Envisioning Invisible Workforces: Enhancing Intellectual Capital

Recent decades have witnessed a marked trend in US universities, and one that is becoming increasingly prominent worldwide, of professors being more actively managed by academic executives to address market demands and pursue market possibilities. Many scholars have written about a more entrepreneurial and commercialized academe in various national contexts (Bok, 2003; Chan and Fisher, 2008; Clark, 1998; de Weert and Enders, 2009; Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff, 1997; Marginson and Considine, 2000). This chapter draws on my concepts of academic faculty being increasingly “managed professionals” (Rhoades, 1998a), and of the rise of non-academic “managerial professionals” (Rhoades, 1998b; Rhoades and Sporn, 2002) working in the context of “academic capitalism and the new economy” (Slaughter and Rhoades, 2004). These concepts point to key developments nationally, and at the campus level, by way of an increasingly specialized and differentiated academic workforce. At the same time, they point to major blind spots nationally, and at the campus level, in higher education policy and ‘strategic’ management. The chapter’s conceptual thrust is to facilitate our ability to envision what are often invisible workforces, and to enhance the intellectual capital of our universities and nations.