It’s a Bittersweet Symphony, this Life: Fragile Academic Selves and Insecure Identities at Work

This article demonstrates the importance of studying insecurity in relation to identities at work. Drawing upon empirical research with business school academics in the context of the proliferation of managerialist controls of audit, accountability, monitoring and performativity, we illustrate how insecurities in the form of fragile and insecure academic selves are variously manifested.

Organization Studies
2014, Vol. 35(3) 335 –357
© The Author(s) 2013
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DOI: 10.1177/0170840613508396
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It’s a Bittersweet Symphony, this
Life: Fragile Academic Selves and
Insecure Identities at Work
David Knights
Lancaster University, Open University and Swansea University, UK
Caroline A. Clarke
The Open University, UK
Abstract
This article demonstrates the importance of studying insecurity in relation to identities at work.
upon empirical research with business school academics in the context of the proliferation of ma
controls of audit, accountability, monitoring and performativity, we illustrate how insecurities in
fragile and insecure academic selves are variously manifested. Emerging from our data were thr
insecurity—imposters, aspirants and those preoccupied with existential concerns, and we analys
the context of psychoanalytic, sociological and philosophical frameworks. In so doing, we make
contribution to the organization studies literature: first, we develop an understanding of identitie
they are treated as a topic and not merely a resource for studying something else; second, we d
how insecurity and identity are more nuanced and less monolithic concepts than has so
deployed in the literature; and third, we theorize the concepts of identity and insecurity as cond
consequences of one another rather than monocausally related. Through this analysis of insecur
insightful understandings into the contemporary bittersweet experiences of working in ac
specifically in business schools are developed that could prove fruitful for future research within
this occupational group.
Keywords
bittersweet experiences, business school academics, fragile selves, identity, insecurity, manage
controls
Introduction
Our existence is “filled with a desire for security” … [in pursuit of] … “being ‘this’ or ‘that’ kind
of person” (Knights & Willmott, 1999, p. 56). Both inside and outside of work, everyday life is full
Corresponding author:
Caroline Clarke, Senior Lecturer in Management, Open University Business School.
Email: [e-mail]
508396 OSS35310.1177/0170840613508396Organization Studies Knights and Clarke
research-article 2013
Article

336 Organization Studies 35(3)
of “multiple insecurities—existential, social, economic and psychological” (Thornborrow &
Brown, 2009, p. 37) that render identity fragile and precarious. Given that identities and the inse-
curities surrounding them are often a condition and consequence 1 of our striving to be creative,
productive and successful in organizations, it is surprising that the topic has not attracted more
research in organization studies (cf. Collinson, 2003; Knights & Willmott, 1999). Of course, organ-
izational psychology identifies job insecurity as implicated in the health, wealth and wellbeing of
employees (Heery & Salmon, 1999). Also, clinical studies pathologize insecurity as a debilitating
characteristic of “deviant” individuals suffering from the extremes of insecurity paranoia (Mullen,
1991). By contrast, this study focuses on the insecurities associated with “doing” the job rather
than threats of unemployment or workplace pathology. Our subject matter, then, is the fragility of
working life insofar as “contemporary insecurity is the outcome of the individual employee’s self-
doubt and emotional instability” (Gabriel, 1999, p. 185).
Insecurity is tied intimately to the notion of identity in the sense that the latter is always precari-
ous and uncertain because it is dependent on others’ judgements, evaluations and validations of the
self and these can never be fully anticipated, let alone controlled (Becker, 1971; Luckmann &
Berger, 1964). Our identities are fragile to the extent that they are routinely subject to the potential
of being socially denied or disconfirmed (Watts, 1977), while simultaneously we are seduced by
aspirations of success and threatened by apprehensions of failure. In the sense that insecurity can
be seen as a medium and outcome (see Note 1) of our preoccupation with identity (Collinson,
2003; Knights & Willmott, 1999), we argue that both identity and insecurity are conceptually
important to the study of organizations.
Drawing upon empirical research with business school academics, this paper illustrates how
insecurity is variously manifested and coupled with conceptions of identity. Emerging from our
data were three kinds of insecure subjects—imposters, aspirants and those preoccupied with exis-
tential concerns, and we analyse these in the context of psychoanalytic, sociological and philo-
sophical frameworks. In so doing, we make a three-fold contribution to the organization studies
literature. First, we theorize identity and insecurity as conditions and consequences of one another;
insecurity tends to generate a preoccupation with stabilizing our identity yet the contingent nature
of the world makes such stability unrealizable and this reinforces the very insecurity that we expect
identity to dissipate. Second, we develop an understanding of identity whereby it is treated as a
topic and not merely a resource for studying something else such as organizational integration or
employee commitment; in contrast, we challenge a tendency to “naturalize” or take for granted our
preoccupation with identity and suggest that a more sceptical relationship might relieve us of unre-
alizable aspirations, imposter feelings and existential meaninglessness. Third, we demonstrate how
identity and insecurity are more nuanced and less monolithic concepts than has previously been
deployed in the literature. So, for example, once it is recognized that identities are not only multi-
ple, precarious and as dependent on performance as any drama, then the idea of security becomes
problematic and identity can no longer be taken for granted. Through this analysis of identity and
insecurity, we reflect on the contemporary bittersweet experiences of university life, linking the
“personal troubles” of academics to the “public issues” (Wright Mills, 2000) of Higher Education,
against the background of regimes of new public management involving a proliferating culture of
audit, accountability and performativity. We intend this paper to make provocative reading since
we (as authors) and you (as our audience) are simultaneously “subjects” (agents) and “objects”
(targets) of this research.
This article comprises four main sections. First, we provide a brief examination of the literature
on identity, insecurity and academic selves, particularly those in business schools. Second, we
account for our methodological assumptions, research context and methods of data collection and
analysis. Third, we turn to our empirical material to analyse the three types of insecurity emerging

