Competition on hold? How competing discourses shape academic organisations in times of crisis

Abstract

This research deals with the question of how the Covid-19 pandemic affected discourses on competition in higher education organisations and how other discourses occurred and gained power. Additionally, it focusses on changes which take place in windows of opportunities that occur through discursive change in times of crisis. We show that discourses on competition have been highly influential in the field of academia. However, the pandemic rapidly introduced or empowered new or different discourses. These discourses either replaced existing discourses on competition, ascribed different meanings or redefined the frame under which a specific discourse is important. We merge our observations of such processes into the argument that the Covid-19 crisis has put competition discourses on hold during the first stage of the pandemic. At later stages, we show that competition discourses regained power. To make these contributions, we analyse interviews conducted at two universities at the organisational leadership level and in different departments in subjects such as social sciences, product design, music and engineering. We also examine official statements by the German rectors’ conference and further documents such as emails and press releases at two stages of the pandemic crisis. The first stage took place during the lockdowns in 2020 and gives us rich insights into the changes during the pandemic. The second stage took place in 2022 when organisations returned at least partly to their pre-pandemic routines allowing us to analyse changes over time.