Invisible forces: the management of resources by professional staff as a contribution to knowledge development in universities

This paper unpacks resource management as a contribution of professional staff to academic knowledge development. Several authors have linked the surge of professional staff to coercive bureaucratization of universities. Others have taken a somewhat more neutral perspective, arguing that the effects of professional staff on primary processes are limited as their work is only loosely coupled to academic work. However, taking a different perspective, bureaucracies may enable primary processes as well. To explore this underrepresented perspective in the literature, this paper asks: ‘How do professional staff contribute to academic knowledge development?’ Twenty-two members of professional staff in a diversity of roles across a multitude of organizational units of a research-intensive elite university in the US were interviewed. The interviews were analysed through the lens of the Cycle of Credit. The results show that professional staff contribute to academic knowledge development enabling, speeding up, improving and changing the content of conversions of resources. Furthermore, professional staff mediate between individual and organizational level conversions. Thus, this study nuances the discussion about professional staff by introducing the perspective of enabling bureaucrats in addition to the coercive bureaucrat frame. It also shows that the work of professional staff in fact is linked to academic work, which speaks against the idea of limited exchange between bureaucratic and academic spheres. These insights imply that we cannot fully understand academic work if we do not include professional staff in addition to academic staff in studies on this topic. Practical recommendations conclude the paper.