Knights and Clarke 337
from our participants’ accounts of their working lives. Finally, we discuss and theorize our findings
in relation to fragile and insecure academic selves and their implications for future studies of iden-
tity at work in organizations.
Identities and Insecurities at Work
“People’s sense of identity is tenuous in the extreme” (Schwartz, 1987, p
Identity invokes the ongoing questions of “who I am” and “how I should act?”, which involves
notions of multiple, dynamic and potential selves (Ibarra, 1999), in contrast with essentialist
assumptions implying unitary, static or enduring continuities. Consequently, the production and
reproduction of identities is a constant struggle involving “complex, recursive, [and] reflexive”
(Ybema et al., 2009, p. 301) processes whereby a myriad of “possible selves serve as points of
orientation for identity work” (Petriglieri & Stein, 2012).
Arguably, organizations are arenas in which subjects assemble and reassemble their identities
via “organizationally based discursive regimes” (Clarke, Brown, & Hope Hailey, 2009, p. 325),
and within these, participants must choose from a variety of discourses (Kuhn, 2009) that intersect,
and are often antagonistic, contradictory or ambiguous. Identity has to be worked at, for it is
“something which we must achieve if we are to have one at all, and … must continue to achieve if
we are to maintain it” (Schwartz, 1987, p. 328). We suggest that identity work is also both a
medium and outcome of insecurity, self-doubt and uncertainty (Alvesson, 2010; Knights &
Willmott, 1989)—an issue that is often underplayed in the literature for few studies address the
nuances of “insecure, critical or self-depreciative identity talk” (Ybema et al., 2009, p. 312).
Empirical studies of insecurity within organization and management are comparatively scant
but the concept does enter research broadly concerned with issues of identity (Brown & Lewis,
2011; Clarke et al., 2009; Collinson, 1992). There are also studies where insecurity is of concern,
albeit not always explicitly. For example, studies of managers note how “work becomes an endless
round of what might be called probationary crucibles”, which produce a constant state of “pro-
found anxiety” (Jackall, 1988, p. 40),2 insecurities (Knights & Willmott, 1999), and frailties
(Watson, 1994). Other studies of the workplace have also demonstrated how management control
has rendered the lives and identities of shopfloor workers permanently insecure (Collinson, 1992;
Nichols & Beynon, 1977). This often leaves individuals blaming themselves for failure (Sennett &
Cobb, 1977), or else the “failed” identity is displaced through alternatives such as leisure (Palm,
1977) or masculine macho indifference to mainstream educational values (Willis, 1977). However,
the elevation of these alternative identities is often self-defeating (Knights & Willmott, 1999) for
they are no more secure than the identities that are displaced.
These ideas are important in organizational research, for “studies of subjectivity have some-
times neglected the extent to which human self-consciousness may be the medium and outcome of
uncertainties, insecurities, and anxieties about who we are” (Collinson, 2003, p. 529), which also
provokes further concerns about who we could be—“if only”. It is also well attested that (like most
experiences) working is an activity infused with emotion (Fineman, 1993). Indeed, people at work
are far removed from their representation in the literature as curiously disembodied and rational
actors (see Bolton, 2005); rather they are “thinking, feeling, suffering subject(s)” (Gabriel, 1999,
p. 179) with anxieties, striving to secure some stability for their own identities.
Fragility (or the vulnerable self) is both a condition and consequence of insecurity, and closely
intertwined with our sense of who we are, and the sweet promise of who we could become. An
analytic distinction can be made in that we experience anxiety and insecurity not just for ontologi-
cal and psychoanalytic reasons of subject–object separation, but also because the self is fragile in

338 Organization Studies 35(3)
that the confirmation of others necessary to our identity is uncertain, unpredictable and uncontrol-
lable (Knights & Willmott, 1999). But as the opera singer Willard White (2012) has argued, the
base of insecurity is uncertainty, which stimulates the creative process and prevents us being blasé
in our performance. While this is suggestive of a sweeter flavour to identity work and performance,
nonetheless identities are always in the balance, as a person’s social significance could easily be
disturbed, disrupted and reshaped by changes in social relations, particularly in that most important
site of identity construction—the workplace.
Empirical studies of insecurity specifically among academics are even more limited although
they occur in accounts of autoethnographic experiences (Humphreys, 2005; Learmonth &
Humphreys, 2012; Sparkes, 2007), critical management pedagogy (Ford, Harding, & Learmonth,
2010), emotion and work intensification (Ogbonna & Harris, 2004), gender (Barry, Berg, &
Chandler, 2006), identities (Garcia & Hardy, 2007), resistance (Worthington & Hodgson, 2005),
the academic journal (Gabriel, 2010) and the research assessment exercise (Keenoy, 2003). 3 The
context of Higher Education also attracts a diverse and politicized literature that provides a com-
mentary on working lives in academia (Harley, 2002; Ford et al., 2010) as an occupation where
“competitiveness, intellectualism, achievement-orientation, hierarchy, and evaluativeness [may
give rise to] all manner of high emotions, anxieties, defences, denials, deceptions, and self-
deceptions, rivalries, insecurities, threats, vulnerabilities, [and] intimacies” (Hearn, 2008, p. 190).
Gabriel (2010) argues that there are idealized expectations of what it is to be an academic—
original, scholarly, pedagogically skilful, and like other professionals, the academic self is highly
exposed “because the real or imagined demands of others invariably exceed the capacity of
ordinary human beings to meet them” (Knights & Willmott, 1999, p. 72). Such ego ideals (Freud,
1914) present an image of the perfect self towards which the ego should aspire—an ideal identity
(Schwartz, 1987) that directs the way we wish others to see us. Within our neo-liberal market-
oriented environment, these ideals are reinforced by an intense pressure to perform (Clarke,
Knights, & Jarvis, 2012) resulting in “winners and losers in a game of academic prestige” (Adler
& Harzing, 2009, p. 74). This performative pressure reflects an ideology where “engagement with
the norms of a practice is governed quite stringently by the logic of fantasy” (Glynos, 2008, p.
276), especially one of “limitless potential” (Ekman, 2012; Glynos & Stavrakakis, 2008).
By definition the elite and competitive nature of such performative demands (Macdonald &
Kam, 2007) reflect and reproduce a normalized yet elusive “multiply starred academic” identity,
leading others to feel abject (Butler, 1993) or “insecure and peripheral” (Harding, Ford, & Gough,
2010, p. 165). However, these demands subject all academics to close and constant scrutiny:
I doubt that there are many professions whose members are so relentlessly subjected to measurement,
criticism and rejection as academics, exposing them to deep insecurities regarding their worth, their
identity and their standing. (Gabriel, 2010, p. 769)
While clearly not every academic can become a “superstar”, the creative impulse in intellectual
work can be its own reward as, in contrast to identity, it is not wholly dependent on the validation
of others. Moreover, the increased pressure to publish in highly ranked journals and the concern of
these journals to improve their standards as well as generating insecurity does stimulate and/or
push academics to improve the quality of their work, something that can be seen as sweet. The
question is, however, does this growing intensification of work in universities result in the negative
consequences of these insecurities drowning out the positive impetus? In short, the consequences
of insecurity can be very bitter even though the creative and productive potential and promise of
academic work can be equally sweet. In elaborating both theoretically and empirically on these
bittersweet experiences in business schools, we anticipate providing the basis for the further devel-
opment of research on other academics and occupations, which lie beyond this sphere.

Knights and Clarke 339
Research Design
Our research was inspired by a belief that “intellectuals are inexhaustibly curious about the nature
of their own activity” (Scialabba, 2009, p. 3), and yet reluctant “to expose their doubts, fears and
potential weaknesses” (Humphreys, 2005, p. 852). While in no way immune to the problems of
precarious academic identities, we did not seek to impose this on the data by asking direct ques-
tions about insecurity. Nonetheless in response to other questions, many of our respondents
expressed significant degrees of insecurity and as such this was a major discursive theme emerging
from the data. Conducting research in our own backyard, however, can be seen as dangerous and
damaging (if not debilitating), not least because it involves “hanging out our dirty washing” for all
to see and this can create problems of trust in the “small world” (Lodge, 1984) of academia.
Nonetheless as social anthropologists have argued, full participant observation (Spradley, 1980)
offers considerable advantages for research because as inclusive members of the organization and
practices under investigation, we are more immune to the effects of “impression management”
(Goffman, 1959).
Of course we are not the only ones in our field to research the academic community and, in
articulating why we have conducted research into our own occupation, and specifically in UK busi-
ness schools rather than academe in general, we must include the obvious advantage of opportun-
istic sampling with relatively easy access. However, ease of access is not in itself a good reason to
conduct a study. A more important reason relates to the idea that if it is important to study other
organizations then why not one’s own (Ford et al., 2010; Worthington & Hodgson, 2005), as this
may also aid our understanding of “the complexities and contradictions in other workplaces”
(Harding et al., 2010, p. 166). Finally, academics should be “better equipped than most” (Keenoy,
2003, p. 138) to defend themselves against regimes for which they have little love, and it is for this
reason that we specifically targeted organizational scholars. For they write and teach about man-
agement control, power, performativity and resistance and so ought to be even better equipped than
most to articulate a critique and possibly resist the disciplinary regimes that they write about criti-
cally in relation to other organizations.
In crafting this piece we ourselves are situated in “an historically contingent and invariably
institutionalized set of knowledge producing practices” (Ybema et al., 2009, p. 315; cf. Humphreys,
2005; Sparkes, 2007), and insofar as “fieldwork is a creative endeavour” inevitably we have privi-
leged some aspects over others to achieve particular effects (Watson, 1995).
Research context
Managerialism has settled into UK universities under a variety of different audit guises: student
satisfaction surveys (NSS), quality assessment audits (QAA), league tables and, of course, the
research assessment exercise (RAE)—soon to be the research excellence framework (REF) (see
Note 3). This latter mechanism has been described as an “artifact” whose “efficacy is widely con-
tested” although “its impact is undoubted” (Keenoy, 2005, p. 304). While perhaps always some-
what insecure (Gabriel, 2010), it has been argued that academic identities have been rendered ever
more fragile by the proliferation of these increased controls and performative demands (Garcia &
Hardy, 2007; Harley, 2002).
It has also been suggested that a recent “institutionalised distrust” has generated a “crisis of
faith” among academics (Deem, Hillyard, & Reed, 2007), possibly undermining the values associ-
ated with the provision, pursuit and creation of knowledge in universities, thus threatening its
“expressed traditional culture” (Keenoy, 2003, p. 152) and aggravating doubts relating to the pur-
pose of working in business schools. This purpose and meaning has been further exacerbated by a
literature on the history of business schools (Khurana, 2007) positing numerous charges of a lack

