From vocation to profession: multiple identities of Chinese management academics

The paper examines how Chinese academics—particularly in business and management schools—construct their professional identities amid the transition from a centrally planned, paternalistic higher education system to a marketized, performance-driven environment. It highlights the rise of managerialism, global publication pressures, and American research paradigms, which have secularized the academic vocation and created identity tensions. The authors argue that role-theory approaches underplay the cognitive complexity and power dynamics shaping identity. Research questions: (1) How do Chinese academics construct their academic identities? (2) How do intersecting dimensions of power contribute to identity multiplicity? (3) How do different power dimensions interact? The study adopts an intersectional lens using a multidimensional power framework to capture the interplay of external forces, organizational practices, and agency in identity construction, aiming to provide nuanced insights relevant to Chinese higher education and management scholarship.

The theoretical background synthesizes work on multiple identities, power, and intersectionality. Identity is multifaceted and context-dependent, with prior research often focusing on roles (teacher, researcher, administrator) and group-level typologies, which can obscure individual cognitive multiplicity. The authors pivot to intrapersonal cognitive multiplicity within the researcher role, salient in Chinese business schools where research predominates. Power is treated following Foucauldian and organizational perspectives as both regulative (identity regulation via social, policy, and organizational mechanisms) and productive (identity work and agency). Fleming and Spicer’s (2014) four dimensions of organizational power—over, through, in, and against—are advanced as an intersectional framework: power over organization (external discourses like globalization/Englishization), power through organization (managerial practices, rankings, tenure), power in organization (individual behaviors, self-regulation), and power against organization (resistance). This framework integrates structural and agentic lenses, is sensitive to context, and suits the hybrid Chinese HE landscape shaped by internationalization, localization, state guidance, and marketization.

Qualitative multi-case study of four leading Chinese business schools (BD, WH, DW, SC), selected via theoretical sampling: top decile in national rankings, international accreditations (AACSB/EQUIS/AMBA), and >20 years establishment to ensure mature organizational cultures. Context: Chinese business schools operate under public governance with semi-independence, balancing state control, marketization, and internationalization. Data collection (Sep 2021–Jul 2022): 43 semi-structured interviews with 33 faculty (postdocs to full professors) and 10 doctoral students; interviews 60–120 minutes, 57 hours total, generating >780,000 words. Participant observation by the author team (academic insiders) produced >30,000 words of field notes on management systems, routines, and interactions. Archival/secondary data (>200,000 words) included scholarly retrospectives, institutional documents, news, and social media (WeChat, Weibo, RED). Sampling combined institutional contacts, snowballing, and maximum variation; recruitment ended at theoretical saturation. Analysis followed grounded theory with abductive reasoning: open coding (24 emergent concepts, e.g., overreliance on quantification), axial coding (8 theoretical categories), and selective coding integrating into five aggregate dimensions. Triangulation, member checking, memoing, and peer debriefing enhanced credibility. The analytical focus first identified power dimensions, then examined their influence on identity construction, culminating in a model mapping power dynamics to multiple identity modules.

• Four intersecting power dimensions shape academic identity in Chinese business schools:
  • American research hegemony (power over organization): U.S. paradigms and evaluation standards dominate, reinforcing positivist empirical methods and privileging publication in top Western journals; qualitative/interpretive approaches are marginalized. Institutional diffusion occurred via training centers, Hong Kong platforms, IACMR, and accreditations.
  • Industrialization of academic governance (power through organization): KPI-driven systems standardize evaluation (publications, citations, rankings, grants), aligning pay, promotion, and security with quantified outputs; research becomes homogenized and risk-averse, akin to assembly-line production.
  • Self-regulation (power in organization): Academics internalize organizational narratives and rationalize KPIs, overtime, and competition; external standards become intrinsic motivations, producing a ‘publish or perish’ habitus and moralization of sacrifice.
  • Rebellion against ‘academic games’ (power against organization): Everyday resistance via minimum compliance, ignoring certain requirements, pursuing intrinsically motivated research/teaching, shifting to public engagement, prioritizing work–life balance, or exit; resistance remains largely practical and limited in structural impact.
• Multiple identity modules emerge from these dynamics:
  • Fanatic convert: Dogmatic adherence to American paradigms and scientism; OEM-style replication of Western standards and methods.
  • Career survivor: Compliance-oriented, prioritizing job security and progression (e.g., the ‘Eight-Year War’ to tenure/rank), focusing on safer, publishable topics.
  • Diligent game player: Enthusiastic pursuit of metrics, status, and titles; competition and self-discipline become internalized, with pride in productivity and resilience.
  • Career retreater: Disengaged, prioritizing personal well-being and autonomy, minimizing compliance, or exiting academia; retreats to ‘small plots of land’ with limited public resistance.
• Interplay among powers:
  • Industrialization and Americanization mutually reinforce: standardized governance amplifies U.S. influence; internationalization and Double First-Class policies entrench quantitative regimes and orthodoxy.
  • American norms integrate with self-regulation: norms are internalized as expertise and professionalism, diffusing through soft power.
  • Managerial control co-constituted with scholarly conformity: dispersed compliance maintains the academic–industrial complex.
  • Resistance is bounded: autonomy exists but is circumscribed; symbolic resistance rarely shifts underlying structures.
• Contextual insight: Compared to Western settings, Chinese academics exhibit more compliance/obedience and less systematic resistance, shaped by cultural norms privileging collective integration and by reliance on institutional support.

The findings address the research questions by showing that Chinese academics’ identities are constructed through an intersection of external discourses (American paradigms), organizational systems (industrialized governance), internalized motivations (self-regulation), and constrained counter-movements (resistance). These interlocking powers generate coexisting identity modules within individuals rather than exclusive types, and their salience shifts with changing power balances and personal values. The study advances understanding beyond role-based archetypes by detailing cognitive multiplicity within the researcher role and mapping how structural forces and agency co-produce identity. It highlights the significance of Chinese contextual factors—state-steered internationalization, KPI regimes, and cultural orientations—leading to high compliance and limited systemic resistance. The model elucidates implications for management scholarship (risks of orthodoxy and marginalization of indigenous theory), university governance (unintended consequences of quantification and standardization), and professional practice (identity tensions, path dependence, and well-being).

The study proposes a multidimensional power model explaining how American research hegemony, industrialized governance, self-regulation, and bounded resistance intersect to shape multiple, coexisting identity modules—fanatic convert, career survivor, diligent game player, and career retreater—among Chinese management academics. It contributes by integrating structural and agentic perspectives through an intersectional power lens, revealing dynamic, context-specific identity construction processes and the mutual reinforcement of managerialism and Americanization. Practically, it cautions that overreliance on quantitative KPIs and external paradigms risks homogenization and detachment from local relevance. Future research should deepen mechanism-level understanding of how power dimensions shape identity and explore designs of evaluative systems that balance excellence with diversity, autonomy, and social value.

• Sampling and subgroup comparisons: Broader theoretical sampling across academic ranks, job titles, and institutional types could refine propositions and enhance external validity.
• Cross-cultural comparison: Differences in cultural traditions and governance models suggest value in comparative studies between China and Western contexts to unpack distinct power–identity dynamics.
• Mechanism depth: The study offers a descriptive mapping; future work should explicate specific mechanisms linking power dimensions to identity construction processes and outcomes.