A New Academic Marketplace

This book examines faculty mobility in the 1980s from the perspective of process and market environment, and makes comparisons between current research findings and those reported by Theodore Caplow and Reece McGee in 1958 in The Academic Marketplace. The present study, like the earlier one, encompasses faculty recruitment, including search and selection procedures and effect, and the circumstances of termination, such as denial of tenure, voluntary resignation, retirement, and death. The research findings are based on data obtained from 306 faculty members in personal and telephone interviews conducted during the period from December 1985 to April 1986 and mail response; the sample universities were six of those used in the earlier survey. The findings are discussed in comparison to human resource management in the nonacademic sector and implications for the practice of human resource management in academic settings, contributing to an organizational culture.

An important feature of this book is the introduction of management techniques and management thinking at the departmental level that did not exist in the 1950s. The author contends, however, that new management strategies appear to have little effect on the recruitment and termination processes, and that these processes have remained traditionally based while the organization is changing under environmental influences. This unique and timely work will be of interest to a broad academic population, providing new insights into the academic world for anyone interested in the present state of higher eduation, and will be a welcome addition in the research and study of sociology, nonprofit management, and university organization.