340 Organization Studies 35(3)
of relevance for so-called “real life” businesses and organizations (Bennis & O’Toole, 2005). This
thorny issue regarding what constitutes knowledge, practice and purpose within the business
school continues to be debated (Adler & Harzing, 2009; Ford et al., 2010, 2012) where relation-
ships between academics and practitioners in particular “remain problematic” and “self-defeating”
(Beech, MacIntosh, & MacLean, 2010). Ironically, such observations potentially fuel the existen-
tial insecurities that business school academics experience regarding the meaning and purpose of
their work. It is against this context that our study took place.
Data collection
Between June 2009 and May 2011, 52 semi-structured interviews with lecturers, readers and pro-
fessors took place within 8 different UK business schools. Our method of sampling was purposeful
(particular business schools and organization studies groups) and self-selecting as participants
responded to our detailed invitation to take part in this study. All interviews lasted between 45 and
90 minutes, and were digitally recorded and fully transcribed. Participants were split 60:40 in
terms of males and females respectively, and aged between 29 and 68. These interviews were “con-
versations with a purpose” (Burman, 1994)—an attempt to understand how academics experience
their working lives, and so we invited participants to talk generally about themselves, and their
affinities with the profession.4 In attempting to research thoughtfully we ensured that participants
were happy to talk about the subject, understood our research and were confident in their anonym-
ity. This was particularly pertinent given our own community membership, and in endeavouring to
attain a rich data set, as “the candidness of revelations depend very much on the trust that is built
up” between researcher and participant (Fineman, 2001, p. 8).
Data analysis
In analysing our data we focused on how language “filters experienced realities” (Ybema et al.,
2009, p. 4), for discourse is never a benign mechanism for disclosing information as “people seek
to accomplish things when they talk or when they write” (Bryman & Bell, 2007, p. 536). As such
we were reflexively aware that as academics interviewing other academics, we comprised a spe-
cific audience for whom our participants authored particular narratives. While critics of at-home
ethnographies (Alvesson, 2009) argue for a tendency to reproduce and reinforce particular “blind
spots” of researchers, we believe this was avoided because insecurity was an emergent theme,
rather than part of any a priori agenda.
All our data were transcribed and coded in an iterative process through which certain con-
cepts emerged that facilitated our framing of the research using template analysis, not a “single,
clearly delineated method” (King, 2004, p. 256) but a “loose and flexible form of analysis”,
which we employed from a “contextual constructivist” position (Madill, Jordan, & Shirley,
2000). In our analysis we initially labelled a section of text with first-order probes and prompts
from the interview guide to provide high order codes (for example the initial draw of higher
education, centrality of identity, emotions and inequalities), which we then sub-divided into
lower order codes (e.g., the concept of emotion was further split into anxiety, fear, frustration,
envy, anger and insecurity). These resulted in tentative second and third order concepts such as
ambivalence, anxiety and insecurity. Notions of ambivalence prompted the construction of the
title of this paper and the concepts of insecurity and anxiety have informed the way in which
this data is presented. All the data were entered into NVIVO™ software to aid our use of tem-
plate analysis.

Knights and Clarke 341
Fragile Academic Selves
The case data are presented under three emergent types of fragilities or insecurities: “impost-
ers”; “aspirants”; and “existentialists”. Despite obvious overlaps and imperfect discreteness
between them, these “types” serve as a heuristic device in analysing the complex nuances of
“insecurity”. Participants often had overlapping identifications (for example being insecure
about meeting their aspirations, as well as having existential doubts concerning the meaning
of what they were aspiring to) and their accounts contained tensions, conflicts, complexities
and antagonisms.
Imposters
The imposter phenomenon/syndrome is a belief that one is not as capable or adequate as others
think, and in a study of high achieving university faculty and students, Clance and Imes (1978)
argued that this leads to feelings of “intellectual phoniness”. Imposter feelings are associated with
self-doubt, a belief that any success is due to luck or hard work rather than ability, and a fear that
others will discover one’s incompetence. It is often treated as a pathological condition deriving
from a “devalued self image” (Cowman & Ferrari, 2002, p. 121), requiring early remedial action
(Topping & Kimmel, 1985). By contrast, we avoid treating the imposter experience as pathological
but regard it as a common response to idealized images and expectations.
Academic life can leave individuals feeling anxious and insecure about their failure to meet the
multiplicity of demands (Clarke et al., 2012; Ogbonna & Harris, 2004) especially to the level of
quality expected both by themselves and others. The very conditions of self-consciousness, self-
reflexivity and freedom that enable us to develop, but also to be insecure about, our identity has
both positive and negative potential. It can be the source of immense creativity as we strive to be
socially recognized at the same time as driving us into extreme pursuits of self-interest, or personal
despair, where a preoccupation with the self loses any sense of the social conditions and conse-
quences of its construction (Roberts, 2005).
Insecurity is often a reflection of self-doubt or an “existential condition” where “attachment to
a particular sense of self can reinforce insecurities” (Alvesson, 2010, p. 198). For some in our
study, an attachment to notions of academic identity was problematic:
I do feel quite often a sense of inadequacy … yeah the old imposter syndrome. (Lecturer)
I’m not quite feeling like I’m ready to say “I’m an academic” … you know, like the real academics. I’m
expressing a sort-of underlying feeling of my inadequacies … as an imposter. (Senior Lecturer)
The sense of not living up to the ideals of what it is to be an academic fuels and fires our anxiety
and insecurity and so we almost distance ourselves from the activity. This participant articulates a
common response:
I suppose, I don’t feel I’m an academic in the proper sense … there’s few academics around—I mean
people who have got outstanding brains and write beautifully and all the rest of it. (Lecturer)
For this participant, becoming a “proper” academic (Harding et al., 2010) requires the demonstra-
tion of incredible intellect and eloquence, even though he admits to knowing “very few” examples.
This “awareness of the gulf between the idealised self and the realised self” (Brown, 2000, p. 64)
evokes self-doubt and vulnerability to exposure:

