Neoliberal managerialism (or corporatisation if you prefer) positions management and governance as something that is best performed by those in leadership positions.

There is an underlying belief that good quality management consists of skills and knowledge that can be applied in any context, and that the ways in which large corporations operate are the best for universities.

As a consequence university managements and governance bodies around the country have taken these ways of operating and applied them in the education context.

Because management and governance believe they know what is best to run organisations, there is a resultant devaluing of staff perspectives. As a consequence we see a growing divide between management/governance and staff.

The Price Waterhouse Cooper review of higher education in 2016 identified democratic governance of Universities interferes with the exercise of managerial prerogative and argue must be reduced in influence for universities, in their view, to function effectively. Connell points out: "management consultants advising university bosses on restructures open speak of 'academic resistance' as a problem to be overcome."

Thus we see "consultations" that are not, by any common understanding of the word, actually consultations; we see vast numbers of policies sent out for "consultation" by email when anyone with the slightest understanding of workload issues, and timing of key busy times throughout the trimester, would know ability to provide thoughtful feedback is severely constrained; and we see the reduction of power of bodies in which staff can participate and the increase in power of decision-making bodies where there are more management than staff.

These strategies allow management/governance bodies to spruik their democratic, consultative processes without actually running the risk of having to take any feedback provided seriously.

Adams talks about the imposition of managerial (ie neoliberal, managerialism) values over professional values in universities resulting in a growing divide between management and staff, with both sides distrusting each other. Spicer writes: "workers were thought to be ill disciplined and even downright lazy."

This conclusion allowed the managers to avoid asking serious questions about actual ideas. Even when a gaping hole opens up between managerial rhetoric and day-to-day reality, it is largely ignored and the responsibility for failure is pushed onto workers.

This divide means a huge gap between what management/governance elements of the university think is going on, and the reality of what is actually going on for staff.

Planning based on perceptions of reality that are not matched by staff experiences of reality are doomed. Lack of involvement of staff in these processes only widens the reality gap and fake consultations fail to improve the situation. In the end the quality of education offered to students declines.

Quality of student experiences declines even further when staff continue to operate in a context where they are not trusted, where they have declining agency, and where they are simply treated as human capital to be exploited, and discarded when they are no longer needed.

Wolgast talks about bodies selling their labour so that they become bodies whose "faculties are not for them, they are for those to whom they chose to enslave themselves."

This is the concept of selling ourselves to another for a set number of hours each day, and that "other" can, through increasing micromanagement, determine what we do, when we do it, and at the same time, convey a complete lack of trust in our professionalism and ability to work without this constant oversight.

Lack of agency in our day to day work impacts on the quality of education delivered to students, as teaching becomes less of a passion to which we dedicate many hours more than are paid, and is transformed into a dutifull following of the rules; doing only that for which we are rewarded (and as I identified in an earlier column, what is rewarded is good unit evaluations generated by what is popular not what is learned).

Leaving these issues unchallenged implies support of them; this is not okay for students, staff and community.