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Style and substance ineducation leadership:further education (FE) as acase in pointDenis GleesonPublished online: 10 Nov 2010.

To cite this article: Denis Gleeson (2001) Style and substance in educationleadership: further education (FE) as a case in point, Journal of EducationPolicy, 16:3, 181-196, DOI: 10.1080/02680930110041015

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Style and substance in education leadership:further education (FE) as a case in point

Denis Gleeson

As governments worldwide articulate the rhetoric of a knowledge economy’ traditional cultures of education man-agement and leadership are found to be wanting. At the same time, growing recognition that market and manage-rial reforms have not improved levels of educational performance has increased government interest in thetransformative powers of business and charismatic leadership. This paper considers this phenomenon with referenceto the changing conditions of corporate leadership taking place in the further education (FE) sector. Whilst ostensi-bly a very English’ case study, the paper draws attention to the wider implications of managing and socializingothers in the self surveillance rules of corporate education culture. Drawing on data from an Economic and SocialResearch Council (ESRC) funded project the paper analyses the shifting discourse of leadership as it is experiencedby principals and senior managers involved in the study. In so doing the paper seeks to examine how principalsand senior managers mediate changing education policy agendas in a sector recovering from an intense period offinancial crisis, industrial action and low staff morale.

Introduction

This paper examines shifting discourses of leadership in the changing policy contextof theEnglish further education (FE) sector. In contrast to a strong research and policyinterest in school-based leadership and management (DfEE 1998), this area remainslargely neglected territory in further education. This is surprising given that FE hasbeen the subject of intense market experimentation and has experienced the worstindustrial relations record in the public sector since the miners’ strike in the early1980s (Burchill 1998). As the sector slowly recovers from highly publicized episodesof industrial action, mis-management and financial crisis, this paper questions theextent to which changing leadership styles challenge or reinforce prevailing forms ofmanagerialism in FE. In addressing this issue the first half of the paper briefly exam-ines the changing corporate context of FE that provides the backdrop to changes insenior managers’ work. This section draws on narrative evidence from a recentlycompleted ESRC project looking at the impact of FE reforms on changing profes-sional and managerial cultures at college level.1 In the second part of the paper, suchevidence is analysed in the broader context of policy ± practice related change in the

Journal of Educational Pol icy ISSN 0268± 0939 print/ISSN 1464± 5106 online # 2001 Taylor & Francis Ltd

http://www.tandf.co.uk/journal s

DOI: 10.1080/0268093011004101 5

DenisGleeson is Professor of Education at the University of Warwick and was previously Professor and

Head of the Department of Education at Keele University. He is a co-director of the ESRC Project,

Transforming Learning Cultures in Further Education [TLC ± FE Project] , which is part of the Economic

and Social Research Council’ s Teaching and Learning Research Programme. His recent book (with Chris

Husbands) The Performing School: Managing, Teaching andLearning in a Performance Culture, was published

by Routledge (2001).

J. EDUCATION POLICY, 2001, VOL. 16, NO. 3, 181 ± 196

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FE sector and beyond. The third and final section critically explores the apparent tran-sition from a hard edged managerialist approach to a more inclusive style of leader-ship, and questions its likely impact on re-fashioning education policy at the micropolicy level of the college.

Managing the m eaning of work in FE

The context of this paper is framed by the impact of the Further and HigherEducation Act (1992) which led to the incorporation of colleges in 1993 (Gleeson1993). The term incorporation’ refers, among other things, to the introduction oflocal management of colleges, institutional self-governance and independence fromlocal authority control. As Lucas (1999) has argued, the grounds for the quasi-marketreform of further education had been laid earlier in school reforms associated withthe Education Reform Act (1988). If, at one level, incorporation introduced greaterautonomy to colleges, allowing them freedom to compete as businesses in theVET market, it also laid the foundations for even greater central control of FEvia market and managerial forces. At college level pressures on FE lecturers to bemore accountable, in terms of increased student participation, achievement andretention while, at the same time, experiencing harsh management strategies andnew contracts of employment, took their toll (Elliott 2000). Following the initialeuphoria of independence from local education authorities in 1993 the funding realityof `more for less’ soon became a major cause of concern for principals and seniormanagers, many of whom had no experience of business or corporate management.As financial pressures intensified, many colleges became preoccupied withentrepreneurial activities, while others entered into ill-advised franchising and com-mercial ventures which had little to do with the further education needs of theirlocal communities.

In the period 1997/99 numerous colleges were investigated by the FurtherEducation Funding Council (FEFC) for financial and management irregularityprecipitating a House of Commons Select Committee of Enquiry into Standardsof Probity in the Sector (Hodge 1998). Such irregularity represents the tip of aniceberg in which many colleges have been driven to desperate measures in seekingto reduce their debts and maintain competitive advantage. Of deeper significanceis the financial fragility that has underlined the bullish marketing front ofmany colleges. Behind the marketing images and new foyer facades a seriousfunding crisis has characterized the institutional reality of this fast growing £4 billionsector. In the period 1993± 97, the FEFC reported that more than 50% ofcolleges were in the red with 63 projecting negative resources, 156 financially vul-nerable and 93 financially weak FEFC (1997a/b). As the FE sector has soughtto recover from such pressures, there has been a 30% turnover of lecturing andsenior staff and a significant increase in casual and contract employment (Williams1998, Lucas 2000). At a time when industrial action and financial uncertaintyhas dogged FE the issue of management and leadership has been high on the policyand political agenda (Kennedy 1997). According to the General Secretary ofNATFHE (National Association of Teachers in Further & Higher Education) thefascination with market and managerial reform has had dramatic effects in termsof how the new breed of principal and senior manager interpreted their changingcorporate role:

