Narrative, zombie academic leadership, and the contemporary university

ABSTRACT This essay uses a narrative – in this case a fictional dialogue – to explore how neoliberalism and managerialism is taken forward in unexpected ways in the contemporary university. In order to make sense of zombie academic leadership, I turn my attention to how it is cultivated in the academy by using the ‘case of J’, which is taken from MacIntyre’s work titled, ‘Social structure and their threats to moral agency’. Indeed, the ‘case of J’ is used as a valuable resource for understanding how certain social structures cultivate zombie academic leaders through the phenomenon of compartmentalisation. This is then followed by a critical discussion and analysis of the fictional dialogue on zombie academic leadership. I argue that the zombie metaphor is an apt articulation of zombie academic leaders because they lack the capacity to exercise their powers of rational agency beyond what a particular role requires. I finish by briefly considering whether reform is possible or not in the contemporary university.