We Can Only Do It Together: Addressing Global Sustainability …
247
such brokering presupposes continuity, to enable trust, engagement and quality in
communication (Holste and Fields 2010). Equally importantly, trust and continuity
in interpersonal relationships are necessary within individual workplaces to deal
with change in constructive ways. Strong and continuous interpersonal relationships
are required to communicate and renegotiate practices when the initial assumptions
underlying formalised steering systems no longer apply. These relationships also
make it possible to collaborate effectively and to focus on the tasks at hand.
Inversely, changes that concern roles and performance at the workplace, and
possibly also job security, expose employees to considerable stress (Shore and Wright
2000; Miller et al. 2011). Relationships also become “opaque”, since the implications of a given action are no longer clear. Responsibilities tend to become confused
so that a disproportionate amount of time and attention is needed to find information
and to assess developments in the surrounding contexts. With continuous changes
and reforms, there is, therefore, a risk that people lose confidence and minimise
investment in the future—a process of alienation.
Besides the risk of disengagement, a further serious consequence of continuous
change, mobility and weakening of interpersonal relationships is a loss of trust. To
compensate, control mechanisms are formalised, but this formalisation tends to lead
to rigidity, paralysing constraints and, ultimately, to dysfunctional organisations that
block intelligent change (Cooke 1987). In times of structural pressures, when agility,
creativity and collaborative intelligence are most needed, a vicious circle of topdown control, formalisation and rigidity can instead occur. The formalised aspects of
institutions are frozen solid, while teachers and researchers are treated as dispensable
and interchangeable workers on a chain. Higher education fundamentally differs from
many other fields of activity to the extent that it is about developing and imparting new
knowledge, rather than merely reproducing a pre-defined set of actions according
to instructions. Researchers and teachers do their jobs best when they have intrinsic
motivation (Marginson 2008) and when their work is in alignment with their values
and convictions. Driving academia with principles of Taylorism, top-down steering
and external motivation only leads to alienation (Oleksiyenko 2018).
In other words, one of the paradoxes that needs to be addressed in transitions
towards sustainability is that to construct relevant decision-making capacity, as well
as necessary knowledge and expertise applicable to new situations, existing professional roles and knowledge systems need to be reorganised and re-negotiated, but
such changes may also create confusion and anxiety, with risks of top-down steering
through formalisation. Thus, although it has been argued that a focus on resilience
can delay efforts for mitigation (see Adger 2006; Fiksel 2006; Olsson et al. 2014 for
an overview of the debate), maintaining cohesion, autonomy (Vogt and Weber 2020)
and continuity are crucial to enable structural changes in HEIs.
247
such brokering presupposes continuity, to enable trust, engagement and quality in
communication (Holste and Fields 2010). Equally importantly, trust and continuity
in interpersonal relationships are necessary within individual workplaces to deal
with change in constructive ways. Strong and continuous interpersonal relationships
are required to communicate and renegotiate practices when the initial assumptions
underlying formalised steering systems no longer apply. These relationships also
make it possible to collaborate effectively and to focus on the tasks at hand.
Inversely, changes that concern roles and performance at the workplace, and
possibly also job security, expose employees to considerable stress (Shore and Wright
2000; Miller et al. 2011). Relationships also become “opaque”, since the implications of a given action are no longer clear. Responsibilities tend to become confused
so that a disproportionate amount of time and attention is needed to find information
and to assess developments in the surrounding contexts. With continuous changes
and reforms, there is, therefore, a risk that people lose confidence and minimise
investment in the future—a process of alienation.
Besides the risk of disengagement, a further serious consequence of continuous
change, mobility and weakening of interpersonal relationships is a loss of trust. To
compensate, control mechanisms are formalised, but this formalisation tends to lead
to rigidity, paralysing constraints and, ultimately, to dysfunctional organisations that
block intelligent change (Cooke 1987). In times of structural pressures, when agility,
creativity and collaborative intelligence are most needed, a vicious circle of topdown control, formalisation and rigidity can instead occur. The formalised aspects of
institutions are frozen solid, while teachers and researchers are treated as dispensable
and interchangeable workers on a chain. Higher education fundamentally differs from
many other fields of activity to the extent that it is about developing and imparting new
knowledge, rather than merely reproducing a pre-defined set of actions according
to instructions. Researchers and teachers do their jobs best when they have intrinsic
motivation (Marginson 2008) and when their work is in alignment with their values
and convictions. Driving academia with principles of Taylorism, top-down steering
and external motivation only leads to alienation (Oleksiyenko 2018).
In other words, one of the paradoxes that needs to be addressed in transitions
towards sustainability is that to construct relevant decision-making capacity, as well
as necessary knowledge and expertise applicable to new situations, existing professional roles and knowledge systems need to be reorganised and re-negotiated, but
such changes may also create confusion and anxiety, with risks of top-down steering
through formalisation. Thus, although it has been argued that a focus on resilience
can delay efforts for mitigation (see Adger 2006; Fiksel 2006; Olsson et al. 2014 for
an overview of the debate), maintaining cohesion, autonomy (Vogt and Weber 2020)
and continuity are crucial to enable structural changes in HEIs.