and the Institutional Diffusion of Ideas
London: Routledge.
Neoliberalism in Ireland
The long tradition of conservative nationalism and anti-intellectualism in the Irish socio-political
sphere (Garvin, 2004) provided a fertile ground in which to breed neoliberal policies (Lee, 1989;
Phelan, 2007). The country’s deep indebtedness in the 1980s, in particular, led to neoliberalism
being adopted through political pragmatism and opportunism. It was also strongly reinforced by
the media elite thereby consolidating its position in public discourse (Phelan, 2007). By late
1987, there was acceptance of three core principles of neoliberalism, that: (1) public spending
had to be cut back (2) tax cutting was the key to encouraging enterprise by individuals and
companies and (3) wage costs had to be reduced and union power restricted through legislation
(Allen, 2000, pp. 14–15). Accompanying this economic curbing of the welfare state was the
incorporation of commercial values into public service provision. This involved offloading the
cost of the welfare state from capital to labour through processes of marketisation, deregulation,
and privatisation of what were once public services (Allen, 2007).
The neoliberal turn happened within a broader context of the global capitalist marketplace, as the
Irish state sought to attract transnational investment through a low regulation and taxation regime
(Allen, 2000). As Ireland’s economic base shifted from agriculture and industry towards
marketable services, education became a central strategy in the promotion of the image of the
‘knowledge’ economy. Ireland sold itself to foreign direct investors as a vibrant ‘knowledge
economy’ (AIB, 2013).
New managerialism was initiated in the Strategic Management Initiative (SMI) (1994) and
enacted in law through the Public Service Management Act (1997). The new managerial project
was framed as one of ‘modernisation’, as politically neutral, promoting greater efficiencies,
openness and better services (Murray, 2001). However, the goals of the SMI were distinctly
Sowa, F., Staples, R., and Zapfel, S. (eds.) (2018) The Transformation of Work in Welfare State
Organizations: New Public Management and the Institutional Diffusion of Ideas
London: Routledge.
political in terms of the values and mores incorporated into systems of public governance,
regulation and accountability. The language of the market was encoded in the law and in policy
with a strong emphasis on accountability; systems for performance appraisal and measurement of
outputs was built into the framework of governance. The objective was to run the government
like a business (Collins, 2007, p. 31).
Impact of neoliberal policies on education
Like most European countries, Ireland greatly increased access to upper secondary and higher
education in the post-war era (although in Ireland’s case it did not take place until the later
1960s). Justification for investing heavily in education was increasingly based on its market
potential, its ability to develop skills leading to new products and markets in the ‘knowledge
economy’. The market-informed human capital approach to education was first articulated as a
policy objective in Ireland in the highly influential Investment in Education Report (1966); the
massive expansion of free secondary education in 1967 and the subsequent development of
Technological Institutes of higher education (originally known as Regional Technical Colleges)
were premised on human capital assumptions. As was true in many other countries in Europe, a
knowledge-based imaginary (KBI) developed over time: it sought to valorise ‘knowledge’ as the
key driver of economic growth, wealth generation, and job creation in the private, public, and
‘third’ sectors (Hazelkorn, 2011; Loxley, Seery & Walsh, 2014; Jessop, 2016). While the cultural
and personal value of education was formally endorsed, a new emphasis on entrepreneurship
emerged in the first decade of the 21st century: ‘the provision of the innovative and creative
graduates equipped with the skills needed to perform successfully in a competitive environment
and contribute to fostering an enterprise culture and the nurturing of entrepreneurs’ was
Sowa, F., Staples, R., and Zapfel, S. (eds.) (2018) The Transformation of Work in Welfare State
Organizations: New Public Management and the Institutional Diffusion of Ideas
London: Routledge.
proclaimed as a key part of the ‘vision’ for higher education (HEA, 2008, p. 12). The
entrepreneurial focus of education was reiterated in 2011 in the National Strategy for Higher
Education to 2030 report (DES, 2011, p. 32). It called for the development of a ‘smart economy’,
an objective first outlined in 2008: The objective is to make Ireland an innovation and
commercialization hub in Europe – a country that combines the features of an attractive home
for innovative R&D-intensive multinationals while also being a highly-attractive incubation
environment for the best entrepreneurs in Europe and beyond (HEA, 2008, pp. 7–8). While this
vocational and employment orientation had prevailed in Irish educational discourse since the
1970s, what was striking was that it became detached from the broader social development ethos
of the public education system; the focus shifted to the creation of a labour market primed for a
global knowledge economy.
