Weapon of the weak: The hidden transcripts of academics’ resistance to policy imperatives in Indonesian universities

The purpose of this paper is to examine how academics resisted and accommodated changes towards the reform process in higher education institutions in Indonesia which has introduced market-driven principle of new public management and the principle of Neo-Weberian model. Using the theory developed by Scott concerning the resistance patterns by powerless or subordinated groups through “weapon of the weak”, this study aimed at mapping the resistance exhibited by Indonesian academics.

This study was a case study using semi-structured interviews conducted with 30 academics in three state universities in Indonesia.

The results of this study demonstrated that academics in Indonesian universities resisted and accommodated the policy reform using their discursive, unobtrusive tactics of resisting.

The method of data collection used in this research was based on the interview alone. It would be useful to consider to deploy other forms of data collection such as, observation to allow the building up of strong trusthworthiness of the findings of this research.

The authors believed that this study may be useful to give better understandings for policy makers on implementing policies by considering aspects of behaviours of academics as street level bureaucrats in accepting, interpreting, and implementing policy imperatives. These results might also be beneficial for policy makers from other sectors outside higher education in effectuating policy imperatives.

The authors argued that, academics actively responded to external pressures which contradicted their own values and beliefs with their unique intellectual strategies by which have been overlooked in the formulation of policy.