Academics in pursuit of the part-time doctorate: pressures and support issues associated with the career development of business and management academics

This article poses the question, how might the application of human resource development, career development (CD) and critical management studies perspectives cast light on the development of doctoral student? Nine part-time students took part in a longitudinal study that required them to complete monthly reflective reports or journals and participate in semi-structured interviews. Most of these part-time students are also in full-time employment as academics within ‘Post-1992’ university employment in the United Kingdom. Post-1992 UK universities, also classified as ‘new’ or ‘modern’ universities, comprised UK higher education institutions that were transformed from polytechnic institutions in or after 1992. Those part-time students within this study who are also in full-time employment as academics complained the lack of time for study has proved to be a significant hindrance and even a threat to their doctoral progress. From a critical management stance, it is proposed that power asymmetries exist between these students and the leaders of their employment organizations. These students are considered to be working towards CD within the turbulence of ‘new’ universities, primarily in the strife for employment security. It is suggested that these concerns link with Grey’s (Grey, C. 1994. “Career as a Project of the Self and Labour Process Discipline.” Sociology 28 (2): 479–497. doi:10.1177/0038038594028002007.) critical management perspective relating to ‘self-management’ as an example of labour process discipline. As such, this article offers a new perspective within CMS discourse, that of critical career development. Publisher statement: This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Human Resource Development International on 30 June 2014, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13678868.2014.928136 .