Fostering the ‘entrepreneurial imagination’ that it believed would ‘empower future workers’
(DES, 2011, p. 37) required a new mode of governance in higher educational organizations in
particular (ibid., pp. 88–95). New managerialism became the new norm, resting on the neoliberal
assumption that the management of change can be best understood through the deployment of
market logic and market mechanisms (Lynch, Grummell & Devine, 2015). Concerns about
inequalities in access, participation and outcomes of education, that were central to debates about
public education in the 1990s, were peripheralised in favour of analyses about the market value
and relevance of education services: there were only three references to ‘disadvantage’ in the
National Strategy for Higher Education (DES, 2011) while there were twenty-eight references to
the relationship between business and higher education. It was made clear that securing the
‘short’ and ‘longer-term prosperity’ of Ireland was higher education’s primary remit (DES, 2011,
p. 29).
Sowa, F., Staples, R., and Zapfel, S. (eds.) (2018) The Transformation of Work in Welfare State
Organizations: New Public Management and the Institutional Diffusion of Ideas
London: Routledge.
Sharp distinctions emerged too in the strategies for developing the so-called ‘high-skilled’ and
‘low-skilled’ knowledge workers required by a global knowledge economy (Brine, 2006). The
neoliberal distinction between high-skilled knowledge workers, trained through higher education
for R&D (Research & Development), and the low-skilled knowledge workers trained through the
Future Education and Training sector, became central to the Irish government’s employment and
education strategies. The Irish promise was to provide high-skilled knowledge workers capable
of R&D work for the global knowledge economy, as well as ‘skill-upgrading’ for lower-skilled
workers servicing the other end of the knowledge economy (Solas, 2014, p. 5, 22). Running
throughout this transformation of the welfare state was a discourse of flexibility and
employability of a mobile and transferable workforce primed to respond to the needs of a global
marketplace and supported by national business-support agencies (such as Enterprise Ireland).
The move to make education into a handmaiden of the market has had profound implications for
the purposes of education in terms of what is taught (and not taught), who is taught and what
types of subjectivities are developed in schools and colleges (Olssen & Peters, 2005; Lolich,
2011). To encourage second-level students to take higher-level mathematics, bonus ‘points’
(extra marks) are given to students who take the subject at the higher level in the final year
national examination at second-level (the Leaving Certificate); no other subject is prioritised in
this way. There is a fetishizing of the marketable capabilities of mathematics that is deeply
problematic educationally (Kirwan & Hall, 2016).
While recognising the merit and value of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics
(STEM), the degree to which they have been prioritised in the research field in Ireland is
striking. The Report of the Research Prioritisation Steering Group (by the Department of
Enterprise, Jobs and Innovation in 2012) did not reference any arts, humanities and social
Sowa, F., Staples, R., and Zapfel, S. (eds.) (2018) The Transformation of Work in Welfare State
Organizations: New Public Management and the Institutional Diffusion of Ideas
London: Routledge.
science research field among its 14 priority areas. The unintended consequence of this emphasis
on STEM is that the knowledges, pedagogies and learning styles of these disciplines are
prioritised at the expense of the arts, humanities and social sciences; rational-critical, calculative
mathematical logics are prioritised over ways of knowing the world through indigenous, plebian,
peasant or experiential knowledge (de Sousa Santos, 2014).
However, there is also quiet resistance to the smart economy narrative: a survey in the Dublin
region of 4,245 higher education students found that many challenged the prioritization of the
‘smart economy’ and entrepreneurial framing of higher education While most students’ primary
reason for attending higher education was to realize their career ambitions through getting ‘a
well-paid job’, ‘a job I like’, and/or being ‘educated’, their ambitions were not confined to career
alone (Lolich & Lynch, 2017). When asked for their personal reasons for choosing to study in a
particular field, the three most important factors, in order of priority, were ‘Becoming an expert
in my field’, ‘Helping others who are in difficulty’, and ‘Raising a family’. ‘Being well-off
financially’ or ‘Having a successful business of my own’ were lower priorities (Lolich, 2015).
Students had ‘an affective imaginary’ as well as a market imaginary; post-college employment
was valued not only in itself, but also as a way of securing their relational (care) futures and
doing socially valuable work. While students recognise the employment realities of a global
labour market, they align their moral and affective (care) priorities with their labour market goals
(Lolich & Lynch, 2017).
