Variables That Are Challenging To Quantify In Academic Workload Allocation: Time Tricksters

Abstract

Workload allocation models are increasingly used in higher education settings but their implementation presents a number of challenges. The challenges are all the more acute if they remain under the radar of discussion and analysis. The purpose of this article is to expose and interrogate one such challenge, to which we refer as “time tricksters”. Time tricksters are mandatory activities that take up significant amounts of academics’ time but that add no or little value to the academic project. The article is a conceptual paper that reviews existing literature on academic temporalities and academic affective regimes to explore how these dynamics shape the ways in which time tricksters complicate the implementation of workload allocation models in higher education settings. The article finds that uncounted, unverifiable, unproductive, wasted time has profound effects on a range of institutional operations at universities, ranging from resource allocation, management and time auditing to how academics rate their wellbeing and job satisfaction. We demonstrate that time tricksters pose profound challenges to the implementation of academic workload allocation models and we present a compelling case for bringing the reality of time tricksters into the frame of workload allocation discussions between line managers and academics. The dynamics that shape the temporal aspects of time tricksters are so elusive, that they have not been conceptualized in the literature. It also means that the creation of a conceptual framework with which we can grapple with these temporal realities constitutes a valuable intervention in the relevant bodies of scholarship. Our development and exploration of the concept “time tricksters” in this article is an important contribution to filling this urgent and necessary scholarly gap. Given the extent of the impact of time tricksters on academic operations, it is very problematic that no scholarly concept exists to denote the activities that whittle away academics’ time, add no value to any part of the academic project, and leave academics feeling disempowered and frustrated. This article thus has the potential to have significant impact on a range of academic management and policy decisions, as well as on the implementation of workload allocation models at universities.