342 Organization Studies 35(3)
I feel that somebody’s going to wake up and say “oh, it’s her”, you know, “how come she’s doing that? I
remember her—she was rubbish”. So I think there is an element of doubt sometimes in everything. (Senior
Lecturer)
There was a sense that participants would always be found wanting in one (or many) respects. For
some, this reflected their late entry into academia—“carrying the baggage” of a previous career
outside academia (Learmonth & Humphreys, 2012, p. 4):
I feel like I’m not a traditional academic so I’m slightly different… So I just constantly sort-of put myself
down as not worthy. (Lecturer)
However, insecurities were also generated in many experienced or senior respondents, such as not
feeling sufficiently competent in fulfilling the various demands, despite excessive “diligence and
hard work” (Clance & Imes, 1978, p. 244):
…the job is never done; it’s never done properly and it’s never done well enough. You’re always feeling
terribly guilty. (Professor)
Life as an academic involves a broad skill set and multiple nondelineated tasks—“it’s poorly
defined, it’s indefinite … and everything can always be better” (Lecturer). Several respondents
constructed “proper” academics as fully accomplished, yet also challenged the impossibility of
these expectations:
Can you do all of these things in one professional label? We’re asked to teach students, engage with
students, have assessment strategies, feedback strategies, supervise MScs, PhDs, mentor people, mentor
other members of staff, research, write research bids, write research papers, present at conferences, publish
in high quality journals, administration and all aspects of pastoral care. I mean it’s just never-ending but is
it realistic? (Lecturer)
These demands, participants said, were relentless in terms of time “a good, successful academic …
requires a day to have 48 hours not 24” (Professor), and talent “you have to be excellent at every-
thing … you need to be fucking amazing” (Senior Lecturer). Such pressure conspired to produce
feelings of failure and self-doubt (Alvesson, 2010) and a belief that “I am not good enough”
(Sennett, 1998, p. 118).
Regardless of the activity, participants reported being subjected to measurement, scrutiny and
negative feedback from a variety of audiences. Ruth (2008, p. 107) argues that all forms of assess-
ment “disembody and isolate the academic” leaving them with feelings of inadequacy. Arguably
any lack of self-confidence is aggravated by the number of points at which academics are assessed
and judged not just by peers, and senior managers, but also by students via feedback
questionnaires.
In summary, participants reflected this sense of being an imposter in all activities and these
often rendered them feeling vulnerable and less than adequate. While these various trials can be a
source of anxiety and insecurity in themselves, they are exacerbated by the feeling of not living up
to an ideal image of what it means to be an academic. This is perhaps reminiscent of Humphreys’
(2005) disclosure relating to his first conference presentation “I am not an academic” … “I felt like
a charlatan” (pp. 846–847).
Despite participants variously defining the constitution of a “proper” academic, some similari-
ties prevailed, particularly a belief that they themselves did not live up to this representation, and

Knights and Clarke 343
that few did. While these idealized images of competence fuelled feelings of insecurity and self-
doubt (Alvesson, 2010) and a degree of “bitterness”, they also served as unremitting aspirations,
promising perhaps, a more palatable future for “the self that I want to be” (Brown, 2000, p. 60). We
now examine these aspirational notions of academics.
Aspirants
Consonant with Thornborrow and Brown’s conceptualizations, we employ the term aspirant to refer
to those desiring a position “higher, better, or nobler than the one they currently occupy” (2009, p.
356). It is claimed that academics aspire to an “idealized Other … the highly successful academic
‘star’, the much published, wise, revered intellectual” (Ford et al., 2010, p. S78). Indeed, our aspir-
ants’ accounts were concerned with a superior future more pleasurable than the present, working
towards an ideal self they “would very much like to become” (Markus & Nurius, 1986, p. 954):
I want to feel relatively not under threat in my work, so I suppose that means “secure”. And recognized,
yeah, … a promotion or progression or something. (Senior Lecturer)
The promise of “recognition” was one aspiration among a multiplicity of future selves acknowl-
edged to be (mostly) unachievable. Despite this knowledge, participants exercised enormous effort
in becoming a “proper” academic, even though this only appeared to be possible “momentarily”
(Ybema et al., 2009), or as a “fantasy of achievement” (Thornborrow & Brown, 2009):
I still don’t see it as a kind-of finished process, I always feel that I’m battling against that and I’m trying
to overcome people’s expectations. (Lecturer)
Such experiences are perhaps manifestations of how academics “express their hopes, fears, anxie-
ties, pride and shame” (Ybema et al., 2009, p. 314). Many engage in the “individualistic pursuit of
material and symbolic indicators of success” as a “compelling and legitimate means of relieving
anxieties about social position and self-identity” (Knights & Willmott, 1999, p. 83). Indeed Strathern
(2000) argues that such rituals in Higher Education are normalized through these processes of
accountability, which then “evoke a common language of aspiration [and] … anxiety” (p. 1).
Because of its necessity for career progression—“it is very clear that only 3* and 4* publica-
tions count” (Lecturer),5 a great deal of fragility surrounds the submission of articles to refereed
academic journals, where repeated rejection is experienced, and where emotional resilience is
essential for survival:
It’s quite daunting because whatever level you’re at, the fear of rejection … it requires a great amount of
resolve. (Professor)
This fear of rejection can potentially undermine or destroy academic aspiration and is “enough to
discourage and depress most sensitive people” (Gabriel, 2010, p. 763). In this sense, the process of
publishing reinforces the anxiety and insecurity that renders academic identities vulnerable, not
least because “four star publications; your academic worth is related to that. It is your academic
currency” (Senior Lecturer). Gabriel reinforces this view, arguing that “few things are more impor-
tant for their self-esteem or identity … And few things hurt as much or engender such deep anxie-
ties as negative criticisms of their work” (Gabriel, 2010, pp. 764–765). This notion was reinforced
by many respondents:

344 Organization Studies 35(3)
The fear of failure can be difficult … your confidence can become very fragile. (Professor)
On the other hand, the sweetness of a publication appears to erase, or at least compensate for these
insecurities because of the “exhilaration” (Senior Lecturer) this brings, although like a drug, the
relief is usually temporary:
What actually you need to do after [an acceptance] is to set up the new research so that it will produce the
papers for the next cycle. So it’s a treadmill. (Lecturer)
There is the added intensity whereby academics are presumed unsuccessful if they fail to secure
publications in ranked journals, a system designed to ensure that an “elite” (Macdonald & Kam,
2007) of research excellent academics stand out from the rest:
I think I would feel an awful lot more secure if I had … if I could go around thinking I’ve got my ten stars;
I can point to it. (Senior Lecturer)
On reflection however, the same participant observes how securing the self through accumulating
“stars” is also a form of (normative) emotional control instilling notions of self-discipline and
self-surveillance:
But, of course, if you take that line of self-monitoring and coercion and so-on, that’s exactly the position
that they would want us to be in isn’t it? This constant insecurity about where we are and feeling that we
have to do things in order to keep our jobs and so-on. (Senior Lecturer)
The anxieties and doubts associated with identity specifically reside in Western culture in so far as
expectations and responsibilities for success have been individualized such that in the event of
failure people “can blame no one but themselves” (du Gay, 1997, p. 302; Sennett & Cobb, 1977).
That is not to say, however, that aspirations of “success” were confined only to externally verifiable
and quantifiable results, as for some participants academia provided far deeper rewards:
People who I know who are very successful at being academics, they do it out of a sense of vocation, more
than they do it out of a job where they’re meeting some performance criteria. (Professor)
I enjoy doing my own research … that’s why I am in academia, you know, not just to have a name and a
title. (Senior Lecturer)
Aspirations for most though, provided a sweetener for the current situation. Externally verifiable
rewards however, did not appear to provide long-term security, but rather the opposite. We argue
that as well as aspiring to treasured identities insecurity was predicated on potential failure, for
example, not publishing in highly ranked journals. Because “academics are now expected to pub-
lish on a continuous basis until their retirement” (Gabriel, 2010, p. 762), attempts at securing one’s
identity rest on constant and relentless achievement. In this context, feelings of unworthiness
appear all but inevitable since “prestigious journals reject 95% or more of submitted articles”
(Gabriel, 2010, p. 763). Interestingly, a preoccupation with publishing often led people to voice
concerns about simultaneously aspiring to and being repelled by what constituted successful aca-
demic identities (Butler & Spoelstra, 2012):
We conform to it [the Research Exercise] entirely and yet we don’t like it. (Senior Lecturer)
I see myself as being encouraged to be less of an academic and more of a publishing machine, for the safe
option. (Lecturer)