Teachers and new managerialism
One of the objects of new managerial reforms is to curb the power of professionals in public
welfare sectors through the enactment of performance indicators and the availability of
Sowa, F., Staples, R., and Zapfel, S. (eds.) (2018) The Transformation of Work in Welfare State
Organizations: New Public Management and the Institutional Diffusion of Ideas
London: Routledge.
surveillance mechanisms (Farrell & Morris, 2003). Accountability was one of the key principles
informing policy development in the Education White Paper in 1995 and Department of
Education and Skills (DES) policy since then. Management complicity was vital for delivering
the new managerial project, with the role of the senior manager or leader being reconstructed
since the early 1990s in a new managerialist form (Gleeson & Shain, 2003; Houtsonen et al.,
2010). The concept of the school leader as a chief executive officer (CEO) gained considerable
ground in the 1990s and 2000s. The Universities Act (1997) gave chief executive powers to
university presidents. Both primary and second-level principals formed their own management
networks (the IPPN, Irish Primary Principals’ Network and the NAPD, National Association of
Principals and Deputy Principals). School leadership became an area of training and
development in its own right, often following a technicist and executive focus that narrows the
scope of professionals delivering education. Principals felt under pressure to conform to new
managerialist principles, so that accounting for your achievements in a school became a project
in itself.
Most of the primary and second-level principals we interviewed for New Managerialism in
Education felt that their work was increasingly subjected to greater regulation and accounting
than previously. They claimed there was ‘too much bureaucracy’, in terms of monitoring and
accounting for achievements and standards, work that was distracting from the core work of the
school, which was attending to the educational needs of children. The feeling that schools were
increasingly accountable, not just to the Department of Education, statutory bodies, parents and
children, but also to the media, was notable (Lynch, Grummell & Devine, 2015). The impact of
reforms arising from the financial crisis has also affected the status of teachers. Since 2008 there
is a growing casualisation of the teachers in both second-level schools (Mooney-Simmie, 2014)
Sowa, F., Staples, R., and Zapfel, S. (eds.) (2018) The Transformation of Work in Welfare State
Organizations: New Public Management and the Institutional Diffusion of Ideas
London: Routledge.
and in higher education (Courtois & O’Keefe, 2015; Cush, 2016): approximately 35% of secondlevel teachers were employed on a part-time and/or fixed-term basis while 9% of primary
teachers are employed on a part-time and/or fixed-term basis after the financial crisis (Ward,
2014, p. 3). Two thirds of newly qualified second-level teachers were also on temporary or parttime contracts even when the crisis was over (ASTI, 2017), while 45% of lecturers in universities
and 25% of core lecturing staff in the Institutes of Technology were temporary and/or part-time
(Cush, 2016). These figures represent major changes from 20 years ago, when almost all primary
and secondary teachers were on permanent contracts, and far fewer lecturing posts were
temporary and/part-time.
The licensing of several for-profit second-level and higher education colleges in Ireland over the
last 20 years has also been a significant development in Irish education; as labour market
conditions in these colleges is generally not governed by trade union agreements, staff pay and
general working conditions are generally very inferior to those in the public sector. While most
of these colleges are small, Dublin Business School (DBS) is comparable in size to a number of
the Institutes of Technology while Hibernia College is the largest single provider of primary
teachers in Ireland, as well as an increasingly important provider of second-level teachers. These
trends exemplify the extent to which education is now seen as a business and a marketable
product that can be traded nationally and internationally, a concept that was unthinkable a
generation ago. While Ireland has always had an education market (Tormey, 2007) due to the
constitutional rights of parents to send a child to the school of their choice for religious reasons, a
culture of market competition has developed between schools in the last 20 years that is
unprecedented; it is driven primarily by parental desires for class advantage rather than religion
Sowa, F., Staples, R., and Zapfel, S. (eds.) (2018) The Transformation of Work in Welfare State
Organizations: New Public Management and the Institutional Diffusion of Ideas
London: Routledge.
(Lynch & Lodge, 2002). New managerialism is both a product and facilitator of this new market
trend.
Challenges to new managerialism in Irish schools: the role of educational
mediators
Government control over education is subject to two major limitations, one being practical and
the other organic (Dale, 1982, p. 139). First, the scale of the educational bureaucracy makes it
practically impossible for central government to exercise complete control over all aspects of
education. Second, each State apparatus, including education, has its own unique history. The
balance of powers that exist within the educational site are historically and culturally
conditioned, and the way these play out varies across nation states depending on the relative
status and power of those who manage, oversee and administer the services at local level (Lynch,
1990).
