Agency in academic promotion: self-oriented and socially-oriented strategies among Australian academics

Abstract

Although the nature of the academic profession and related career advancement has been well documented, little empirical evidence has been provided on the professional agency that academics employ to advance from one academic rank to another. Adopting an agency focus, this study therefore investigates what strategies academics adopt when seeking promotion. Through semi-structured interviews with 37 participants from a representative Australian university, the study identifies promotion seeking as a two-stage process involving two clusters of six interrelated strategies. A Framework of Agency in Academic Promotion (FAAP) is proposed, demonstrating how, with motivation to climb the career ladder, academics engage in both self-oriented and socially oriented strategies, initially to ‘become promotable’ and then to write a promotion application. The study confirms and elaborates the role of professional agency in academic promotion, supports the argument that strategies are an important enabler of agency, and contributes to the scarce empirical literature in this field. Academics and their managers, developers and mentors can use the FAAP model to craft promotion strategies and career development plans.