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The term 'ritualism' was introduced into studies of organizational behaviour in a famous study of deviance by R K Merton in 1968. Merton had noticed that American society displayed considerable tension between the lofty aims of individual achievement ('log cabin to White House') and severely restricted opportunities and means to attain social mobility. In a famous table, Merton charted a series of possible responses from those caught in this tension: conformists would accept both aims and official means toward achieving them, but there were four alternative deviant responses. Much interest has been devoted to the 'innovative' response, where people seek to achieve social mobility through illegal means such as professional crime. Other options included 'retreatism', where both official aims and means were rejected, and 'rebellion' , where political solutions were developed towards achieving a less contradictory society.

There is one other option, however, which is 'ritualism', where people outwardly conform to officially-accepted means while quietly ignoring or sliding away from official aims. Ritualists 'go through the motions', pushing paper around, attending committees, giving every appearance of doing what they are paid to do, but not in fact doing anything. Merton was keen to point out that in terms of social damage and social costs, ritualism in American society was probably far more of a threat than professional crime.

Ritualism describes a process which was also noted by Max Weber in his famous studies of rationalized organizations (bureaucracies). Weber identified a number of pathologies in modern bureaucracies, including a tendency for means to displace ends. What this means is that bureaucracies tend to lose sight of their ultimate goals or values, and become preoccupied with designing or administering systems which are supposed to achieve those goals. This is hardly surprising since rationally administering systems is a lot easier than the messy business of trying to discuss and specify, and then pursue, ultimate goals.

Ritualism has been described in educational organizations in another context too. In an interesting study, Lutz has examined the irrational behaviour that goes on. In a nice rhetorical flourish, he analyses the resolution of disputes in a university as following a parallel course to the ways in which the Azande manage the problems raised by accusations of witchcraft. Universities need witches, it is argued, for the same reasons that the Azande do, and the accused can react in a number of interesting limited ways in both cases. The successful ones admit the strength of the witchcraft explanation but deny personal guilt (by claiming to have been possessed temporarily and unwillingly, for example, and offering to undergo a purification ceremony -- 'blowing water'). In a similar vein, Becher has referred to 'academic tribes and territories' as a way of understanding the irrational behaviour that seems endemic in universities. Again, we can refer back to Weberian analysis for a more general comment that reminds us that highly rational activities can only too often be combined with deeply irrational ones -- that the existence of the former is no guarantee of the absence of the latter.

Twenty years ago or so, Quarry University had a rather limited management system. By and large, routine administration was carried out pretty closely to the activity of teaching. There were one or two specialist managers, some occupying honorific posts and some devoted to the important tasks of managing resources, buildings, timetabling, examinations, ceremonies, the replacement of equipment and so on. These activities were largely unobtrusive, giving a feeling of considerable autonomy to the academic staff concerned. Promotion to one of the honorific posts was not always sought nor was it always welcome. One senior colleague, for example, was rather annoyed to find that it was his turn to be Dean, since this would mean the abandonment of some interesting research. Occasionally, people at the end of their teaching careers would gravitate into senior management as they became marginalized as teachers or researchers.

At the end of the 1980s, however, things began to change and management functions expanded considerably. Various rationalized forms were introduced, familiar to anyone who has read Weber,such as line-management systems for example. Here the overall responsibilities of teaching a course were subdivided into various functions, and some of those functions were to be concentrated in management posts, organized as a hierarchy. For the first time, the post of lecturer was to be defined in a specific written job description, and lines of responsibility were to be clarified for matters such as the maintenance of quality, the production of research, curriculum planning, and so on. The committees that had existed before were rationalized too. The rather minimal structure of Faculty and Academic Board was expanded to include a number of committees with special responsibilities (for quality, assessment, recruitment, resources). The political background to these changes are well known: ordinary lecturers were to have key skills stripped from their posts and concentrated in the hands of others, partly to enforce a suitable new kind of discipline on the workforce, partly to enable the replacement of expensive skilled labour by less expensive casual labour, and partly to justify the new and expensive stratum of managers.