While regional Education and Training Boards (replacing the original the vocational education
committees in 2013), school management bodies, and national parents’ organisations, exercise
power over education policy-making in Ireland, there is compelling evidence that the most
powerful mediators of primary and secondary school services are the teacher unions and the
Churches, especially the Catholic Church. Thus, despite pressures towards marketisation, there
are nation-state-specific social conditions that have militated institutionally and culturally against
new managerialism.
The governance structure for primary and second-level schools in Ireland is set down in a
number of Education Acts, the most significant of which is the Education Act (1998). This act
gives educational partners, (namely the owners and managers of schools, parent representatives
Sowa, F., Staples, R., and Zapfel, S. (eds.) (2018) The Transformation of Work in Welfare State
Organizations: New Public Management and the Institutional Diffusion of Ideas
London: Routledge.
and teacher unions), authority to exercise influence in the governance of several areas of
education, including school design and planning, and curriculum development through the
NCCA (the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment). Teachers and teacher unions are
also strongly represented in Teaching Council, the body that governs the education and
professional development of teachers under the Teaching Council Act 2001–2016. The teacher
unions are by far the most numerous and influential group on these bodies as they have the
resources and professional staff to assign to various positions (Coolahan, 1981; Cunningham,
2009).
Irish teachers are highly unionised with almost all school teachers being union members. As their
consultative relationship with the state and other statutory policy-making groups is embedded in
law, unions are party to national wage negotiations and policy developments in the education
field. They have been active in resisting new managerial reforms. While the power of the teacher
unions to drive the education agenda was tested in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008, and
the collapse of the social partnership arrangement between government and mediator groups,
teacher unions remain very powerful. They have held several strikes to resist curriculum and
assessment changes and to challenge cutbacks during austerity; they have also mobilised parents
at times to support them on this. Additionally, teachers hold extensive political and social capital
and are very active within political parties. The Prime Minister (Taoiseach) from 2011 to 2017
was a former school teacher, as was the Minister for Finance.
The teachers’ unions collectively, between them, had become the most powerful group in
Congress… They had that solid institutional political clout, insofar as they permeated every
parish in Ireland, every political party in Ireland, every cultural, sporting and recreational
body.
Sowa, F., Staples, R., and Zapfel, S. (eds.) (2018) The Transformation of Work in Welfare State
Organizations: New Public Management and the Institutional Diffusion of Ideas
London: Routledge.
(Mulvey3 in Cunningham, 2009, p. 217)
Religious bodies and boards, most of which are Catholic, control the management of the majority
of schools nationally (Coolahan, Hussey & Kilfeather, 2012). In the context of an intense debate
about introducing league tables and performance indicators for schools in 2009, the Catholic
Church actively promoted a holistic vision of education beyond narrow academic goals or
market demands stating that “a Catholic conception of education…[is]…primarily moral and
spiritual, concerned with principled behaviour and focused upon community and public good
outcomes…” Bishop Leo O’Reilly, keynote address to the CPSMA (Catholic Primary Schools’
Managers’ Association, April 24th Dublin 2009). While not mobilising against new
managerialism per se, and indeed endorsing certain ‘reforms’, the Churches, especially the
Catholic Church, has silently resisted others, not least by not opposing or challenging teachers’
resistance to league tables and performativity measures.
Primary schools (especially) and to a lesser degree second-level schools, are small by
international standards; there are over 3,000 primary schools and 740 second-level schools in a
country of 4.5 million. Their size alone militates against a managerial model. The active role that
many teachers and schools play in Irish social life also militates institutionally against new
managerialism: the principal is a teacher in many small primary schools and in some smaller
second-level schools. The manager and worker divide that is assumed within the new managerial
frame does not apply: the management and delivery of education are not always discrete
functions. Teachers, as deliverers of education, are not a distant professional elite; they are
deeply embedded within local communities especially outside of major cities. They are also
highly organised both inside and outside formal party politics; they work through trade unions,
Sowa, F., Staples, R., and Zapfel, S. (eds.) (2018) The Transformation of Work in Welfare State
Organizations: New Public Management and the Institutional Diffusion of Ideas
London: Routledge.
local community associations (including sporting bodies such as the Gaelic Athletic Association
(GAA) which has clubs in most large villages and towns), and through the churches and
community politics.
The power that the teacher unions exercise over education historically is far from unproblematic.
While primary schools did change radically and become more child-centred in the 1970s, a trend
that has largely persisted over time, second-level education has been largely subject-centred,
didactic and far from innovative in terms of curriculum change. Protecting sectoral interests
plays a very significant role in forestalling change in both curriculum and assessment in Ireland
(Gleeson, 2010; Harvey, 2015).
