Scholars in the Audit Society: Understanding our Contemporary Iron Cage

Universities are changing (Göransson and Brundenius, 2010). On the one hand, universities are blamed for having all kinds of purported weaknesses and failures. On the other hand, universities are identified and projected as the solution to many problems and challenges in our contemporary world. Universities are decried as self-centred, slow and conservative, ensconced in theory and abstract thinking, closed and elitist. They are called upon to become agile and open, to target the world and to propose concrete answers to mundane problems. Scholars are supposed to be the kingpin of this profound institutional revolution. But scholars themselves are at a turning point as they experience, and de facto actualize, a consequential change in identity. [First paragraph