Knights and Clarke 345
This contradiction leads us to our final category of responses, those associated with existentialist
insecurity. This type of insecurity is concerned with perceived threats to the worth and significance
of being an academic and what is valued and meaningful.
Existentialists
I think most of us are looking for a calling, not a job. Most of us, like the assembly line worker, have jobs
that are too small for our spirit. (Studs Terkel, 1972, p. xxiv)
Existentialism involves a questioning of the self over concerns relating to time, destiny and the
meaning attached to our actions (Sartre, 1943), and work provides “an illusion of realness and
permanence in the face of an unconscious fear that everything is fleeting, fragile and meaningless”
(Fineman, 1993, p. 24). Arguably, academics have traditionally shared with other professionals a
creative autonomy and self-discipline that seeks to distinguish their work from what is “too small
for our spirit”, as Terkel (1972) puts it, for certainly in the past it has resembled more of a vocation
than a job (Keenoy, 2003). However, recent years have seen a dramatic increase in the levels of
managerial intervention to structure and control our work externally, which has arguably rendered
academics susceptible to decreasing autonomy and “continual self-surveillance” (Kuhn, 2009, p.
686) as we subordinate ourselves to the task of accruing “quantitative ammunition” (Cederstrom
& Hoedemaekers, 2012, p. 232) in the form of top ranked publications.
Our participants reflected an increasing tension between fulfilling their (career) aspirations and
finding meaning from their work:
I could probably spend more time with students 6… [and] research on stuff that was more meaningful.
However, inside me there is constantly, I suppose, my father who is saying “promotion, money, security”.
(Lecturer)
For many participants the wider meaning and benefit of their work was constantly re-examined:
Our research exists in a very selfish domain … half the crap that you read in some of the four-star journals
does absolutely no benefit or carries no significance for virtually anything, anywhere for anybody other
than the author. (Lecturer)
I would love to be able to press reset and get rid of this existential worry that I have that I should be doing
something more meaningful. (Lecturer)
The sweeter meanings ascribed to academia were often reported to be undermined by performa-
tive controls (Keenoy, 2005), as game playing and instrumental moves to secure publications
resulted in “less interesting research” (Reader). For some, the relentless pursuit of “professional
publications” (Grey, 1994) challenged their academic selves and “left many with an uncomfort-
able and lingering sense of falseness and insecurity” (Thornborrow & Brown, 2009, p. 369),
perhaps frightened of “becoming the kind of people we wished we were not” (Learmonth &
Humphreys, 2012, p. 4):
Business Schools become more and more irrelevant to daily practice. Am I in business to help managers?
Certainly not! I’m in business to help my Department to get a higher score in the RAE and the only way I
can do it is by doing more and more arcane stuff. (Professor)
Most [journals] are not read by anybody [so] don’t harbour the illusion that you have done some kind of
research that is very widely going to be disseminated, because it won’t. (Professor)

346 Organization Studies 35(3)
Our data indicated participants’ anxieties about the meaning of their activities, especially as high-
impact journal publication has “low or no impact on anyone outside academia” (Gabriel, 2010, p.
768). Understandably there was a need to have confirmation of their own esteem through alterna-
tive positive connotations: “the job provides you with some element of, to be blunt, you-know status
and personal feelings of self-worth” (Senior Lecturer). For some, the meaning of their job was
constructed more sweetly by drawing on alternative discourses of “making a difference”, and iden-
tities relating to teaching and inspiration:
When I was able to have an influence on a bunch of students who “got it”, who begun to understand and
got enthused about something, that’s what really made me feel worthwhile. (Senior Lecturer)
Careers in public service often relate to the pursuit of specific values and ideals rather than simple
pecuniary rewards, what Perry (1996) refers to as a motive of “self-sacrifice”—a philosophy more
frequently found amongst those who subscribe to “ideals of duty and service” (Feldheim, 2007, p.
260). The public view of academics, however, is often negative, summed up in the phrase—“it is
just academic”:
The word “academic” in the popular discourse is always used as pointless, irrelevant etc. (Professor)
Also, the stereotype of academics portrayed in films and books is often that of eccentric men with
greying hair (see, for example, the films Educating Rita, My Fair Lady, Back to the Future). This
parodying of the academic profession is partly a function of the public misunderstanding of much
of our work:
People can’t understand I’m not on holiday, well, no I’m not … I’ve got to prepare for next year. I’ve got
to write this thing. I’ve got to do that thing. (Senior Lecturer)
There is a social perception of academics; having constant holidays and not really, actually, having a job.
(Lecturer)
Of course, the public understand that academics teach but because students only attend lectures for
less than two thirds of the year, academics are often thought to be always on holiday and there is
little awareness regarding whatever else academics do. There is ambivalence from the public
because much research is specialized if not obscure and seems only to enter the public conscious-
ness either when made fun of or trivialized by the media. It was also reported that the public per-
ceive academic life as easy and undemanding especially since the Government’s public deficit
cuts: “the media represents the public sector workers as being all, somehow, lazy and not doing
enough” (Professor). In addition, our study indicated that academics were less respected in the UK
than in some other countries, and this impacted their sense of value and worth:
In the States … working at a university has some esteem. You are seen as being pretty clever … in the UK,
I find that’s not the case. (Lecturer)
In Finland … they still regard the university professor as high status so … you feel different about yourself,
as a person. When you come back to England the reality checks in, you’re just a service provider.
(Professor)
Doubts and insecurities creep back into significant parts of our (academic) identities because the
self can never be fully confirmed and during times of existential doubt it is often felt that our lives
lack substance. It is not surprising therefore, that activities such as work become one of the

