Dispositives of newness and change: academic organisations' discursive practice at the intersection of excellence and gender

The paper examines how academia is being transformed by knowledge sets such as excellence, internationalization, and gender equality. The authors concentrate on excellence and gender equality, analyzing their emergence in Germany since the 1990s as "new" political programmatics and legal frameworks. While excellence discourses aim to elevate German academia, gender equality demands seek to address patriarchal structures. The German Excellence Initiative (and its successor, the Excellence Strategy) intertwined these discourses, particularly concerning early-career researchers. The study uses Foucault's concept of the dispositive—a heterogeneous ensemble of discourses, institutions, and practices—to investigate how these innovations evolve within academic organizations. The researchers aim to understand the patterns of newness and change that these innovations follow and whether they promote equality or reinforce existing inequalities.

The paper draws on existing research highlighting the transformative effects of knowledge sets like excellence, internationalization, and gender equality on academia (Marx-Ferree and Zippel, 2015; Riegraf and Weber, 2017). It also cites studies on the neoliberalisation of academia, emphasizing the shift towards new governance structures since the 1980s and their impact on discursive patterns and dispositives of creation (Peters, 2019; Weber, 2013a). The authors acknowledge the existing literature on the challenges faced by women in academia, including gendered attributions that marginalize female academics (Engler, 2001) and the interplay of habitus and organizational processes that perpetuate inequalities (Elven et al., 2018; Schwarz et al., 2018). The literature review also touches upon the conceptualization of the modern university and its evolution from the dispositive of 'man as creator' to the 'entrepreneurial self' (Weber, 2013a), influenced by neoliberal governance and the knowledge economy (Peters, 2001; Marginson and Considine, 2000).

The study employs a dispositive methodology based on Foucault's work, analyzing the interplay of discourses, institutions, and practices to understand how power and knowledge are produced. The researchers investigate how the "new" (excellence and gender equality initiatives) emerges through different dispositives of creation (transcendence, creation as act, man as creator, collective creation) within German academic organizations. The empirical study involves a mixed-methods approach: (1) Website analysis: Six German academic organizations (four universities and two extramural research organizations) were analyzed using a multimodal approach focusing on images, design, and text to understand the organizations' discursive strategies regarding gender equality, excellence, and early-career researchers. (2) Interviews: Ten semi-structured interviews were conducted with gender equality officers and heads of early-career researchers' departments. A discourse-analytical approach, informed by performativity theory (Butler, 1996), was used to examine the interviewees' speaking positions, discursive strategies, and the creation of meaning through interaction. The analysis focused on identifying which knowledge and truths underlie the institutional programmatics and how speaking positions are constituted and negotiated within the organizations. The analytical questions were: (1) Who speaks? and (2) How is speaking possible?

The study compared two organizations: a Global Player Organization (GPO) and an Aspiring Organization (AO). The GPO, a large extramural research organization, presented itself as already excellent, competing with elite US institutions. Its discourse focused on maximizing human capital, treating researchers primarily as human resources. Gender equality was framed as an external demand, potentially hindering organizational freedom, and was largely subordinated to the overarching discourse of excellence. The analysis of the GPO's website and interviews revealed a hegemonic discourse of excellence that marginalized certain gender equality perspectives and rendered structural inequalities invisible. The AO, a university striving for excellence, adopted a more inclusive approach, integrating gender equality and early-career researchers' discourses into its positioning strategy. Its website and interviews highlighted the organization's commitment to addressing social inequalities through mentoring, empowerment programs, and professional development initiatives. The AO's discourse was characterized by an entrepreneurial approach, actively engaging in the processes of achieving excellence and addressing gender imbalances. The study found that the GPO's approach to newness followed a singular-static generativity, where gender equality was subordinated to pre-existing notions of excellence. In contrast, the AO exhibited a dynamic generativity, driven by individual initiatives and micro-alliances, incorporating gender equality into the pursuit of excellence. The study highlighted the absence of alternative dispositives of creation (transcendence and collective imagination), suggesting a need for more innovative organizational strategies that foster genuine inclusivity and avoid the pitfalls of neoliberal approaches.

The findings reveal how different dispositives of creation shape the emergence of "newness" in academic organizations. The contrasting approaches of the GPO and AO highlight the tension between maintaining established power structures and embracing genuinely transformative change. The GPO's approach, rooted in a hegemonic discourse of excellence, risks perpetuating inequalities. The AO's entrepreneurial approach, while more inclusive, still operates within the framework of neoliberal competition. The study demonstrates the importance of discursive practices in shaping institutional innovations and their impact on gender equality in academia. The authors suggest a need for moving beyond the currently dominant dispositives (man as creator and creation as act) towards more inclusive models that embrace transcendence and collective imagination, leading to a more equitable and innovative academic landscape.

This study reveals the significant influence of dispositives of creation on how academic organizations integrate initiatives promoting gender equality and excellence. The contrasting cases demonstrate the need for organizations to critically reflect on their discursive practices and adopt strategies fostering genuine inclusion rather than merely co-opting equality initiatives to enhance their competitive position. Future research could explore alternative organizational models that prioritize collective imagination and transcendence, moving beyond the constraints of neoliberal dynamics.

The study's focus on two German organizations limits the generalizability of the findings. Future research could broaden the scope to include a wider range of institutions and national contexts. The reliance on website analysis and interviews might not fully capture the complexities of organizational cultures and power dynamics. Further research employing additional methodologies, such as ethnographic studies, would enrich the understanding of these processes.