The Impact of New Public Management on Academic Citizenship : A Case Study of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa

Abstract: Background: The last decade has had many changes within the management of organisations in the public sector and several public sector organisations have implemented New Public Management. This has lead to research becoming more emphasised in universities lately, mostly because international ranking systems put more weight to it. At the same time recent literature underestimates the contribution of citizenship behaviour to public organizations and the wider society. This opens up to an interesting debate on how New Public Managament affects academic citizenship. Purpose of the study: The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of New Public Management on academic citizenship at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. It will explore how certain characteristics of New Public Managementaffect academics ability to perform academic citizenship. This study will also look at the practical implications for the university. Methodology: In order to conduct this study a qualitative approach was chosen. The research design is a single case study that focuses on one specific setting, in this case the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. The empirical data was gathered through interviewing 10 academics at the university with semi-structured interviews. Conclusion: The conducted study has shown that New Public Managament does affect academic citizenship. The study shows that certain New Public Management characteristics affect the academics ability to perform academic citizenship, which leads to it being pushes a side to a certain extent. The implications of academic citizenship being pushed a side affects both the university and the students as well as the contribution to the society.