Knights and Clarke 347
important sites for repairing what might be lacking elsewhere (Driver, 2009). This is especially so
for those attempting to secure meaning and identity through strategies of career—“projects” predi-
cated on climbing hierarchies to enjoy the “sweet smell of success”. 7 Learmonth and Humphreys
remind us that all too often “successful [or] aspirational narratives of identity” in academia are
synonymous with being well published (2012, p. 12), and yet such attempts at securing identity can
provide no more than “brief ecstatic moments of accomplishment” (Harding et al., 2010, p. 164),
which reproduce rather than remove the existential void.
Is it all academic(s)?
We are not suggesting that our academics complied unthinkingly with managerialist regimes or
that their responses were entirely homogenous and without struggle (Fleming & Spicer, 2007) as
there were numerous tensions, contradictions and antagonisms. Some participants attempted to
find meaning in their work whilst circumnavigating the requirements of the REF:
I won’t join in the game. I will continue to find the “so-what?” in my own research and make it relevant
and make it impactful—as far as I can. (Senior Lecturer)
For others, there was a rationalization of their compliance insofar as they argued that this created a
freedom in itself “cloud[ing] the boundary of consent and dissent” (Courpasson, 2011, p. 19):
So you could say it’s kind of selling-out a little bit because you’re doing what they ask but then it gives
you more freedom. But I’m happy to sell-out then if that’s the case. (Lecturer)
There were even a few participants who claimed to be untouched by the demands of the auditing
regime:
I’m not particularly resistant to this kind of audit culture I suppose … for me, as long as it aligns with what
I’m interested in then it’s fine. If, however, it didn’t for whatever reason then I’d probably be a lot more
vociferous. (Professor)
However, a majority of participants specifically alluded or admitted to a lack of resistance:
One of my complaints … is the extent to which academics are so bloody supine in the face of so much stuff
that is pushed down upon them. (Professor)
In spite of the fact that academics have probably moaned ever since these RAEs … we have colluded all
the way; we’re not resisting it at all. (Senior Lecturer)
A more extreme example perhaps was the observation that resistance had little place in academia,
because “you don’t play monopoly and complain about the rules” (Professor).
However, perhaps the main reason why resistance has been limited is because publishing schol-
arly work coincides with the values of what Keenoy (2003) terms the expressed traditional culture
of academia. Why would they (we) seek to resist an activity that is central to the sense of what it is
to be an academic? In short, being complicit and even perpetuating the normalized judgements that
are embedded in the audit, accountability and performative culture is as much about identity for us
academics as is practising scholarly work. Indeed as the performative measures have proliferated
so have academics discursively imposed their own discipline not only on themselves but also on
each other. Consequently, a performative “panoptic” and disciplinary regime is mediated through

348 Organization Studies 35(3)
the academic community at large and, in this sense we are not just victims but also perpetrators of
the audit and accountability culture. We now turn to a more theoretical discussion of our findings.
Discussion
Although we have intimated throughout the paper that resolutions of insecurity are unlikely to be
found in acquiring identities that are a sign of material and/or symbolic success, we perhaps should
now make this more explicit. We feel that the proliferating literature on identity in organization
studies has tended to take the concept for granted as is commonly the case in everyday life. While
accepting that the preoccupation with identity is increasingly prevalent in individualized societies
like our own, we believe it is important to challenge some of the premises on which it is founded.
For example, it can be argued that humanistic beliefs in autonomy and a limitless potential to real-
ize the self underlie the self-disciplinary efforts that individuals in Western societies are inclined to
devote to identity work (Knights & Willmott, 2002).
What does this mean for academics? Of course, the belief that identity can be secured by acquir-
ing scarce material and symbolic resources is widespread and is a significant factor in motivating
us to work for hierarchical success in organizations. Moreover, insofar as it rarely delivers what it
promises it is the source of a self-defeating vicious spiral of ever-intensified preoccupations with
identity. Would then an acknowledgement that identity can never be secured because it is depend-
ent on the “Other” whose affirmations and evaluations of the self are uncertain, unpredictable and
uncontrollable mean an erosion of motivation? We think this would only be the case if our work
was carried out principally or exclusively for the material (economic) and symbolic (identity)
rewards that can pertain; a view often endorsed by many in our study. Insofar as academic and
intellectual production is valued as an end in itself, the performative regime need not intensify our
insecurities any more than all the other sources of insecurity that we have discussed in this paper.
However, diminishing our instrumentalism might not remove the nagging doubts that we fall
short of fulfilling the demands of a proper academic (aspirant) and that our knowledge is too flimsy
to be described as scholarly (imposter) or that its content is ultimately meaningless (existentialist).
Many of our respondents directly or indirectly reflected one or more of these insecurities concern-
ing their occupational lives. First we theorize our findings in terms of identity and insecurity
through social, existential and psychoanalytic perspectives. Then through an exploration of ideal
selves and the meaning of work, we focus on the consequences and implications of our findings for
business school academics.
Sociological, psychoanalytic and philosophical frameworks
While imposter, aspirant and existential forms of insecurity emerged from our research data, they
have a resonance with the social, psychoanalytic and philosophical modes of analysis. So, for
example, many of our respondents felt like imposters because they could not live up to the image
believed to symbolize a proper academic. Hence, their insecurity revolved around an uncertainty
about how they would be regarded, and the possible contradiction and challenge of their identities
by others (Becker, 1971; Watts, 1977). A social construction (Berger & Luckmann, 1967) and
potential deconstruction of the self is what drives us all to aspire to identities that are more secure
and an escape from the negative evaluations of others often in academia delivered from the “safe”
position of anonymity in journal or research grant reviews (Gabriel, 2010). This account can be
further strengthened by psychoanalytic arguments concerning the mirror stage of ego development
where there is a misrecognition of the self insofar as it identifies with an image of itself (the imagi-
nary) as if this were solid, separate, discrete and independent of others (Lacan, 2008). As most of

Knights and Clarke 349
our respondents were aware, this is contradicted not only by sociological accounts of the precarious
self (Luckmann & Berger, 1964) but also by the forced subordination of desire (e.g., the Oedipus
complex) to the Symbolic (i.e., language and the rule of the father) and its domination over the
imaginary and the real (Driver, 2009; Roberts, 2005). The aspirations of our respondents provide
clear evidence that, as a performative construct (Butler, 1990), identity has to be continuously
“worked at” (Schwartz, 1987, p. 328) but also how this is reinforced by routine attempts to please
“significant others” such as the “father”. Many of our respondents commented on the pressure of
the publishing “treadmill” sustained by academic institutions, and others also indicated how what
they described as meaningful work was often sacrificed to satisfy the subconscious demands of the
“father” to chase “promotion, money, security” (Lecturer).
Both sociological and psychoanalytic accounts are grounded in philosophical or ontological
conceptions of the separation between subjects and objects. In existentialism these were reflected
in the anxiety and insecurity generated by the overwhelming contingency of nature, its meaning-
less disorder and unpredictability (Sartre, 1938). Despite committing themselves to aspirational
projects that are perceived to provide a treasured, secure, stable and successful academic identity,
our respondents frequently referred to existential worries that they should be doing something
more meaningful. Even the sweet “exhilaration” of publication provides only temporary escape
from the treadmill of producing the next paper or the meaninglessness of writing where seemingly
there may be “no benefit” or “significance” beyond the pursuit of academic ideals that are often
unattainable.
Ideal academics and meaningful work
Ego ideals (Freud, 1914) and ideal identities (Schwartz, 1987) arguably fuel the unrelenting pres-
sure to perform; academics must work hard in their attempts to maintain and present a knowledge-
able self despite “insecurities arising” from the “sheer impossibility of being as skilful and wise as
is required” (Ford et al., 2010, p. S76). Academics can never feel secure about their (our) compe-
tence in as much as the “ideal academic identity that haunts us [remains] unattainable” because, in
contrast with idealized images, only rarely is an academic judged to be “a major thinker” (Harding
et al, 2010, p. 165). So for most, and despite aspirations to be brilliant writers, teachers, thinkers
and administrators, a failure to “fully” acquit ourselves may be bitterly experienced. Once internal-
ized and individualized, this reinforces the conditions of insecurity and the meaningless void amid
the omnipresent possibility of sliding from a “claimed expertise into a fear of failure” (Ford et al.,
2010, p. S77). This may also lead to excessive over-commitment or a “demented work ethic”
(Kuhn, 2006), which results in the work of academics encroaching on family and leisure space. Yet
as our study has shown, these insecurities are a mixed blessing because while they can be debilitat-
ing, they are also the driving force of our productive power that help generate high standards and
pride in our work.
However, central to humanistic ideology is the notion that freedom is synonymous with human
autonomy (Knights and Willmott, 2002) as a basis for realizing the self—yet this is a potentially
oppressive force concerning which we should remain ambivalent (Foucault, 1982). An alternative
“ethical logic” would restrain the ideological demands of this humanistic faith in autonomy in
favour of more modest expectations. Many of our participants subscribed to a fantasy of “limitless
potential” (Glynos & Stavrakakis, 2008), striving inexhaustibly to perform at the highest levels in
administration, publishing and teaching. Whereas in acting ideologically, we tend to generate fur-
ther fantasies to manage disappointment (Ekman, 2012, p. 20) regarding, for example, rejected
articles or failed grant proposals, an ethical logic might reflect more on the insecurities that fuel the
expectations for superhuman achievement. Through such an ethic, we become more concerned

