The Formula as a Managerial Tool: Audit Culture in Hong Kong

Joseph Bosco

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DOI: 10.2190/WR.16.3-4.h

Abstract

Universities are increasingly moving away from the professional ideal of management by professors to a form of managerialism known as "audit culture." This article provides two examples from Hong Kong, where audit culture has been imposed very rapidly over the past 15 years: the imposition of a "one-line budget" and the "Research Assessment Exercise" (RAE). The one-line budget shifted control from deans to department chairs, but set up incentives and rules of the game that had unintended consequences, including the dumbing down of classes to attract students and an increase in student-teacher ratios. The RAE was intended to allow administrators to compare all departments against one another, and to shift resources to those that were successful and "efficient." The article argues that these administrative methods misuse business metaphors and undermine creativity by focusing only on process. The end result is waste of resources and an inability to achieve real excellence.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.