How performativity was mediated in Irish education
Performance indicators, such as school league tables, were not formally introduced in Irish
schools for a number of reasons. While standardised tests are administered at primary school,
these are only disclosed to parents, teachers and the school, and remain private. The first public
examination (the Junior Certificate) is undertaken when students are in their mid-teens, at the
end of compulsory education at age 16. These school results (and those of the final year
examination, the Leaving Certificate) could be made public but are not due to teacher resistance,
but with the tacit support of parents, and the religious and other administrative bodies that own
and govern second-level schools. A system of Whole School Evaluation (WSE) was introduced
instead; school evaluations take place on a partnership basis between the school, the management
body, parents and the inspectorate of the Department of Education and Skills (McNamara &
O’Hara, 2012). These reports are made public; however, the work of individual teachers is not
assessed in the reports. Since WSE was introduced, teachers have successfully resisted operating
Sowa, F., Staples, R., and Zapfel, S. (eds.) (2018) The Transformation of Work in Welfare State
Organizations: New Public Management and the Institutional Diffusion of Ideas
London: Routledge.
a system of in-school teacher assessment of their own student’s work (for public examination)
although this issue is still under negotiation at the time of writing.
While the government adopted the rhetoric of new managerialism, both rhetorically and in
practice, by devising performance indicators, measures of accountability and strategic plans,
(High Level Goals) for schools, Gleeson and O’Donnabháin’s (2009) research on their
implementation suggests that the reforms are less honoured in practice than in theory. A culture
of ‘contrived compliance’ operates amongst teachers in terms of engaging with self-evaluation
(Harvey, 2015). Most of the focus has remained on policy implementation at a general school
level (Gleeson & O’Donnabháin, 2009).
However, a focus on performativity is becoming evident in other ways across Irish education.
Standardised testing of individual students occurs at three stages (early, middle and end) of
primary schooling and, while this data is only disclosed to parents and the school, this operates
as an indirect form of regulation. As the performance of Irish students is compared with those in
other countries in PISA and TIMSS tests, these also operate as a form of control and regulation
(MacRuairc, 2012). Moreover, both the policy emphasis and the language-of-analysis have
changed and are becoming more market-led, most notably at second level (Mooney Simmie,
2012, 2014). Although school-level examination results are not published as league tables,
newspapers have created a type of second-level league-table system by using Freedom of
Information requests to identify the percentage of children from different schools who go to
higher education (Lynch, Grummell & Devine, 2015). This practice has been strongly critiqued,
but has persisted as it has parental support, especially, among middle class parents, who have the
resources and time to choose schools (Lynch & Lodge, 2002).
Sowa, F., Staples, R., and Zapfel, S. (eds.) (2018) The Transformation of Work in Welfare State
Organizations: New Public Management and the Institutional Diffusion of Ideas
London: Routledge.
More widely, the power of the media to promote neoliberal values continues both outside
(Phelan, 2007) and inside education (Lynch, Grummell & Devine, 2015, pp. 205–224), a trend
that is not unique to Ireland (Blackmore & Thorpe, 2003). Although the media are not usually
identified as major players in education policy-making, they are increasingly powerful in setting
public agendas that school managers must heed in a media-driven age. In an increasingly
competitive and diverse society, the reputational status of a school becomes increasingly
significant (Lynch & Lodge, 2002; Devine, Grummell & Lynch, 2011). Principals become ever
more conscious of how ‘their’ school is positioned in the competitive stakes. This is allied with
the apparent objectivity of rankings systems, which ‘become naturalised, normalised and
validated, through familiarity and ubiquitous citation, particularly through recitation as ‘facts’ in
the media’ (Lynch, 2013, p. 8).
Higher education accommodating new managerialism
The situation in higher education, especially in the universities, is quite different to the primary
and second-level school sectors. The government-initiated OECD review of higher education in
2004 (OECD, 2004) was a watershed in Irish higher education. The report strongly critiqued the
lack of investment in higher education research in the sciences and technological areas in
particular, emphasising the key role of higher education in developing a ‘skilled work force for
the economy’. There was almost no reference in the report to the developmental role of the
universities or higher education in enhancing the civil, political, social or cultural institutions of
society, either locally or globally. The National Strategy for Higher Education (DES 2011) set
out the framework for the future development of higher education in Ireland to 2030. It was even
more heavily laced with the new managerial language of efficiency, flexibility and
Comment [A1]: AU: References
“Blackmore & Thorpe (2010); Devine,
Grummell & Lynch (2011)” are cited in the
text, but not provided in the reference list.