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You had all thesePrincipals walking around with `Thriving on Chaos’ by Tom Peters in their briefcases, andwhat it said to Principals was: and you are God’. That was a disaster. The process took reasonable peopleand turned them into monsters. (Mackney, quoted in Beckett 1998)

Evidence in this paper suggests, however, that principals and senior managers donot necessarily constitute such a neat or homogeneous group. Their responses andperceptions of leadership vary in relation to institutional effects, context, experienceand gender. At the time of interviewing and undertaking fieldwork for this research,there had been considerable change in senior personnel across the five collegesinvolved in the study, with four principals appointed between 1995± 97, two ofwhom were women. Moreover, a majority of senior managers were also appointedin this period following major restructuring and a wave of early retirements. Apartfrom curriculum managers appointed mainly through the ranks, the majority ofsenior managers (in marketing, personnel, estates and finance) were recruited frombusiness, industry and commerce. One might expect, therefore, that this weightingof business experience would inevitably identify them with the corporate aims oftheir new employers. Many, however, were appointed during the period between1993± 97, when industrial action in colleges was at its height. Much of the unpopularrestructuring had been instigated by and conveniently blamed on previous principalsand senior managers who, with little business experience, had taken their collegesthrough the first phase of institutional independence. Thus, the majority of the 30senior managers interviewed in this study, were relatively new and circumspectabout their role.2 Appointed at the point or near aftermath of major conflict, budgetdeficit and redundancies, the new guard’ of principals and senior managers adopteda more strategic and inclusive view of management, as a means of uniting a belea-guered and often hostile workforce. Though much of the day-to-day activity ofprincipals and senior managers is taken up with managing staff budgets andplanning strategy, it also involves interpreting shifting national policy agendas atcollege level and making thesemeaningful to staff on the ground. This is how a recentlyappointed senior manager from industry and an advocate of market managerialreforms in FE, sums up her view of the new reality’ being communicated to staff inher college:

Eastward College is a corporation; we are the employer and we are totally responsible for our employees interms of employment legislation . . . The employer in the past was **** County Council ± a body farremoved . . . . The college has got a strong identity, although having said that, some people have takenquite a while to adjust to it- some people perhaps won’t ever adjust ± and it has brought with it . . . a sortof commercialisation, a sense of reality that wehave to win. (Sally, senior manager)

This account suggests that senior managers such as Sally see an important aspectof their role as one of persuading staff in the college to accept this new reality. It is astrategy increasingly connected with transparency, a term associated with openness(opening the books for all to see), designed to ensure participation, teamwork andcompliance among those all in the same boat. This apparent spirit of inclusivity is,however, not always reciprocated. There are, in Sally’s view, a few isolated individ-uals who do not like change and who will not adjust. Implicit in her account is thecharacterization of the previous organizational order, based on a public sector modelof professionalism as bureaucratic, complacent and wasteful. By comparison the newmanagerial order stresses responsibility on the part of staff and, above all, responsive-ness to change in terms of flexibility.

New managerial values, stressing efficiency, compliance and flexibility, pose achallenge to the perceived easy-life’ that existed for lecturers prior to market reform

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in the early 1990s (Randle and Brady 1997, Elliot 1996). The management of consentwhich guides change towards such `new realism’ also requires a different set of organi-zational values to those previously associated with public sector professionalism andare made explicit by senior managers through a variety of means. These include:college mission statements and corporate plans issued to staff; training courses aimedat the professional development of staff; and meetings intended to identify targetsand values with which staff are expected to identify. The approach is increasingly,though not exclusively, expressed in progressive terms, often disguising managerialistambitions in core values associated with inclusivity, teamwork and communication(Casey 1995). The following extract from a senior management group interview,provides an example of this approach:

. . . we’ve got quite a sophisticated communication system to start with and I think that staff know what isgoing on and that may be a contributing factor. We don’t have any secrets. That is also very helpful, andalso staff have copies of the strategic plan. They know about the mission, the vision, the values etc. and wedo reinforce the successes in terms of telling people how well we are doing on a regular basis so peopleknow we are doing well; we have always underlined DON’T GET COMPLACENT. (Group Interview,senior manager)

In this account what comes across clearly is the requirement that staff, as individuals,must take responsibility for ensuring that success is internalized and maintained.Thus, while staff may be rewarded for their successes, they are reminded that theymust not get complacent’. The communication of such values, often associated withan intensification of work performance, requires senior managers to manage the mean-ing of work for staff so that it is appropriately internalized. In thewider organizationalliterature the management of such meaning in the workplace is identified as a majormanagement priority and responsibility for increased work performance (Collinson1994, Salaman 1997). For FE, this is particularly important since the new contractsof employment introduced since 1993 have, in many cases, led to an increase in teach-ing and contact hours coupled with, in real terms, a decrease in pay requiring a diffi-cult leadership job for principals and senior managers. Managing the corporate FEculture in such circumstances involves deliberate attempts to structure the meaningsemployees attribute to the organization and their work (Flynn 1999). In an increas-ingly competitive environment this approach is presented by management gurus(Peters 1992, Handy 1994) as a key method of achieving institutional participationand allegiance designed to produce economic benefits through human and organiza-tional performance (du Guy 1996). Successful attempts by senior managers to redefinethe work culture of their staff through charismatic leadership are contingent on staffinternalizing realism and regulation.

Part of the emerging corporate culture of FE involves senior management repre-senting the college as a unified body through the expression of a corporate or unifiedvoice. In the account presented below the college is represented through a discourseof unity that transcends different identities and often competing professional culturesthat exist within the college. Though the rhetoric often does not match the experi-ences of many lecturers at the sharp end of the system (Shain and Gleeson 1999), thefollowing account is illustrative of the authority that is invested in senior managersspeaking on behalf of the organization, in defining its inclusive culture.

The culture is one of an open style of management . . . we are looking at leadership rather than managementof staff and no doubt you have seen the college’s organizational values’ which I think sum up the fact thatwe are all working together; we are all part of the college. I don’ t see it as an us and them’ or `managementand staff’ . . . I think everybody knows what we are about, or they should know. We spend a lot of timecommunicating with staff and staff understanding what our strategic aims are; what our vision and mission

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is; we should all be working together. Now, no doubt some people don’t feel part of it as much as others;some people will choose to opt out anyway, but I think in terms of the ethos, it is one of all participating asmuch as possible at all levels in decisions which affect the staff and students. (Sally, senior manager)

Here the culture of the organization is defined by a senior manager through a dis-course of unity. Management and staff are apparently unified in working towardscommon goals and purposes for the organization. The discourse of openness andinclusivity associated with this account draws on the notion of the college as a com-munity in which senior managers have different but complementary roles in workingtogether with staff to produce organizational harmony and consensus. This visionarymodel is, elsewhere, seen to contribute to a `happy’ atmosphere at work. The imageof the corporate college as a community also defines the role of principals and seniormanagers as community builders and representatives of core values of tradition andcontinuity. It is an approach that involves an inclusive style of management that isembodied in managers’ vision, presence and approachability. As Salaman has argued,it is an approach that requires the manager:

. . . to move modestly among the people, disclaiming the panoplies of rank . . . a leader in touch with thepeople, who manages by `walking the talk’ , by being accessible and working with subordinates. Throughthis consensual approach employees are both free to make their empowered decisions and can safely be reliedupon to execute their new authority judiciously. (Salaman 1997: 255)

At a time when the FE sector is seeking to establish greater stability after a period ofunprecedented change, this charismatic style of inclusive leadership is increasingly inevidence as the account from a recently appointed principal illustrates:

It is about having to read, to think quickly, to use some part of your experience and a lot of intuition and towalk around calmly and positively . . . that is no different from any other leadership role; it is to demonstratethat you are in control and that you are comfortable. What I have fed back to me is that everybody seesthat I am actually quite excited about the job. I am not walking around cynically, which would have beenthe other option, saying, `oh no, more problems’ ; I think it is very important to actually spread that excite-ment about FE now, however difficult it is and actually pick up and say what the opportunities are.(Maria, principal)

In talking about her vision of leadership Maria highlights the importanceof spreadingexcitement around the place and instilling this into employees by her own example.This approach is, however, more than just a morale boosting exercise for staff. It isalso a communicative technology that goes hand in hand with the internalization ofregulation and self-discipline (Ball 1990).

We have spelt out the culture of this college; wehave actually spelt out organizational values, which weputout to the staff and the desirable features of the college structure. Now weput these out not for consultationbut for people to add to so we said [to staff], there are ten things we think are our values. . . . Everyone isresponsible for striving for continuous improvement; there is openness and respect, which is importantbecause people have different views; it is welcoming and supportive; promoting equality of opportunity;recognizing contributions . . . it is open rather than explicit. (Maria, principal)

For Maria it is important that staff adopt a self-critical approach that connects withthe corporate vision. This involves self-motivated staff taking more responsibilityfor the success of the collegewithout constant supervision. However, for staff to inter-nalize the new rules of the organization principals and senior managers must play acentral role in communicating these values to staff. This process of unifying staffaround an institutional mission and core values takes a variety of forms, including dis-playing posters, issuing leaflets, meetings, memos, workshops, training days andappraisals. The culture of the college is, as Maria illustrates, literally spelt out to staff.Such is the speed of change in FE that spelling it out is seen as a necessary precursor

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to inclusivity. In order to achieve this, however, senior managers may also adopt amore direct role that involves the policing of people to make sure it happens.

I went though a stage last year where I felt like a police lady, policing people. [I was saying] you can’t dothat, you have to use a corporate image’ and I don’t like that at all but . . . having developed a good corporatestyle then I couldn’ t then allow people in a way to do their own thing and so it has to be controlled, but ina nice way. I don’t like controlling people; you get the best out of people by letting them all do their ownthing but then you can get chaos and when you are dealing with the public you obviously have got to instilin staff that there are rules to this. (Gina, senior manager)

Again we see the adoption of the community metaphor, but here the seniormanager takes on the policing role that is deemed necessary in order to prevent thekind of chaos that might ensue if newly established rules are not adhered to. In otherinstances, an approach of coaching may be necessary in order to encourage middlemanagers to take responsibility for their staff and, at the same time, to accept theirright to manage’:

I think to get managers to actually manage and to see that they are responsible for staff . . . sometimes it[involves] coaching managers on the job. We had a disciplinary meeting a couple of years ago. I hadn’ tbeen here very long and I was almost rehearsing the managers saying, right, this is how you are going torun the meeting and what you are going to say and if I think you’re going way off I will call an adjourn-ment’. I am not here to do the manager’s job, [I am] just here to help them to manage their staff. I couldmake a decision in five minutes but I spend an hour with the manager looking at all the options and hope-fully he or she will come to the decision I think is right but it is their decision at the end of the day. (Sally,senior manager)

Here, not telling middlemanagers what to do (in ways which allows them to reach theright decision) is the trick of managing and socializing others in the self-surveillancerules of corporate culture (Ball 1990). But is this process so neat and clear-cut in prac-tice? As Collinson (1994) notes, despite insisting on the essential reality of consensusand community within the organization, leadership campaigns are often at oddswith the existing conceptions and experiences of employees. This suggests, as othershave noted, that corporate culture is not automatically accepted by FE lecturers orby senior managers themselves (Ainley and Bailey 1997).

For Brian, who came through the ranks from lecturer to director of studies (andnow vice-principal), there is a sense of frustration with the overt rebranding of FE’simage which compromises his sense of professionalism. His feeling of unease, for ex-ample, with the `business speak’ of FE draws attention to the ethos and language ofthe corporate college.

There is a kind of business speak about FE, Directors, managers, clientele, finance, efficiency gains. What Ican understand about it is the new ethos and you have to live with it. It’s not just us, it’ s the NationalHealth Service, and others. A lot of the former public sectors have now got this post-Thatcherite’ languageand rationality. I understand where it comes from but I’m not entirely comfortable with it, at least not allthe time. I suppose, yes, I still see myself as a teacher.

For others, such business speak’ is also reflective of wider reforms in the publicsector associated with growing divisions between professionals and managers (Flynn1999). According to Richard, a senior manager recruited from industry, there is alink between iconoclasm and de-professionalization in public sector reform.

There is a kind of iconoclasm built into incorporation in the sameway as there is for all sorts of other govern-ment initiatives such as those which have taken place in the health service, which is a de-professionalization.There is actually restructuring of the system in a way that doesn’ t give the primacy of view to the educatorin the classroom ± that says `well I think that in order to achieve these students should receive X’. In thesame way that doctors don’t run the health service any more, it’ s to say well in effect that professional argu-ment, as a basis for running the system, is broken. (Richard, senior manager)

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The iconoclasm referred to by this senior manager connects the market fractur-ing of professional and managerial knowledge in FE with wider changes in the publicsector. If, in theory, professionals are now expected to get on with their jobs sup-ported by principals and senior managers running the operational side of the busi-ness’, that division in practice is not clear cut or without controversy. The mainfrustration felt by some senior managers is that the business environment to whichthey have been recruited is not businesslike enough. Rather, it is seen to be more deter-mined by funding and bureaucratic systems associated with government, than bythe college itself. While many senior managers in the study agreed that college inde-pendence and new funding arrangements gave FE more status and flexibility, themeans to achieve this were seen to be contentious. A key concern is the displacementof time and energy which goes into data gathering, market research and bidding’for funds, resulting in a culture change more linked to funding requirements thanthe learning needs of students:

It’ s meant staff having to go through a culture change, which they are still going through to get to grips withthe way in which we are funded and to understand the importance of finance. I personally believe that alot of decisions that we ought to take within the college ought to be driven by educational philosophy andwhat we want to do for students and what is good for students. Whether we get it right or not is what weought to consider, and we try to do that, but the funding methodology drives us more and more to takedecisions which we have at the forefront of our minds, i.e. finance . . . as well as education and possiblyeven instead of . . . and that is bad I think and staff who might want for very good reasons to run a class in aminority subject with two or three students . . . which we would have supported and still try to support,are now having to understand that funding is numbers related and they can’ t do what they might havedone five years ago. We have tried very hard to get the message across to staff and I think it’ s getting across,but the culture is changing. (James, vice-principal)

The nature of such culture change is closely associated with new ways of work-ing that are linked with how successful senior managers are in making bids to theEuropean Union and government agencies for funding. Essentially, the differencebetween `winners and losers’ in this bidding process is tied to the quality of informa-tion and evidence provided by institutions to the Further Education FundingCouncil in order to obtain funds. Thus, not only is a high degree of investment ininformation systems and data retrieval required, but also personnel, time andresources which can detract from investment elsewhere, notably in relation to the cur-riculum, teaching and learning. For Emma this process is seen to have had a detrimen-tal effect on senior management’ s relations with rank and file lecturers. For her thereis a close connection between the speed of change and the funding and managementof that change on FE lecturers working in the sector.

I think the way it has impacted upon staff is that, to some extent, it has constrained their opportunity todevelop their curriculum, their subject, the things that they are interested in because of methodology andfunding. It has also de-professionalized their role because of things like the Student Centred LearningApproach etc. The models that have been driven in from a more financial basis have meant that staff havebeen threatened by that whole approach. We can have a demonstrator now and not a teacher. Well if themachine does it where does that leave me? Does it mean that I am a software developer? That has verymuch been an attitude of staff. I think Incorporation has been very threatening for them but it has de-professionalized staff. It has been heavily dependent upon the type of management we have had. If youwere able to have supportive management in the process of post-incorporation then the de-professionaliza-tion and the challenges would not havenot been quite so threatening whereas, if you havehad a very aggres-sive management, then the challenges have been so threatening that lots of people have just turned off andfelt that they are no longer of any value or that they have any professional worth. (Emma, senior manager)

The notion, therefore, that senior managers are necessarily distant and lack empa-thy with their lecturer colleagues can be challenged. Many such senior managers asEmma acutely recognize how cultures of managerialism affect them too, particularly

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in their management relations with disillusioned colleagues. This reading’ of the ten-sion finds further expression in the often contradictory education and business ambi-tions of the institutions in which senior managers work as a corporate team as, again,Emma points out.

