Life in a graduate school of business: the Bill stories

This paper presents stories to describe changes in the lifeworld of ‘Bill’, a typical academic employed in an autonomous graduate school of business between the 2002/2003 and 2008. The stories are based on interviews with academics in three autonomous graduate schools of business that existed in 2002/2003. The study was designed as a two stage longitudinal research project investigating the tensions between academic values and the corporatisation of higher education. Results highlight the positive and negative effects of institutional implementation of government policies in the two periods, in particular role of autonomy in fostering academic engagement.