Kindly provide complete details of the same
in the reference list or delete the citations.
Comment [A2]:
We have inserted Devine et al 2011;
Blackmore and Thorpe should be 2003 and
that is already in the references
Sowa, F., Staples, R., and Zapfel, S. (eds.) (2018) The Transformation of Work in Welfare State
Organizations: New Public Management and the Institutional Diffusion of Ideas
London: Routledge.
accountability; a whole section of the report is devoted to Efficiency and Productivity. The report
highlights the role of higher education in rebuilding ‘an innovative, knowledge-based
economy’…having graduates who will be ‘the productive engine of a vibrant and prosperous
economy’ (DES, 2011, p. 1). Reviewing the work of academic staff ‘continuously…in all
institutions as part of a robust performance management framework’ is seen as central to the
realisation of the new goals (ibid., p. 2). It also proposed to curtail university autonomy by
ensuring that ‘institutional strategies will be defined and aligned with national priorities’ (ibid.,
p. 4). The Report also supported the idea of ‘up-front fees and [an] income-contingent loan
scheme’, and ‘…greater productivity and commercial activity’ (ibid., p. 5) to help fund higher
education into the future (DES, 2011). While the debate about the future role of higher education
continues, and there is strong resistance to the introduction of student loans in lieu of grants in
particular, what is noticeable is the redefinition of higher education’s purpose. It is defined by
government increasingly as a public investment that should be more commercially-driven and
market relevant.
Performance appraisal and ranking play a much more significant role in Irish higher education
than at school level. Bibliometric databases, such as the H Index, Scopus, Google Scholar
Citations, the Science and Social Science Citation Indices, catalogue and rank individual
publications and citations and also contribute to subject ranking within and between universities.
New modes of ranking universities as corporate entities has also been developed, such as UniRank, the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), the Times Higher Education
World University (THE) rankings and that of Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), a number of which
are commercially controlled (Lynch, 2013, p. 6). The apparent objectivity of such ranking
systems disguises the highly selective nature of their measurement procedures: they are heavily
Sowa, F., Staples, R., and Zapfel, S. (eds.) (2018) The Transformation of Work in Welfare State
Organizations: New Public Management and the Institutional Diffusion of Ideas
London: Routledge.
reliant on data provided by Thompson Reuters and Elsevier, companies that own many journals
used in rankings, the majority of which are in English. Moreover, none of the prestigious
rankings grade colleges in terms of their accessibility, inclusiveness or the quality of student
experiences.
While there has been some resistance to the increased marketisation of higher education in
Ireland, the power of the unions in the higher education sectors, especially in the seven
Universities, is not comparable to that of their colleagues at primary and second-level. This
occurs not only because there are a range of unions representing different staff, but also because
union density among academics is much lower than that among teachers. In addition, many
junior academics are on temporary and/or part-time contracts (Cush, 2016), and are not
unionised, while many general services in higher education have been outsourced to private
providers over the past 20 years. The highly individualistic culture that has always pervaded
higher education is another factor that militates against collective action; in an age of
individualised academic capitalism, many academics see themselves as sole traders, or even
potential ‘stars’ who can, if successful, have very profitable academic careers (Slaughter &
Leslie, 1997). All of these factors reduce the scope and influence of unions at the higher
education levels, especially in the universities. However, it is important to note that the
Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI), which represents academic staff in the higher education
Institutes of Technology (and also represents many teachers at second-level), has been more
active in resisting managerialist changes in the third-level sector than have unions in the
universities. It held strategic strikes and lobbied successfully against legislative changes that
would have undermined the autonomy of academics in the Institutes prior to national elections in
2016.
Sowa, F., Staples, R., and Zapfel, S. (eds.) (2018) The Transformation of Work in Welfare State
Organizations: New Public Management and the Institutional Diffusion of Ideas
London: Routledge.
Overall, however, higher education colleges are being pressurised to change and be more
business-oriented; there is a strong emphasis on productivity and targets with funding from
government increasingly dependent on meeting specified benchmarks. The values of the
commercial sector are increasingly encoded in the heart of the higher education systems and
processes, often without reflection (Lynch, 2006), marking a profound shift in values away from
the ideal of education as a public service.
Further education: susceptibility to new managerialism
The further education sector in Ireland is highly susceptible to the influences of new
managerialism (Murray, Grummell & Ryan, 2014). As it has never had a clearly defined role or
institutional framework, further education’s position, between and on the borders of second and
higher education, locates it at the margins. It is characterised by a diverse student cohort, most of
whose families would have little or no further or higher education; the workforce is heavily
casualised, and it has a complex funding and organizational structure, all of which increases its
vulnerability to control and regulation.