There was some resistance initially, which led to further management initiatives. The old subject groupings were broken up and replaced by course teams; academic committees became advisory; and there was a split between policy making and the management of resources, with the latter firmly in the hands of the new managers. Line managers banded together in structures of their own, and academics were seen increasingly as providers of services requiring management and co-ordination (as in a 'matrix structure').

Substantial changes in the university sector accelerated these trends. Modular degrees developed at Quarry, for example, which embodied the new structures pretty clearly. In particular, a degree scheme was no longer owned by subject specialists but was serviced by them. A plethora of government initiatives encouraged managerialism, from a declared intent to 'simulate a market' in higher education to the provision of a number of bureaucratic bodies designed to measure teaching quality or excellence in research. All of these featured the administrative operationalization of teaching, learning and research, leaving no room for public debate of any wider values (which would lead only to messy and possibly divisive outcomes). As government funding became more important and more directly tied to policy, a whole new range of management functions emerged, arising from the need to respond to an increasing flood of bureaucratic initiatives and commands.

Since the government had become managerialist, it clearly made sense that universities should be too. The academic - turned - manager would no longer be suitable, and specialist managers had to be recruited. For the first time, it became possible to think of a career in universities as a manager, a prospect made even more attractive by the emergence of a considerable differential in salary structures.

However, at Quarry, the constant flow of government policy surprises encouraged a sporadic response ('crisis - management') and also an instrumental one. Neither encouraged long-term planning towards ultimate goals. Managers also found that they were not particularly popular with their academic colleagues who soon found a number of cogent arguments which could not be solved within managerialist discourse (such as the ultimate point of a university, whether standards really were rising', or whether teaching was not far too complex to be summarised in a series of banal learning outcomes). Unpopularity tends to lead towards withdrawal, to the development of isolated groups of managers who will not have to face critical questions from each other, and who will have to deal increasingly only with other managers, in government or, commerce.

Irrational and ritualistic behaviours became increasingly apparent. There are far too many examples to discuss here, but these are the main ones:

1. An increasing obsession with organizational structures: in the space of five years, Quarry University tried Schools, Faculties, and Divisions. Quality Assurance Committees came, went, and transformed themselves into Academic Standards, and Academic Audit variants. Management spent months on a mission statement, and then even more months on a vision statement. Behavioural objectives were the key to rational course design one year, and then learning outcomes were the next -- and a great deal of time was spent discussing the difference. Course Leaders came and went, sometimes combined in a matrix with Subject Heads, and sometimes in a line management hierarchy. Deans became Pro-Vice Chancellors, requiring a whole Chancellory to co-ordinate them. All posts rapidly acquired assistant posts, and the ability to get them agreed was an important measure of status. In a common move, managerial functions were so complex that different systems were responsible for overall direction and 'day-to-day running'. Naturally, the former function was considered far more important, and it attracted a higher salary and more pleasant work conditions.

2. These changes clearly encouraged a great deal of micropolitical behaviour among those who were likely to benefit from them. Those who had decided to make management their career could clearly benefit from some changes, and lose out from others. As a result, many managers spent much of their time trying to calculate micropolitical advantages -- was it better to be a Course Leader than an Assistant Dean? Was being a Subject Head likely to lead to promotion, or was it better to take on a responsibility such as timetabling? Was it worth trying to acquire an MBA? Given that a successful career often depended upon being in with the right crowd, or acquiring an adequate sponsor, there was a considerable pressure not to do anything particularly risky, for fear of annoying people who were even more on the right track than you were. Indeed, in a fairly changeable environment, much activity was devoted to trying to keep things unchanged, to defend territory.