350 Organization Studies 35(3)
about what we do rather than with the image or identity that we fantasize to be the outcome. Of
course, fantasy enables us to “evade the corrections, resistance, and disappointments, which a
focus on ‘the matter’ would entail. One can, so to say, hide in the limitless concern about identity”
(Ekman, 2012, p. 19). Where we speak about preoccupations with securing our identities being
problematic if not self-defeating, psychoanalytical theory argues that too great attachment to our
fantasies results in ideological behaviour that is more concerned with the image we create than the
ethics and social responsibility of what we do.
It has been argued that because organizational actors generally fail to confront their own fini-
tude, they are less likely to make meaningful decisions within the limited time available to them.
This makes them susceptible to passively consume “dominant discourses” (Reedy & Learmonth,
2011, pp. 120–121) rather than actively choosing what to do and this may provide a partial expla-
nation of the apparent compliance of our academics. Insofar as there was any resistance, it took
place individually, in the form of ignoring “some of the rules” on the basis that it is precisely the
proliferation and complexity of the regulations, which renders their enforcement difficult.
Alternatively, a few academics expressed resistance at the same time as complying with the
demands through a form of consent. This reflects the strategies adopted by a number of academics
(and we include ourselves among them) who simply write critically about the intensification of
work and managerial demands in university, while in doing so, effectively comply with them
(Clarke et al., 2012; Grey, 2010; Willmott, 2011). This is no more than a reflection of a professional
and ethical commitment to the values of intellectual production. Overall there was little evidence
in the study that any solidarity or collective resistance could potentially result from academics’
struggles against these managerialist regimes (Courpasson, 2011).
Arguably, aspirations to publish in highly ranked journals ensure a harmony with the demands
of the institution, such that academics are creating little more than “designer” (Casey, 1995) or
“engineered” identities (Kunda, 1992) within a specific cultural time and space. However, such a
reading yields predominantly to a deterministic version of sociological, psychoanalytic and exis-
tential frameworks in which academics are constructed as “cultural dopes” (Garfinkel, 1967) who
are seemingly unable to exercise agency (Thomas & Davies, 2005), or reflect on the egocentric and
contradictory assumptions underlying much identity theory (Knights & Willmott, 1999).
Reflections on sociological, psychoanalytic and philosophical reasoning can help us to understand
how problematic or self-defeating is this attempt to render our identities secure, for identity is a
perpetually revolving ephemeral construction, the security of which can only ever be transient.
Admittedly our research has revealed pressures rendering individuals as objects of institutional or
managerial calculation (Foucault, 1977), and hence they were often instrumentally spurred on by a
desire to accumulate visible achievements in order to secure themselves a “treasured” identity
(Brown & Phua, 2011), or at least one which is known to be recognized and rewarded (Macdonald
& Kam, 2007). Nonetheless, these pursuits are also the outcome of academics reflecting upon
multiple contradictory discourses (Clarke et al., 2009) regarding their own identities and future
selves. However, recognizing such contradictions does not always result in changing one’s prac-
tices and while these antagonisms were sometimes consciously incorporated in the narratives of
our participants, it is possible to accuse academics of “paradoxically clinging to the very thing
[they] claim to abhor” (Cederstrom & Hoedemaekers, 2012, p. 229).
Given our preoccupation with identity it is not surprising that we participate in the reproduction
of the very controls that we criticize since these provide us with a form of external legitimacy. Of
course, academics are by no means exceptional in being monitored and measured, and subjected to
continuous systems of audit, accountability, and control and yet many other workers (not all), are
commonly assessed through a single line manager. By contrast a myriad of different constituencies
legitimately stand in judgement of the academic and there is a relentless surveillance of all parts of

Knights and Clarke 351
their work, whether it is teaching students (Vince, 2010), presenting at conferences (Humphreys,
2005), bidding for research funds, securing research access, or competing for posts in recruitment
or promotion processes. These continuous assessments are notoriously anxiety provoking and
involve intense identity work as audit, accountability, monitoring and surveillance all come
together to inform potential career advancements. These hierarchical observations, normalizing
judgements and examinations (Foucault, 1982) are situated in an “extremely competitive, if not
aggressive institutional context” (Ford et al., 2012, p. 32) marking us out as successes or failures,
worthy or unworthy and rendering us vulnerable to “deep insecurities regarding [our] worth, iden-
tity and standing” (Gabriel, 2010, p. 769).
Discourses of success and failure have seduced academics to conspire in exercises of performa-
tivity, a form of “often subconscious, dysfunctional collusion” (Adler & Harzing, 2009, p. 85).
Perhaps this is because as Sennett suggests, “if we have enough evidence of material achievement
we won’t be haunted by feelings of inadequacy” (1998, p. 119). As we have suggested, working
life in academia offers a tantalizing array of potential and possible selves, situated within a range
of circulating discourses as “academics reflectively recognise and acknowledge their participation
in corrosive processes that have become both naturalised and embedded in UK business schools
and universities” (Clarke et al. 2012, p. 14). This conscious complicity we suggest is partly fuelled
by (unrealizable) attempts to secure the (academic) self.
Limitations
In common with all research projects, this study exhibits a number of limitations. First, in asking
for research “volunteers” we possibly attracted and marginalized certain academics, but we cannot
determine whether those who took part were more, or less insecure than the population as a whole.
Second, extrapolating from UK business schools is fraught with difficulty as specific cultural,
historic and economic conditions may differ in relation to other disciplines and schools and
“question(s) may be answered quite differently by groups with distinct histories” (Brown &
Humphreys, 2006, p. 252). While the research has raised interesting questions concerning manage-
rialist interventions in UK business schools and their impact on academic staff, it is for other
research to establish whether our findings are unique or have significance for a broader population
of academics and perhaps other public sector professionals. Finally, this paper has focused on inse-
curity and fragility but there were, of course, other feelings and concerns that arose from our par-
ticipants’ accounts, for example, “love” (Clarke et al., 2012). However, in our experience academics
often exhibit other dysfunctions such as narcissism or self-aggrandizement and conceit. While
these findings did not emerge from our study, it may be that these are more prevalent in some busi-
ness schools than others and evident to different researchers, although of course such behaviours
could easily be read as just another manifestation of insecurity. We trust that our research has been
sufficiently illuminating and provocative to encourage others to pursue future research that might
ameliorate some of these limitations.
Summary and Conclusion
Against the background of a proliferating culture of audit, accountability and performativity, this
article has drawn on primary empirical material to examine the identities and insecurities of busi-
ness school academics as mutually interdependent phenomena. From our data, we have identified
three emergent types of insecurities: “imposters”; “aspirants”; and “existentialists” and, in turn,
linked these to sociological, psychoanalytic and philosophical analytical frameworks. These inse-
curities partly resulted from the continuous subjection of academics to the judgements of others,

