Organisational Identification of Academic Staff and Its Relationship to the Third Stream

A university is a organisation where academics study, research and teach students. The archetypal “academic” has an image and identity that is as clear as a doctor or fireman. However the nature of a university is changing, the university is now required to seek out new relationships with businesses and non traditional “customers”, delivering learning and knowledge in new ways, frequently driven by commercial demands. University senior management teams are motivated by government and funding to meet these demands and steer the university towards these new goals. These new areas of activity are often referred to as the “Third Stream” TS (teaching and research being streams 1 and 2). The new mission, strategies and definitions of third stream initiatives form a changing organisational identity for a university which may challenge widely held notions of a universities identity by its member staff, the academics. Dutton et. al. (1994, p1) state; “Strong organisational identification may translate into desirable outcomes”. If the university wants its members (the academics) to embrace the changing mission of a university and undertake actions in support of the new mission, university managers must understand the organisational members (the academics) relationship to the new identity and aim to engender a strong organisational identity