Working conditions and conditional work — critical studies of organizational conditions for reduced fragmentation of academic work, AVA

The project will highlight how fragmentation of academic work is controlled in documents and processes and how it is perceived in different subjects within the university, and based on it provide suggestions for actions that can contribute to change.

What concrete measures can be implemented to achieve more coherent time of work brought about by digitalization, current governance and organization?

Ensuring high-quality research and teaching requires organizational measures that reduce the fragmentation of academic work. Increased administrative tasks, systems that create extra work, changing working methods and communication patterns in the workplace are examples of factors that reduce the scope for more coherent and more concentrated time for research and education.

The whole project is based on MIUN 2025, a comprehensive work for the future with a vision of a desirable Mid-University in 2025, whose conclusions remain relevant. In this work, questions about what characterizes the desirable university from the perspective of employees were raised. This work revealed that fragmentation of work was one of the main occupational safety and health risks and a risk to the quality of work. Furthermore, the need to integrate different control systems and not to try to organize away the complexity of academic work was highlighted. Instead, the need to be a place for complexity and different perspectives in the management and organisation of work was highlighted, in order to ensure quality education and research as well as a desirable workplace.

In the project’s three sub-studies, different activities are conducted such as process mappings, interviews and workshops with staff. In all sub-studies there are people from HUV and NMT to ensure and use different perspectives and experiences. Proposals and challenges are discussed on an ongoing basis in dialogue with the University’s Management Council. The project will propose measures and tools that reduce fragmentation at different organizational levels as well as identification of room for manoeuvre at different levels and strategies for resistance. Results should be presented in an anthology and scientific articles.