3. A great deal of redundancy and overlap between functions became apparent. There was no single system of management but a series of overlapping systems. Roles and responsibilities were never clarified. New posts would be created, and job descriptions would be written for them, but then the system would change once more. Indeed, once the process of abstraction has begun, the proliferation of managerial responsibilities is almost endless. At Quarry University, the resources devoted to management, in terms of expensive manpower alone, doubled in two years. Naturally, the staff - student ratio worsened considerably in the same period: seen from the outside, the core business of the University seemed to involve the production of managers rather than graduates.

4 . In the spirit of means-ends displacement discussed above, all sorts of meta-managerial activities come into being, including committees to investigate the efficient working of other committees (at Quarry, for example, one committee undertook a survey to examine staff views of the committee structure, and one committee offered to audit all the others; large parts of meetings were devoted to examining the decisions made at other meetings, or to setting the agenda for other meetings). However, new systems never quite replaced the old ones, which remained in the background. After all, actually demoting someone, or even dismissing them, would be to take risks and to destroy managerial solidarity. Sometimes, powerful or well-connected individuals would hold a succession of posts as the systems changed.

5. In one particular case, a favoured individual (Clint) was simultaneously a Module Leader, a Subject Head, a Course Leader, and an Assistant Dean. This individual also held a number of key posts on various committees. The absurdity becomes apparent once individuals are inserted into formal systems. Let us imagine that Clint failed to maintain standards in his capacity as a lecturer on a particular Module and that his Module Leader had to admonish him (only a complete fool would do this in real life, of course). Clint could refuse to accept the admonition and appeal to the Subject Head (ie himself). His decision as Head would be upheld, probably, by the Course Leader (also himself), although further channels might be available to the original complainant, via the Assistant Dean, for example (Clint again). Clint would have a final chance to discuss the matter at Quality Assurance Committee, which he chaired, or when he reported to himself at Academic Board. You do not have to be much of an expert in educational administration to suggest that it would be much more efficient if Clint just clarified his own opinion on things in the first place. Certainly, there is very little chance of anyone else's opinion prevailing. Given the failure to clarify the roles and responsibilities, it is almost inevitable that individuals become the locus of power: powerful individuals then act through the media of various formal systems, which is the reverse of the official picture, where committees are rationally divided in their function, and a system of checks and balances operates to achieve some institution-wide policy and practice, regardless of the interests of powerful individuals or factions.

6. Partly as a consequence of this domination of formal structures by acutely micropolitical individuals, there was a mass withdrawal from the administrative system by most of the staff. The occasional meetings, where the staff was simply informed of decisions, soon attracted a low attendance rate. Ritualistic shuffling of administrative systems, the major role of management, had a limited appeal, and few were happy with the level of risk (and boredom and triviality) involved in embracing a management career. Individuals who could marshal sufficient power were able to develop functional autonomy, based around their own teaching or research groups. Less powerful persons simply carried on with their jobs as well as they could. Certainly, the growth in management functions and systems never seemed to take away the necessity for individual lecturers to perform important tasks largely unsupervised and unregulated, such as keeping up-to-date, assessing students fairly, trying to develop research and publication, attending conferences, managing with decreasing resources and increasing workloads. However, this sort of response tends to do nothing to halt the spread of management, and, indeed, it provides further 'problems' for management to discuss, leads to the growth of committees trying to manage autonomous units, or to organize an 'academic culture' (respectively). This response also led to increased levels of supervision and surveillance of ordinary members of staff, who were now expected to attend meetings, or deemed to be at risk of demonstrating low commitment if they failed to put themselves forward for official committee posts.