There is a real tension between being told that you are a business and getting your funding from public fundsfor 90% of what you do, being told how you must spend it or how you may acquire it, or not. You eitherget on and run yourself as a business or you don’t and I would much prefer to be part of a public sector andI do consider myself a public servant and consider that is part of my job. It is to serve the community. Tohave a level of provision which meets the needs of the community, not because it meets my business needsbut because it meets the community needs . . . but not necessarily without having an eye to the finances ofthat. (Emma, senior manager)

Given the funding crisis in the FE sector (FEFC 1997a), reconciling such ambi-tions has proved elusive to more than 50% of institutions in the sector. Thus, despiterecognition that the education and business interests of FE are connected the issue,according to Hilary, is one of remembering what kind of business FE is in.

As long as it is always remembered that our business is about people. We are not making iron bars. We arenot trying to make thousands of students exactly the same. Everybody that comes in is different, comes indifferent, goes out different. What they need, and their capability of achievement is different so everybodyis unique and an individual . . . and it is important to remember that. Yes, we do need a business model.We also need a strategic plan and we do need to run ourselves as a business. We have to make sure that wemake a surplus. We need to actually manage the budgets properly. . . . All of those kinds of things. We doneed our own functions, finance and human resources but we must not forget what our business is allabout and sometimes I think people have forgotten it is all about people. (Hilary, senior manager)

Both Emma and Hilary’s accounts reveal tensions in the business of learning’,and that no amount of corporate newspeak is likely to bridge the two (Ainley andBailey 1997). The assumption, therefore, that senior managers passively accept thecorporate line, despite working within it, ignores their experience and interpretationof educational reform as it affects their working relations with staff. Narratives inthis study indicate that principals and senior managers resist and feel morally uncom-fortable with hitting targets that do not conform with educational reasoning andrationale. Brian, for example, talks of some of the dodgy tricks’ which can compro-mise senior managers and lecturers in FE.

I think the targets we were set and the financial penalties incurred if you didn’ t reach them is really gettingmore for less, it’ s really put a lot of strain on the colleges and it has made a lot of colleges do some chancyand risky things that have not always been done for educational reasons. You do it for maximizingunits. You get more students in and some colleges are going for some very dodgy franchises. (Brian, seniormanager)

Here, Brian draws attention to pressures which, for financial reasons, have drawninstitutions into risky activities ± some of which have been induced by fundingmechanisms ± and which nationally have attracted critical attention (Kennedy 1997,Hodge 1998). Again, as with other participants in this study, principals and seniormanagers often strongly resist pressures which they see as dodgy or compromising,though not always successfully. Elsewhere, Linda points to some of the ethical andprofessional dilemmas of matching image with reality when marketing new pro-grammes and courses in her college.

Theequal opportunities group and themulticultural forum produced a little leaflet and wegot somebody totranslate it into Urdu and possibly another language as well. It was translated into Urdu and distributedthrough the local community and I said this is all right but what happens when somebody who speaksUrdu rings up? Who is going to speak to them? That is fine provided they are there. I do find that particu-larly difficult and I suppose that is one of the biggest challenges really, matching what we do to the imagethat weproject and trying to live up to people’ s expectations that wehave created. There is always a danger

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in marketing, where you go out to get as many people as you can . . . and when people come we let themdown. It is trying to get that balance. (Linda, senior manager)

The balance between marketing, provision and expectation, to which Linda refers,captures both the excitement and risk associated with a more dynamic and enterpris-ing FE system. However, extreme financial pressure on colleges to attract studentsfrom a wide range of backgrounds, in this case ethnic minorities, tempts many institu-tions to test themarket as a means of signalling inclusivity and drumming up business.The downside of this is, as Linda notes, that marketing strategies can often precedethe promise to deliver on provision (Avis et al. 1996). For some senior managers suchtensions between the corporate rhetoric of inclusivity and the reality, in which theywork with staff, are not one and the same thing. This, coupled with ongoing conflictin colleges over performance related pay, redundancy and casualization, is increas-ingly challenging the belief among some principals and senior managers of the effi-cacy of managerial and funding-led reform in the sector. In a system acknowledgedto be slowly recovering from crisis how do principals and senior managers view thefuture, and what has gender got to do with it?

Gender, touch and leadership

Despite the overt and less obvious trappings of FE corporate culture so far discussed,there are signs that extreme forms of managerialism, described earlier by Mackney(1998), are now taking a different shape. Two factors explain this. The first connectswith the growing realization that FE has been an industrial relations disaster with lec-turing staff at the limits of what can be expected of them, in terms of pay, conditions,institutional change and morale (Burchill 1998). The second relates to the unprece-dented turnover of principals and senior staff in which 32% of 431 colleges (139colleges) have appointed a new principal since September 1996. Of the `old guard’of principals and senior managers in post before or just after incorporation manyhave since been replaced by a second wave’ of new appointments, more versed inthe ways of market and managerial reform. Though the evidence for this is specula-tive the `old guard’ fell into oneof two groups: those who willingly embraced collegerestructuring and the industrial relations battles which followed and those, more cir-cumspect, who sought a middle way between public sector professionalism and mar-ket-led managerialism. With little experience of business, information, humanresource or management systems, the initial excitement of college independencesoon wore off for first wave’ principals and senior managers. Many such pioneersretired early as the funding and political ratchet of industrial disputes over lecturers’pay, conditions and contracts increased. Not surprisingly there has been great vari-ation in the management and leadership responses of colleges in the post-incorpora-tion period (Green and Lucas 1999). As the FE sector grapples with the aftermath ofsuch rapid change, a new breed of principals and senior manager is discernible.There is, for example, recognition among recently appointed senior staff that stresslevels throughout FE are counter-productive to achieving a more inclusive learningculture and that more flexible and inclusive teaching and management approachesare called for.

Someof them [lecturers] feel that themanagement’ s external accountability has meant a further rift betweenteachers and management. Some of them are conscious they are working harder and harder. Greater stress,more and more bureaucracy. Some of that has come from the awarding bodies. They are having to work

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very very hard. The stress builds up. Some of them go off sick, they then have to cover for sick colleaguesand they become sick. The volume of change and the speed of change has meant some people have got leftbehind. . . . (Maria, principal)

For Maria, there is a close association between the management skills that sheadvocates and issues of gender. Paradoxically, the need for a second wave’ of restruc-turing in the face of near collapse in the sector has opened up new appointments andopportunities for women managers in senior posts, with a slightly increased propor-tion of women Principals rising from 14% to 20% in 1999. If jobs in estates andfinance remain predominantly male orientated, colonization of softer’ more femin-ized areas of senior management, in curriculum, personnel and marketing, hasoccurred partly as an antidote to rifts and divisions generated by macho managementand partly in response to women’s professional experience in those areas (FEDA1997a and b). Here, Maria connects what she sees as the `woman’s touch’ to a manage-ment style characterised by inclusivity.

. . . the issue of gender is important whether you want it or not. It isn’ t the only factor but it is an importantingredient and it goes from walking around and saying this place is dirty’ and I have been told, `we can seealready there is a woman at the helm because it is much cleaner’. The other thing is about touch. Womenhave less difficulty touching whilst they are talking and I know that I touch. I don’t necessarily do it con-sciously but I have been told I do. The other thing is the ability to operate it through four different levelssimultaneously because I have brought three children up and prepared the evening meal and prepared classessimultaneously and, therefore, the awareness of the skills that you pick up of having been a housewife andmother. I think that is mixed in with the human concern. (Maria, principal)

Such apparent accommodation or privileging of gender is not, however,straightforward or uncontested in FE or the wider workplace. Neither does it signalthe onset of the widespread feminization’ of FE (Hughes 2000). The promotion andaccommodation of women in senior positions in FE is still not the norm and remainsas much a combination of legitimate ambition, (self) exploitation and stereotypingas in the past. Brenda, for example, sees both sides of this issue, in terms of what`being a woman’ means in senior management terms.

I have these views that women can jugglemore things in the air and be more flexible. It’s never been provenhas it, but it’ s a question that is continually asked. Women tend to be more adaptable. Women have to beadaptable . . . it could be why there are a lot more women Principals and a lot more senior managersnow. . . the communication of team working that is necessary for Incorporation. Would I call it exploita-tion? I think sometimes it is exploitation and sometimes it is just a matter of management and personality.(Brenda, vice-principal and recently promoted to principal of another college)

As noted elsewhere (Gleeson and Shain 1999), while there is evidence that somewomen middle managers feel exploited by such experience others, at more seniorlevel such as Brenda and Maria, view their gender, knowledge and skills as integral.It is also the case that adaptability, teamwork and communication skills in the currentFE climate have as much to do with strategy and pragmatism than with feminiza-tion’ or apparent feminine attributes. According to Limb (2000), there is a need togo beyond `monochromatic stereotyping’. She argues that a more appropriate famil-ial model of leadership, based on the role of containing parent’, is called for: . . . hold-ing back the demonising and idealisation of leadership in creative tension’ (Limb2000). While the apparent ethos of leadership emerging here suggests a familial andperhaps less confrontational management style, it may be no less managerialist ormacho in practice. In a sector riven with debt, casualization and low morale moreparticipative rather than distant or overtly managerialist approaches, represent ahighly pragmatic response for both men and women senior managers. In the caseof Jim, recently appointed principal following major financial difficulties in his

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college, an altogether different participative approach to management is seen to be ahigh priority. In an atmosphere described by oneof his senior management colleaguesas previously like living in Stalinist Russia’, Jim talks of rebuilding the relationshipwith staff:

I have spent quite a lot of time around the college speaking to groups of staff either in formal situations butmore often informally, getting around staff rooms, getting around classrooms. Being seen around the insti-tution. Again that is a difference from the previous world that we were in and I think that helps. Peopleknow that they can talk to me and that I do listen and I try and do something about it. I can’ t always givethem the answer they want but I would be sympathetic, understanding and I would look into it and tryand do something if I possibly can and I think staff do appreciate that. (Jim, principal)

In such circumstances being seen around the institution’ is an essential ingredient ofmanagement wisdom. The importance of `walking and talking’ the job is alsoperceived by Maria as an antidote to a previous distant management regime. In thefollowing account, for example, she views consultation as an integral feature of herpreferred management style.

The first thing is to get to know the staff and the college. That means walking around, attending meetings,talking to people and nipping into staff rooms. Calling meetings, walking the job and picking up what isgoing on and so that the decisions I take in this office have got some relevance to what happens outside andthat is also my style. (Maria, principal)

If Jim and Maria’s accounts say much about the need for a more tactile handson’ leadership approach, in circumstances where trust and morale has to be rebuilt,they also connect with the mantra of visionary management thinking associatedwith presence, visibility and touch. (Peters 1992, Handy 1994). Although few princi-pals and senior managers in this study acknowledge being influenced by such dis-course their references to `walking and talking’ the college would seem to suggestotherwise.

One consequence of the FE system being in crisis is that it is requires new think-ing about changing conditions of leadership, management and professionality(Hodge 1998). Endless exhortations by government to greater flexibility and smarterworking practices do not, however, cut much ice with principals and senior man-agers, many of whom have experienced the demoralizing effects of funding cuts andindustrial action. As early advocates and forerunners of incorporation have fallenvictim to their own constructions of managerialism, more participative or inclusiveleadership responses have since emerged. Though most `new guard’ principals andsenior managers in this study spoke of being heavily pressurized by funding, staffingand managerial constraints, they were not consumed or overtaken by such pressures.While operating in a highly competitive and cash strapped environment three of thefive principals working in neighbouring colleges met regularly to discuss joint co-operative ventures with schools, HE, community and other bodies regarding studentparticipation, course rationalization and recruitment.

I think there was always competition with private training providers and fine, why shouldn’ t there be. Ihaven’ t got a problem with that. I do have a problem with competing with other FE colleges and certainlyif you have spoken to [other Principals in this area, you will know that] we have made a decision thatwe are going to work together and we will. We will all say `our college has got to survive and our collegeis the best at X, Y and Z’, but there are certain things where we are doing, a lot of collaboration. (Wendy,principal)

Here, Wendy points to how FE institutions are able to operate more effectivelythrough co-operation in a competitive market situation, in ways that make sense toall those involved. Jim, a principal and a close neighbour of Wendy’s college endorsesthis view, pointing to the ways in which colleges themselves can `grow the market’.

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We are more concerned about growing the market in total than we are in taking shares from each other. It ismuch more important that more people participate than we win some students from X or Y College winssome students from us. To some extent the Y College and us are really quite complimentary. Our bigemphasis is Post 19, sort of 80% odd of our students are over the age of 19 and 80% odd of their studentsare 16± 19 so there is that issue. We are not in head on competition. They are recognized as the main A-level centres for example in the area but we have all sorts of specialist provision, which nobody else locallyhas. So it is partly complimentary. (Jim, principal)

In the absence of any coherent national policy for FE, principals such as Jim andWendy have initiated partnership links for themselves. If this is partly to do withmarket share, protection and growth the question arises whether emerging forms ofpartnership and inclusive management style represent just another version ofmanagerialism, or support more democratic forms of leadership and professionalityin the sector? Certainly the rhetoric would seem to confirm that FE under new man-agement’ is less obsessed with macho images, and more concerned with learning,staffing and leadership matters, if only for strategic and pragmatic reasons.

This issue of rhetoric and reality’ returns me to the central focus of the paper. Ifat one level market and managerial reform is seen to have undermined professional-ism and collegiality in FE, at another, it has paradoxically exposed various anomalies,policies and myths surrounding a `golden age’ of FE (Gleeson and Shain 1999).Between the old guard of senior managers who have since departed FE and the newwave’ of recently appointed Principals and senior managers, how is corporate culturein FE best understood? In addressing this question wider research in public sectormanagement is split between those who discern a growing interchangeabilitybetween professional and managerial roles in the education workplace (Menter andMuschamp 1999), and those who see an increasing separation between them inresponse to market and managerial reform (Gamble 1988, du Guy 1996, Flynn1999). If, ironically, both views acknowledge the inevitability of post-structuralchange in the public sector workplace, the former tends to talk up the possibilities ofprofessional reconstruction arising from market dislocation while the latter tends toexaggerate the de-professionalizing tendencies experienced by workers at the sharpend.

The narratives considered so far suggest that the effects of deregulation, market-ization and managerialism have impacted on FE in intense fashion. Such effectshave, however, gone largely unnoticed by the wider education community, partlydue to FE’s historical invisibility and partly due to a lack of public understanding ofa sector marginalized between school, work and higher education. This, coupledwith FE’s voluntaristic and entrepreneurial legacy has rendered it accessible to `marketcapture’ in response to various government and business agendas, designed to bothrealign FE with the economy and increase patterns of student participation at rela-tively low cost (DfEE 1995; 1998). Yet, if FE has been restructured along quasi-mar-ket and managerial lines ± essentially on a `more for less’ model ± it shares much incommon with public sector reforms in the UK and elsewhere (Exworthy andHalford 1999). What distinguishes FE is multiple restructuring resulting in the unpre-cedented exodus (and recruitment) of principals, senior managers and lecturers.Since the introduction of the Further and Higher Education Act 1992, FE has experi-enced continuous professional, managerial and industrial disruption coinciding withbelated public interest in the probity and effectiveness of leadership, managementand governance in the sector (Hodge 1998).

One way of interpreting such contingency in FE leadership and managementis to see it as part of a postmodernizing tendency, linked with greater social and

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economic diversity at institutional level (Hargreaves 1994). This points to new waysof understanding how institutional and professional leadership can arise in conditionsof crisis and chaos. Whether, of course, the transition from government to marketgovernance in FE heralds the introduction of such a postmodern awakening in FE isdebatable. Arguably, much depends on how one views the type of leadership shiftconsidered so far, as either a progressive response to pluralism or as a means of mana-ging and controlling it. Thus, while inclusive leadership may appear to offer a strate-gic response to rapid social and economic change it is not clear whether it representsa new way of dealing with a differentiated polity or is `part of the problem’ in perpe-tuating the kind of chaos that has been experienced in FE and the wider public sectorto date. The danger of uncritically accepting the mantra of charismatic leadership isthat it promotes naive personality trait’ solutions to market problems, . . . with nosense of the structural, the political and historical as constraints’ (Grace 1994; 1995).

While the narratives in this study suggest that principals and senior managers arestrongly influenced by the shifting FE policy agenda, they are not necessarily takenover by its various facets. There is, nevertheless, a noticeable shift in leadership stylefrom the `old to the new guard’, following a second wave of restructuring soon afterthe onset of college independence in 1993. If the first wave of senior managers bothinitiated and ran the gauntlet’ of market reform, often as perpetrators or victims ofthe new managerialism, their replacement by a new breed of corporate principal,more versed in the business of FE’ (Ainley and Bailey 1997) has passed by virtuallyunnoticed. Less compliant and overtly managerialist than their predecessors, thenew corporate senior management team are more strategic in their thinking aboutpolicy-practice related issues. At the same time, as Avis (1996) notes, these possibilitiesare constrained by wider government and Business agendas as well as the forms ofgovernance and surveillance in which they operate at college level. The nature ofthese constraints range from auditing methodologies, linked to the previousConservative Government’s low trust model of professional accountability, throughto New Labour’s consensual `Third Way’ which, though high on the rhetoric ofinclusivity and social justice, maintains a largely fiscally driven FE reform agendatied to targets, delivery and qualifications (Skelcher 1998). In the immediate contextof their work principals and senior managers often have to balance these parallel andcontradictory processes in two ways. The first concerns working within ever declin-ing funding levels while, at the same time, responding to national demand for widen-ing patterns of participation and learning provision (Dearing 1996, Kennedy 1997).The second concerns one of how to match New Labour’s agenda of inclusion withthe job of motivating an often under-trained and demoralized lecturing workforce,stalked by a legacy of market experimentation and policy neglect. The wider parallelshere with public sector reform, in health, social and welfare services, and transport,are compelling (Esland 1999).

Seven years down the line from incorporation there is now less euphoria aboutcollege independence, funding and management-led reform following a protractedperiod of industrial dispute and casualization. While the partial evidence presented inthis paper indicates that principals and senior managers have absorbed the contradic-tory discourse of corporate culture they do not necessarily readily identify with theaggressive managerialist agendas which underpin it. One way of interpreting theemerging culture of collaboration within competition’ is to view it as yet anothervariation of light touch’ managerialism: as a more feminized or inclusive form ofsocial control. Another possibility is to see it as a basis for rethinking professionality

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in the FE sector and for raising new questions about how professionality, gender andleadership can be critically reworked around pedagogy and community. There is,however, little evidence of that to date (Hughes 2000). On the surface it would seeman impossible task to reconcile such contradictory positions given the degree of orga-nied anarchy that the FE sector has experienced in recent years. The danger is one oftreating principals and senior managers as victims of funding led or managerialistreform, rather than as strategic interpreters of policy in the reconstruction of FE prac-tice at college level.

Conclusion

Despite widespread evidence of managerialism in the FE sector this paper has soughtto draw attention to competing forms of senior management response which bothpromote and challenge the hegemony of managerialism from within. As principalsand senior managers become more aware of various alternative interpretations andre-workings of democratic professionalism (sharing, co-operation, inclusivity) thismay, in the absence of a consistent national policy for FE, encourage new ways ofthinking about leadership and management within the sector. This will require, asWhitty (1997) argues, ` . . . new forms of association in the public sphere, withinwhich citizens’ rights in education policy can be reasserted against restricted visionsof the State and a marketised society’. From this viewpoint more inclusive manage-ment styles alone are unlikely to succeed in the absence of changes in the broader dis-tributive policies adopted by government and the state. It also requires newsolutions in transforming the market machinery of managerialism in favour of amore public vision of pedagogy and leadership in further education, which resonateswith changing professional and learning cultures on the ground’ (Ball 1994). Whatthis paper demonstrates is that devolved forms of managerialism both negate anddraw attention to a wide variety of leadership and management responses at organiza-tional level. Its principle argument is that corporate managerialism is neither as com-plete or uncontested as it is sometimes portrayed. In discerning a cultural shifttoward more inclusive leadership styles in FE much depends on whether principalsand senior managers believe this shift to be real or simply a reworking of old manage-rialist imperatives. It may be that belief is too risky a concept to rely on. Yet, depend-ing on which interpretation one takes it may have a significant bearing on the futureoutcome of leadership at the micro-policy level of FE, as the sector responds towider principles of learning and social inclusion. If leadership in this volatile sector isto be more than just a trick of managing and socializing others in the self-surveillancerules of corporate culture, a more critical understanding of learning and professionaldevelopment is called for.

Acknowledgem ents

The research upon which this article was based was funded by the Economic andSocial Research Council (1997± 99) (ESRC award no: R000236713).

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Notes

1. This paper draws on evidence derived from the ESRC project Changing Teaching and Managerial Cultures inFurther Education (ESRC Award No. R000236713, 1997± 99), directed by Professor Denis Gleeson, ResearchFellow Dr. Farzana Shain. I am grateful to Dr. Shain for allowing me, in this paper, to draw on collaborativework connected with this project. The fieldwork for the project was conducted over an eighteen month periodfrom January 1997 to March 1999 in five colleges across three counties in the Midlands. In each institution,semi-structured interviews were conducted with a cross-section of 20 to 25 individuals, including principals,governors, senior and middle managers, lecturers, support staff and union representatives. In all, over 150 inter-views took place that included some follow up individual and group interviews. In addition, documentarydata (inspection reports, strategic plans, policy documents and internal memorandums) from colleges was ana-lysed and observations were recorded where possible of key meetings (e.g. strategic planning, management andsector meetings).

2. The evidencebaseof this paper is drawn mainly from the interview accounts of 30 senior managers (a majority ofwhom were appointed since 1993). Interviews covered a range of issues regarding role, position, experienceand perceptions of work including the impact of national policy on senior management roles at college level.Though each institution was subject to different geographical, educational, business, labour market and fundingconditions, the research sought to illuminate different narratives that express recurring themes among seniormanagers across the colleges. The research on which this paper draws attempts to make sense of FE policythrough the experienceof a small group of senior managers, as they manage and mediateFE reform in theprofes-sional field in which they work (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992).

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