In his thoroughly compelling and enjoyable account of the role of trust in modern societies, Trust: the Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity, Francis Fukuyama wrote: "consider professionals like doctors, lawyers, or university professors. The professional receives both a general college education and several years of technical education in his or her specialty and is expected to display a high degree of judgement and initiative as a matter of course. The nature of this judgement is often complex and context dependent and therefore cannot be spelled out in detail in advance. This is the reason that professionals, once they have received their technical accreditation, can go completely unsupervised if they are in business of themselves, or else are relatively loosely supervised if work in an administrative hierarchy. In other words, professionals tend to be trusted to a higher degree than nonprofessionals and therefore operate in a less rule-bound environment. Although they are perfectly capable of betraying the trust placed in them, the concept of a professional serves as a prototype of a high-trust, relatively unregulated occupation. It is inevitable that there should be a decrease in trust as education and skill levels decrease: a skilled worker, such as an experienced lathe operator, is given less autonomy than a professional, and an unskilled assembly line worker requires more supervision and rules than the skilled craftsman (1995: 223)."
My own research focuses on trust in relation to the increasing ethnic heterogeneity in modern societies. I cannot help to notice, however, that the nature of academic work and academia in general seems to have veered from the above course. Now, we have the Research Assessment Exercise for the setting of quality criteria and impact factors that previously academics internalised through peer pressure. Needless to say, there is nothing wrong about setting a few rules. This could be an important pathway to recognition and status... As long as these rules are not one too many. The concept of intellectual endeavour might be often mythologized and unproven to boost productivity but de-legitimizing it serves only to make some fundamental academic tasks such as research and teaching much more mechanistic.
Fukuyama warns that: "past a certain point, the proliferation of rules to regulate wider and wider sets of social relationships becomes not the hallmark of rational efficiency but a sign of social dysfunction. There is usually an inverse relationship between rules and trust: the more people depend on rules to regulate their interactions, the less they trust each other, and vice versa (1995: 224)".
Let us all hope we have not reached that point although some worrisome patterns exist. This last academic year has seen a lot of industrial action by university-based trade unions which can be interpreted as a sign of disintegrating trust bonds; and in terms of the academic archetype, as a response to the laying out of more and more academic duties in "a highly detailed and legalistic form". In Fukuyama's words: "it is only natural, then, that trade unions respond with demands that the employers specify their duties and responsibilities in explicit detail as well, since the latter could not be trusted to look out for the welfare of the workers in return (1995: 224)". Trust is fragile and it will be surprising if the growing pressure were to leave university cohesion undented.
My own research focuses on trust in relation to the increasing ethnic heterogeneity in modern societies. I cannot help to notice, however, that the nature of academic work and academia in general seems to have veered from the above course. Now, we have the Research Assessment Exercise for the setting of quality criteria and impact factors that previously academics internalised through peer pressure. Needless to say, there is nothing wrong about setting a few rules. This could be an important pathway to recognition and status... As long as these rules are not one too many. The concept of intellectual endeavour might be often mythologized and unproven to boost productivity but de-legitimizing it serves only to make some fundamental academic tasks such as research and teaching much more mechanistic.
Fukuyama warns that: "past a certain point, the proliferation of rules to regulate wider and wider sets of social relationships becomes not the hallmark of rational efficiency but a sign of social dysfunction. There is usually an inverse relationship between rules and trust: the more people depend on rules to regulate their interactions, the less they trust each other, and vice versa (1995: 224)".
Let us all hope we have not reached that point although some worrisome patterns exist. This last academic year has seen a lot of industrial action by university-based trade unions which can be interpreted as a sign of disintegrating trust bonds; and in terms of the academic archetype, as a response to the laying out of more and more academic duties in "a highly detailed and legalistic form". In Fukuyama's words: "it is only natural, then, that trade unions respond with demands that the employers specify their duties and responsibilities in explicit detail as well, since the latter could not be trusted to look out for the welfare of the workers in return (1995: 224)". Trust is fragile and it will be surprising if the growing pressure were to leave university cohesion undented.
