Academic Rebels: From Bureaucracy to Trust, Teams, and New Leadership (CAL139, S8E4)

What if a corporatisation approach could actually make academic life better? Looking across the episodes so far this year I see three themes: shifting from “I” to “we” by treating research as a team sport; developing a new kind of leadership focused on enabling others through self-awareness, humility, authenticity, kindness, and clear roles; and adopting new ways of working that reduce bureaucratic hierarchies. These point to new ways of working. Drawing on Masud Husain’s 2025 editorial on corporatization and “bullshit jobs”, and Jayne Price’s discussion of holacracy and Corporate Rebels, I remind us, as if we need reminding, of how our current arbitrary and onerous bureaucratic processes take us away from our core work. I then explore what we could learn from holocratic approaches that move from bureaucracy and control to trust and self organised teams, as captured in Corporate Rebels’ eight trends (purpose over metrics, networks of teams, supportive leadership, adaptation, freedom with accountable trust, distributed decisions, transparency, and talents/mastery). I invite us to experiment with being academic rebels exploring new ways of working with new forms of leadership. There might actually be forms of corporatisation that could be useful for our sector.

00:29 Reflecting on Conversations so Far in 2026

02:08 Theme 1: Mindset shift from I to We

02:55 Theme 2: Critical Role of Leadership

05:09 Theme 3: Needing New Ways of Working

07:19 The Rise of Corporatisation and 'Bullshit Jobs' in the Academic Sector

10:17 Learning from New Approaches in the Corporate Sector?

13:31 Exploring the Arbitrariness and Impact of Bureaucracy and Heirarchies

14:13 Example: Different Approaches to Bureaucracy around Teaching

16:39 Example: Different Approaches to Booking Holidays

17:48 Example: Booking Work Related Travel

20:05 Example: Bureaucracy and Control of Funding Bodies

22:39 Example: Bureaucracy, Micromanagement in Professional Organizations