Further education developed a new policy focus arising from the neoliberal demand for a
flexible, employable and mobile workforce in the post-austerity period. The establishment of
SOLAS (Seirbhísí Oideachais Leanúnaigh agus Scileanna, the Irish national education and
training body) in 2013 led to the adoption of more explicit employability and performativity
discourses. These were influenced by EU strategies such as the Strategic Framework for
European Cooperation in Education and Training and EUROPE 2020 A strategy for smart,
sustainable and inclusive growth (Holford & Špolar, 2012). In the Irish case, this greater
alignment of education and training agendas, which had always characterised further education,
Sowa, F., Staples, R., and Zapfel, S. (eds.) (2018) The Transformation of Work in Welfare State
Organizations: New Public Management and the Institutional Diffusion of Ideas
London: Routledge.
was now incentivised by new statutory changes in labour market activation strategies, the
increased conditionality of welfare, new public procurement processes for education providers,
and the expanded reach of the accreditation processes of Quality and Qualifications Ireland
(Fitzsimons, 2017b). An increased focus on market-oriented further education is aligned with the
decimation of community development and community education support frameworks that are
Comment [A3]: AU: Please clarify the
citation of reference “Fitzsimons 2017”
should be either “Fitzsimons 2017a” or
“Fitzsimons 2017b”.
Comment [A4]:
non-market led. There have been severe cuts in funding to community development programmes,
family resource centres, special education needs programmes, disability and other support
services (Fitzsimons, 2017a).
The further education sector has been particularly targeted by neoliberal discourses of
performativity aimed at upgrading the employability of low-skilled and marginalized sectors of
the population (Brine, 2006). The training agenda within further education and training (FET)
moved from vocational education to employability and enhanced labour activation (Gleeson,
Davies & Wheeler, 2005). The policy shift is evident in the discourses of the new statutory
agencies of SOLAS and INTREO (Employment and Income Support Agency) (Hardiman,
2012). Both agencies emphasise employability and labour activation – a readiness to work rather
than actually becoming employed. Measureable evidence of employability is stated as a priority
in the Further Education and Training Strategy 2014–2019 which focuses on
Skills as a resource for economic growth; Skills as drivers of employment growth; Skills as
drivers of productivity increase; Skills and ‘smartening’ of the economy; Skills as drivers of
productivity increase, Skills and ‘smartening’ of the economy, Skills as a driver of social
inclusion and social mobility; and Skills as an insulator from unemployment.
(SOLAS, 2014, p. 4–5)
Query answered
Sowa, F., Staples, R., and Zapfel, S. (eds.) (2018) The Transformation of Work in Welfare State
Organizations: New Public Management and the Institutional Diffusion of Ideas
London: Routledge.
The focus on employability in further education was accompanied by continuous reforms in the
accreditation system. Established under European quality assurance frameworks, QQI developed
a national qualifications framework for learning awards across further and higher education. It
focusses on hierarchical learning outcomes that the learner can visibly display for verification
and accreditation purposes. This emphasises learning as individual achievement, output and
performance that is dependent on the subjective interpretation and self-regulation of the learner,
educator and assessor (Fitzsimons, 2017b).
The formalising of educational outcomes through qualifications structures places enormous
pressures on students and staff who struggle to capture the complexity of their learning into
measurable performance-related categories (O’Neill, Fitzsimons & O’Reilly, 2014; Fitzsimons,
2017b). The non-traditional background of many students and the diverse access routes provided
by further and adult education struggles to fit into the performativity radar of formal learning
outcomes of FET and QQI (Quality and Qualifications Ireland). As Allias argues, this emphasis
on the end product disguises the learning context and processes, leading to a market-driven
procurement process awarded to those who can deliver on prescribed measureable outcomes at
the lowest cost (2014, p. 69).
Conclusion: the local contexts of the neoliberal project
While neoliberalism was initially sold as a simple modernisation project, the political nature of
its purpose became increasingly visible over time. The focus on the human capital value of
education persisted but it was married to a new education project focused on educating students
for a market economy. This radically shifted the purpose of education in a welfare state from
broader developmental and social goals towards more single-minded, market-driven objectives
Sowa, F., Staples, R., and Zapfel, S. (eds.) (2018) The Transformation of Work in Welfare State
Organizations: New Public Management and the Institutional Diffusion of Ideas
London: Routledge.
of employability in a knowledge economy. The development of an entrepreneurial and actuarial
self-became the new mantra in an age of individualised modernity, not only globally (Peters,
2005) but also in Ireland (Inglis, 2008). Market logics increasingly began to dictate educational
discourses and practices through a new managerial code. However, this process was nuanced by
the varied contexts of Irish education as we explored in this chapter. The experiences of the
school sectors have been very different to that of further and adult education setting, and each of
these has differed from the higher education sector, revealing the complexity of new
managerialism in the specific location and context of different welfare states.
While neoliberal policies have been challenged in the delivery of primary and second-level
education, due to the power exercised by the Catholic Church and the teacher unions in
particular, there has been an incorporation of market logic into further and higher education, and
there have been demands for changes in educational management and organisation at primary
and second-level. In the latter case, school principals are under surveillance from media and
parents (especially at second level) to produce academic results through strong examination
performances and to comply with new modes of school evaluation. While teacher unions and the
churches can and do resist such demands, they cannot pre-empt them.
Higher education has provided a more fertile ground for new managerialism, given the
globalised competitiveness of the higher education sector itself (Hazelkorn, 2011). Individualised
citation counts, rankings, and the commercialisation of research funding, impel a more
competitive and individualised culture that facilitates the internalization of new managerial
norms (Lynch, Grummell & Devine, 2015). The adult and further education sectors also proved
highly susceptible to the impact of new managerialism due to the lower status of the sector, the
Sowa, F., Staples, R., and Zapfel, S. (eds.) (2018) The Transformation of Work in Welfare State
Organizations: New Public Management and the Institutional Diffusion of Ideas
London: Routledge.
ongoing casualisation of its staff and expanding performativity and new professionalism
requirements instituted in law and practice.
While culturally-specific conditions meant that there was and still is resistance to new
managerialism in education, especially at primary and second level, and also by students at thirdlevel, albeit not mobilised politically in the students’ case4, new managerial reforms inevitably
get under your skin; there is no way of escaping, even for those who are not committed to the
new managerial project. The call to be market-led rather than education-led has profound
implications for the educators and learners who deliver and receive education. The new
managerial focus is the product not the person, both in terms of what is attained and what is
counted and countable. A culture of carelessness is created, one that is most evident in higher
education (Lynch, 2010) and further education (Murray, Grummell & Ryan, 2014). Increasingly,
it permeates all levels of education policy and management (Lynch, Grummell & Devine, 2015),
with different education sectors varying in their degree of susceptibility or accommodation (in
the case of further and higher education respectively) or resistance (in the case of primary and
second-level schooling).
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Blackmore and Thorpe, 2003. Fitzsimons
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1
This this paper is based on three empirical studies: the first is a study of the procedures and criteria for appointing
twenty three senior managers (school principals, heads of colleges and top-ranked posts in universities across
primary (N = 8) secondary (N = 8) and further and higher education (N = 7). Those appointed to the posts and those
who played the key role in the appointments (usually the chair of the board of assessors) were interviewed; 52 indepth interviews with managers & assessors were undertaken (Lynch, Grummell and Devine, New Managerialism
in Education, 2012, 2015, 2nd ed.) The second study, led by Kathleen Lynch, is an investigation of the relationship
between working, learning and caring life in higher education: 102 interviews with staff – academic, management,
professional, general service -across ten higher education institutions. (http://irc-equality.ie/) The third study was
undertaken by Luciana Lolich under the supervision of Kathleen Lynch; it was a study of students’ perspective
(N=4265) on the market (smart economy)-focused changes enacted in higher education following the OECD (2004)
Report recommending a more market-led approach (Lolich & Lynch, 2016, 2017).
2
There were 1,583 references to ‘customers’ on the Website of the Irish Revenue Commissioners (National Tax and
Customs Authority) accessed May 10, 2017 www.revenue.ie/en/index.html
Department of Social Protection – over 2,000 references to ‘customers’ on the website accessed May 10, 2017
www.welfare.ie/en/Pages/home.aspx
The Department of Education has a Customer charter accessed May 10, 2017 www.education.ie/en/TheDepartment/Customer-Service/Customer-Charter/Service-Standards.html/
3
Kieran Mulvey served as Chief Executive of the Labour Relations Commission for over 20 years.
4
Although students have run a successful campaign in 2017 against the introduction of student loans, albeit one that
is supported by a variety of other groups.
Comment [A13]: AU: Please provide
editor name for this reference.
Done