7. In the absence of any consensus about functions, given the suspicion and mistrust associated with micropolitical advantages to be gained, and without any clear evidence of effectiveness, even for their own satisfaction, managers found themselves becoming defensive, isolated, and the subject of some criticism, as we have seen. An authoritarian turn was the response, with relations towards ordinary staff increasingly seen as regulatory or even as punitive ones. Managers were physically withdrawn into a special block or suites of offices, with their own facilities and with limited access for outsiders. The only encounters with non-managers occurred at increasingly infrequent general meetings of staff. Otherwise, managers communicated via newsletters or memoranda (and sometimes had meetings to discuss the best ways to communicate with ordinary staff). In such circumstances, it became possible to demonise or witch-hunt colleagues, and a number of victims were selected and persecuted, sometimes with the result of driving them away, or forcing early retirement. Again, considerable management time was displaced on to these activities, and once paranoia sets in, a great deal of time is also spent on detecting signs of incipient witchcraft -- at Quarry, it is believed that psychologists were actually engaged as consultants to scrutinise the writing and the behaviour of suspects. In some ways, these can be seen as 'rational', even if cold and ruthless, strategies to discipline staff, but there often seemed to be an excessive zeal behind some of the persecutions. Perhaps this is the Weberian point that no-one can lead a cold, rational (and probably pointless and trivial) organizational life forever, no matter how good the salary: exasperation, irrational outbursts, angry denunciation of critics, and a tendency to look for victims seem endemic in systems like this. To cite Adorno's remark, those who inhabit authoritarian systems turn into 'bicyclists' -- 'above they bow, they kick below'.

Overall, the picture of management at Quarry University over this period is a curious one. There has been a dramatic expansion in administrative posts and responsibilities, and in managerial careers (including the new post of educational consultant, several of whom were hired to support management). At the same time, it is almost impossible to point to anything positive that has been achieved by this new stratum, since the new energy, expertise, and plentiful resources seem to have been displaced into ritualism, as defined here. Managers spend most of their time discussing how to manage, finding additional things for themselves to manage, manoeuvring to gain advantage from management systems, justifying what they do to sceptics, detecting and regulating dissent, collaborating in self - serving and ultimately trivial games with Government managers.

While official management practices endless deferral, ordinary members of staff are just left to cope as best they can with the new problems of under-resourced expansion. To take one notable example, insufficient funds for Faculty photocopying have been a constant problem for years -- despite the proliferation of management, no one seems to be able to solve this relatively simple problem. It recurs on agenda after agenda, together with other favourites like timetabling, the replacement of staff, arrangements for study leave,and the replacement of PCs. It seems simply insoluble as a problem, or perhaps its function is to fill up time in meetings (an important if rarely disclosed goal of meetings).

Managerial ritualism is itself the major problem, however. For staff there is the constant risk of having solid effort undermined by a sudden shift in direction, or an outburst of macho exasperation, or even witch-hunting. At best, these initiatives are seen as periodic additional nuisances that simply have to be managed by extra work: syllabi have to be re-written to accord the latest vision statement or managerial buzzwords, time and effort has to be devoted to undoing the demoralising effects of ill-advised outbursts. One that caused a number of problems concerned a sudden decision to punish students who were in debt to the University by forbidding them to attend graduation ceremonies, while, in another case, an absurdly restrictive IT policy, with all sorts of harsh penalties for non-compliance, was sprung upon unsuspecting staff who were expected to police it.

At worst, managerial megalomania produces serious effects. Managers at Quarry seem to want to insist that the problems in managing a University are really quite simple ones, soluble by simple policies implemented by issuing fiats and maintaining an optimistic attitude. As a result, they have strayed into areas where they are clearly grossly incompetent.

Of course, managerial pathologies are not to be discussed, since that would be disloyalty and/or beyond the competence of ordinary folk. The only conceivable way forward is to redefine, and preferably add, managerial responsibilities, such as employing more consultants, market researchers, advisers, or accountants. The end result will be to stifle discussion, to under-use existing expertise, to alienate creative and entrepreneurial spirits, to reduce everything to simple agendas and recipes: as Luhmann once suggested, the real mission of management is to attempt to simplify the world until it can be managed. That mission seems set to clericalise, routinize, deskill and bourgeoisify academic life until it fits the banalities of educational management. Here are some bullet points in conclusion: