Available online at http://www.idealibrary.com ondoi:10.1006/cpac.2001.0560Critical Perspectives on Accounting (2002) 13, 779–781

DISCUSSANTS COMMENTS ON:“UNIVERSITIES AND COLLABORATION

WITHIN COMPLEX, UNCERTAINKNOWLEDGE-BASED ECONOMIES”

(JAMES JUNIPER)

TONY TINKER†

Baruch College at the City University of New York; School of Accounting andInformation Systems at the University of South Australia and School of

Management at Leicester University

The broad sweep of literature that Juniper brings to this topic is most refreshing. Heforges an analysis and perspective that is both challenging and relevant. His brief isassessing “the prospects for the creation of the “virtual university”, largely detachedfrom material and spatial constraints . . . ” while, at the same time, reconciling thiswith what most academics and university managers would acknowledge: “. . . theimportance of an effective integration between the various activities of teaching,consulting and collaborative work . . . ” (p. 1).

Juniper’s economic predispositions are evident in his analysis from beginning toend. Market/environmental/technological uncertainty are presented as parametricconcerns in a range of ‘new’ economic literatures (p. 3) that are used to prime alinkage to some of the contingency accounting literature (pp. 3, 4). Three economicmodels of knowledge production are then presented (Romer’s New Growth Theory,Evolutionary Economic Theory, and Transaction Cost Theory), the specifics ofthese are then reviewed in greater detail in subsequent sections (pp. 7–14). Inconclusion, universities are cautioned against abandoning a collegiate system foroften-simplistic corporate models of management that “ignore the more subtleaspect of innovation management” (p. 16).

The conditional conclusions of this study—a modest plea for more nuancedunderstandings—are hardly contentious. However, the means by which we arriveat these conclusions deserve scrutiny, especially if they are to serve as a basisfor further inquiry. I would not for one moment want to tar James Juniper with thisbrush, but we should be cognizant of the severe shortcomings of this economisticorientation of the paper that could severely impair subsequent investigations. This is

†Address for correspondence: CUNY–Baruch College, Department of Accounting, Box E-0723, School

of Business & Public Administration, 17 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA.E-mail: TonyTinker@msn.com

Received 15 July 2001; accepted 12 September 2001

7791045–2354/02/$ - see front matter c© 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

780 T. Tinker

that grand, perennial tradition of economic, intellectual imperialism that colonizesphenomena in a manner that either erases or caricatures many social, conflictual,political, and institutional processes.

No reassurance comes from seeing, on the front of the paper, the “Division ofBusiness and Enterprise” at the University of South Australia. Typically, such outfitshave been set-up in universities to “subvert from within”. As boosters of marketrationality and efficiency, these institutions are only too willing to celebrate “Centersof Excellence” (p. 16) that cherry-pick market compliant faculty and courses,employing untenured short-termers, who are kept anxious and barefoot, laboringfor the market. Not surprisingly, these union-busting organizations are happy to offerglib advice about “change” to “luddite” mainstream faculty who are blamed for “. . .clinging to outmoded disciplinary boundaries” (p. 16). Having met the author, I haveno doubt he transcends these affiliations.

Turning to the specifics of the paper: the stretch from diffusion of innovationstudies and institutions to universities tests credibility. To posit, as Juniper does,that “most academics and university managers would acknowledge the importanceof an effective integration between the various activities of teaching, consultingand collaborative work” is surely an observation that comes from another planet.Senior and junior capitalist countries have, in recent years, suffered a hollowing outof their state functions, with a catastrophic “defunding” of educational institutions.The bloating of a casual, part-time, untenured, labor force has been one response.In CUNY for instance, adjuncts now compose 50% of all teachers, up from 20% in1988. They cost a mere 10% of the cost of a full-time faculty person to staff a course.

The virtual university, and new courseware is, for many colleges, the PromisedLand of cost-reduction. This technology promises to deliver educational “products”at a fraction of that hitherto. While lvy League brochures and university managersmight indeed waffle about “an effective integration . . . of teaching, consulting andcollaborative work”, in reality, this is a low-budget exercise, launched “off-the-books”from the University Extension, with cheap, non-union labor (again). The aim is toincrease market share (beyond the traditional geographical catchment areas) withthe “unintended consequence” of draining away students from high-cost traditionalprograms (of competitors and their own). In the US, the diminishing numbers oftenured faculty (who control many of the unions) have been bought-off with thepromise of fat pensions.

The paper misses this context because it lacks an adequate grasp of the historical,institutional, and social reality. Economists (institutional, evolutionary or whatever)are notoriously bad at understanding the “internal” functioning of organizations(observations by Simon, Cyert, Barnard, March etc. are as relevant today asthey were 50 years ago). Neoclassical economists proceed from competitivemarket contexts and rarely delve into the workings of the organizational black box.Managerial and organizational processes are reduced to the kind of Chandler-Williamson caricatures that “inspired” transaction cost theory, and has not beeneffectively demolished by serious business historians (cf. Du Boff & Herman, 1980)and organization theorists (cf. Tinker et al., 1988). This bad taste in literature servesthe converse purpose of privileging market efficiency and banishing conflict fromthe agenda.

Discussion 781

A property authorization of this study requires a literature adequate to its task,one that is also cognizant of sociological and organizational dimensions. Aronowitz(2000); Bowles and Gintus (1976); Dillard and Tinker (1996) are instances (only)of a sociological and institutional informed view. Even for contingency accountingliterature (Davila, Mouck, etc.), it would have been better to have consulted theworks of the organ grinders in organization theory, rather than their “monkeys” inaccounting. Burns and Stalker (1961), Aiken and Hage (1971), and even the oftenanti-intellectual case peddlers from Lawrence and Lorsch (1967) offer more carefullyresearched studies to substantiate findings about environmental uncertainty, andthe appropriate organizational struture (including, of course, accounting structure).Indeed, there is no reference to what even Chuck Horngren regards as thefoundational study in accounting contingency theory: the Simon et al. Simon etal. (1954) investigation for the Controllership foundation. Researchers need to lookbeyond organizational and economics literature to find a social problematizationof uncertainty. Braverman (1998), Whitley (1986), Allen (1975) and Baritz (1960)all offer a theoretical (social) structuring of what economists takes as intrinsicallyuncertain.

References

Aiken, M. & Hage, J., “The Organic Organization and Innovation”, Sociology, Vol. 5, No. 1, 1971,pp. 53–82.

Allen, V., Social Analysis: A Marxist Critique and Alternative (Harlow: Longmans, 1975).Aronowitz, S., The Knowledge Factory: Dismantling the Corporate University and Creating True Higher

Learning (Boston: Beacon, 2000).Baritz, L., The Servants of Power: A History of the Use of Social Science in American Industry (New

York: John Wiley & Sons, 1960).Bowles, S. & Gintus, H., Schooling and Capitalist America (New York: Basic Books, 1976).Braverman, H., Labor and Monopoly Capital: 25th Year Anniversary Edition (New York: Monthly Review

Press, 1998).Burns, T. & Stalker, J., The Management of Innovation (London: Tavistock, 1961).Dillard, J. & Tinker, T., “Commodifying Business and Accounting Education: The Implications of

Accreditation”, Critical Perspectives on Accounting, Vol. 7, No. 1/2, February/April 1996, pp. 215–226.Du Boff, R. B. & Herman, E. S., “Alfred Chandler’s New Business History: A Review”, Politics & Society,

Vol. 10, No. 1, 1980, pp. 87–110.Lawrence, P. & Lorsch, J., Organization and Environment (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1967).Simon, H. A., Guetzknow, H., Kozmetsky, G. & Tyndall, G., Centralization versus Decentralization in

Organizing the Controllers Department (New York: Controllership Foundation, 1954).Tinker, T., Lehman, C. & Neimark, M., “The Struggle Over Meaning in Accounting and Corpo-

rate Research: A Comparative Evaluation of Conservative and Critical Historiography”, Accounting,Auditing, and Accountability, Vol. 1, No. 1, 1988, pp. 55–74.

Whitley, R., “The Transformation of Business Finance into Financial Economics: The Roles of AcademicExpansion and Changes in US Capital Markets”, Accounting, Organizations and Society, 1986.