352 Organization Studies 35(3)
but our analysis sought to map (albeit with certain overlaps and anomalies) the three types of inse-
curity on to the analytical perspectives. First, from the philosophical perspective, conforming to
the demands of excessive audits and assessments aggravates insecurities about the existential
meaning of what we do, possibly distancing us from the community that we otherwise seek to
impress. Second, from a sociological perspective, idealized expectations can engender a sense of
failure or of being an imposter whereby we are sceptical of the limited social confirmations of self
that come our way. Third, from a psychoanalytic perspective, despite existential “drifts” into mean-
inglessness and scepticism about complying with the managerial demands, many of us still remain
addicted to the pursuit of a solid sense of self that, however illusive, drives us to aspire to be rec-
ognized by external adjudicators, our peers, academic institution and the general public.
In addition, our participants’ academic lives were authored in ways that we describe as bitter-
sweet in the sense that they variously displayed ambivalence along a positive–negative binary. On
the one hand, they understood what constituted a “proper” academic as being laudatory or sweet—
passionate, enthusiastic and full of expectation. However, a bitter or pejorative taste also surrounds
the sense in which their ambitions often seemed unrealizable if not unrealistic. While responses to
their efforts at the institutional level were often bitter in falling short of hierarchical, social or peer
recognition, the sweetness of a potentially esteemed career and publicly recognized identity fuelled
and fired their strivings. The ambivalence of the public could also be seen to exacerbate the bit-
tersweet and contradictory sense of what it is to be an academic.
Empirically this study has contributed not only to an understanding of one part of the academic
profession but also how insecurity figures in the way that work is experienced and identity ren-
dered fragile and precarious. While the three types we focused upon are far from exhaustive, they
do illustrate how insecurity is a driving force in the pursuit of (academic) identities that are forever
illusive if not entirely illusory. We have argued that techniques which are both performative and
panoptic contribute to a form of self-regulation that is extremely compelling and seductive, and
which renders academics over-committed and yet simultaneously falling short of an idealized, and
by definition impossible, set of managerial, peer and self-induced expectations.
Through illustrations of how identity and insecurity have illuminated the understandings of this
specific occupational group, we believe that our analysis can also be extended beyond the world of
academia where the pressures of increased accountability, control and work intensification gener-
ated by the audit and performative culture are also in evidence. This can provide a new visibility to
some of the processes of identity management and the insecurities surrounding it as well as the
ways that compliant, committed and loyal selves are produced. In addition, insecure and fragile
identities could inform studies relating to both career and the audit society. Future studies might
also address whether insecurity promotes or stifles creativity. Insecurity could also provide another
“string” to the emotional theorists’ bow regarding emotional selves, and the stresses and anxieties
involved in working lives. Finally, our three categories of insecurity could be broadened or refined,
and other typologies could also be proposed to enhance the conceptual links between identity and
insecurity. Although other occupations are likely to manifest different kinds of insecurities, our
research is relevant to a broader range of workplaces and organizational studies of identity.
In writing this piece we are aware that we as authors cannot be absent even though “exposing
the vulnerable self through autobiographical process can be fraught with personal and professional
risk” (Boyle & Parry, 2007). For example, we are conscious that in this study of academics we are
not only writing about ourselves, but we are doing so in a way that potentially boosts our own REF
return, with the risk thereby of becoming a parody of ourselves. In conducting this research and
presenting our work at conferences (and in this paper) we have experienced a “familiar strange-
ness” with our occupation, as some accounts resonate more than others, and particularly because
our own insecurities associated with publishing this article have surfaced in ways that perfectly

Knights and Clarke 353
reflect the subject matter—bittersweet. However, when studying one’s own occupation the focus
shifts uncomfortably between a tendency to transform research subjects into objects of our repre-
sentations, and acknowledging ourselves as embodied in their world just as they are in ours.
Consequently, writing this paper has been partially an exercise in providing an embodied and
meaningful relationship between our “personal troubles” as academics and the “public issues” of
Higher Education. We now invite the reader to undertake similar considerations for themselves.
Acknowledgements
We acknowledge the contribution of our colleague Carol Jarvis who was involved in conceiving the project
and conducted some of the research interviews but whose other pressures of work prevented her participation
in writing this article. We are very grateful to Andrew Brown for his untiring advice, support and valuable
comments on our work. We would also like to thank the three anonymous reviewers and the editor of
Organization Studies for their insightful comments and criticisms during the review process.
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit
sectors.
Notes
1. The phrases “condition and consequence” or “medium and outcome” were deployed by Giddens (1979)
to avoid dualistic and deterministic forms of analysis in social theory and we adopt this approach in our
paper for similar reasons.
2. We do not imply by this that academics are actually in a constant state of formal probation, but they are
subjected to constant trials of judgement (peer review, student “happy sheets”, funding applications),
which means that their working identities are rarely secured but constantly under the gaze of surveillance.
3. The UK government’s first Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) for purposes of an evaluation of aca-
demic performance through peer review, primarily of publications, was in 1986 and has been conducted
every 4 or 5 years. It provides the basis for a competitive allocation of research funds to universities. It
has now been renamed the Research Excellence Framework (REF) that although also demanding evi-
dence of the impact of academics, for all practical purposes has similar effects.
4. For example we asked: At a social gathering how do you explain what you do for a living? What drew
you into higher education? What activities are legitimate and rewarded in your business school? What
political and socio-economic changes in the last decade have influenced the way you take up your role?
5. The star system for publications was created by the research assessment. Each article of the four submit-
ted to the REF is rated from 1* to 4* so that a top ranking submission would be 16*. The UK Association
of Business Schools constructed a ranking of all the journals in the management field to coincide with
this requirement.
6. We could have provided more data on teaching but space did not permit.
7. The title of a Broadway film from 1957.
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Author biographies
David Knightsis Professor of Organizational Analysis at Swansea University School of Management, Lancaster
University and the Open University. He also holds a visiting post at Stockholm University Business School. He
was previously a Professor at Manchester University where, in 1994, he co-founded the international refereed
journal: Gender, Work and Organization on which he continues as co-editor in chief. His recent books are
Introducing Organizational Behaviour and Management 2005, 2nd edition, 2012, Cengage Learning and
Organization Analysis: Critical Contemporary Contributions, 2011, Cengage Learning (both edited with
Hugh Willmott), and Handbook of Gender, Work and Organization, 2011, Blackwell/Wiley (edited with
Emma Jeanes and Pat Yancey Martin).
Caroline Clarkeis a Senior Lecturer in Management for the Open University Business School, Walton Hall,
Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA. Her research interests are centered around identity, emotions and autoethnogra-
phy. Caroline’s most recent journal publication is Clarke, C., Knights, D. and Jarvis, C. (2012) ‘A Labour of
Love? Academics in UK Business Schools’, Scandinavian Journal of Management, S.I on Identity.