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The reforms that have been promoted in public organisations in developed countries since the 1970s are said to impose changes in professional bureaucracies by promoting self-governance and institutional autonomy and by challenging professionals’ status and their values and standards. Taking the specific case of Portugal, this paper intends to contribute to understanding to what extent professional bureaucracies, like hospitals and Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), have been affected by changes in state policies and how the professionals involved have responded to these organisational changes. Based on an empirical qualitative study the paper concludes that there are significant differences in the way the state changed the regulatory framework and the professional archetypes in hospitals and HEIs and that professionals give heterogeneous responses to these changes.

In recent years, the academic profession has received increased interest as an object of study. Higher education systems all over the world have submitted to deep and structural changes with implications for this professional group. Two relevant international projects have been developed to analyze changes in the academic profession in a comparative way: “The Changing Academic Profession” (CAP) and “Academic Profession in Europe: Responses to Societal Challenges” (EUROAC). The aim of this chapter is to analyze the major results of these projects, reflecting on the way they have incorporated theories in the field of sociology of professions, and, simultaneously, to reflect on the contributions the empirical results of these studies have brought to the theoretical framework in this specific field of study. Data analysis reveals that, even if academics do not engage in an in-depth discussion about academics as a professional group, it is possible to classify them as the ‘producers of producers’, or as a meta-profession. Simultaneously, analysis of current changes in the academic profession demonstrates the existence of an increasing internal diversification and fragmentation (based on such dimensions as changes in academics’ roles, employment and working conditions, internationalization processes, autonomy, gender, and age). These results suggest the need to include professional internal diversity in the current debates on changes in professions in contemporaneous societies.

This paper aims to contribute to the understanding of the three‐dimensional model of organizational commitment proposed by Meyer and Allen (e.g., 1991). It focuses on whether continuance commitment should be considered one‐dimensional or bidimensional (low alternatives; high sacrifices). Whether affective commitment should be divided into two components (affective commitment; future in common) or if it should remain as a one‐dimensional construct is also discussed. The paper also considers a “new” factor identified by Rego (2003), which he named “psychological absence”, but which we denominated here as accommodating commitment. Besides the confirmatory factor analysis, the paper shows how four dimensions of organizational justice (distributive, procedural, interpersonal, and informational) explain organizational commitment. The sample comprises 366 individuals from 22 organizations operating in Portugal. The predictive value of the justice perceptions for both instrumental commitment components is quite weak, despite ranging from 25 per cent to 36 per cent for the other components. Procedural and interpersonal justice are the main predictors. The accommodating dimension improves the fit indices of the factorial model, but its meaning is not clear. It is also not clear whether one should consider it as a new component of commitment or whether its items should be removed from the measuring instruments. The findings suggest that some gains can be achieved in the partition of the affective and instrumental commitment, but further research is necessary to clarify the issue.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse if the existence of equal opportunity legislative frameworks and affirmative action programs make any difference to the way senior managers perceive the role of top university managers in influencing women's position in their institutions. A comparative study was therefore undertaken between a country with traditions in implementing AA in universities – Australia – and another which has no tradition in this domain – Portugal.

A qualitative methodology was chosen to collect and analyse data. A total of 44 interviews with male and female university senior managers – 21 in Australia and 23 in Portugal – were conducted by the principal researcher in each country.

When describing the role of top managers, gender equality was not often mentioned, suggesting that it may not be a topic on the current institutional political agenda either in Australia or in Portugal. When specifically asked about gender, respondents considered that Rectors and VCs in the two countries took opposite positions with Australian VCs being more aware of their role in improving gender equality. The study therefore concluded that the existence of equal opportunities frameworks and AA policies may have an influence in increasing top managers’ awareness of their roles in improving women's representation in management teams.

The research was restricted to public universities. In Portugal the system is more diverse and comparing HE with private and polytechnic institutions could provide important insights about senior managers’ roles in relation to improving women's position in HE. More in‐depth qualitative studies are needed, to obtain top managers’ perceptions of the variables that impact on their views and attitudes to women in senior management.

This study provides new and innovative contributions to knowledge about the perceptions of senior managers of their top managers and their roles in eliminating gender discrimination and the influence of affirmative action in HE in these perceptions.

This paper contributes to the discussion on the advantages and disadvantages of using affirmative action programmes by analyzing a dimension which has not been explored – its impact on senior managers’ perceptions of their role in promoting gender equality in HEIs.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the way gender may be used as an instrument to avoid New Public Management (NPM) potential processes of deprofessionalisation in nursing.

In total, 83 nurses with managerial duties were interviewed in autonomous and corporate public hospitals in Portugal.

Nurses used gender as an argument to legitimate their presence in management, and in this way, to keep their control over the profession. Gender stereotypes were used to legitimate their position in two different ways. Firstly, nurses reproduced and reinforced gendered inequality by supporting their male colleagues careers. Secondly, they valorised their feminine skills sustaining that women were in better position to manage hospitals as an extended role from the private domain.

The paper uses a sample from only one country and care must be taken when extrapolating conclusions to the wider population.

Acknowledges the way NPM reinforces gender stereotypes and contributes to redefine professionalism.

Recognition of the complexity and diversity of gender issues in the organisational context and in the structuration of professional legitimacy.

There have been profound changes in the Portuguese national health system (NHS), instigated under the influence of managerialism and the new public management (NPM) “philosophy”. These changes have been in line with what has happened in other developed countries. At the beginning of the new century, important reforms that emphasised the efficient use of scarce resources were implemented. The objective of this study is to understand how nurses are adapting to a more managerial environment, one in which economic rationalism and market‐driven initiatives are the key principles behind the health reforms.

A qualitative study was developed, based on semi‐structured interviews with 83 nurses with managerial duties in ten hospitals in Portugal. All interviews were tape‐recorded and each interviewee's discourses were subjected to content analysis.

Data analysis led to the conclusion that under the new logic of the market and managerialism, these professionals have tried to (re)define their professionalisation route by emphasising the importance of care but also by trying to incorporate management as their dominant role in the social division of work. In reconfiguring their notion of professionalism, nurses were incorporating new practices in their day‐to‐day activities. This empirical study confirms that professionalism can also be conceptualised as a technology of self‐control being able to discipline professionals at the micro level.

This research is an empirical study based on the effects of managerialism on nurses with managerial duties in Portugal. This study contributes to a better understanding of the complex process of the professionalisation of nurses in a context of institutional change.

We evaluate the use of metaphors in academic literature on women in academia. Utilizing the work of Husu (2001) and the concept of intersectionality, we explore the ways in which notions of structure and/or agency are reflected in metaphors and the consequences of this.

The research comprised an analysis of 113 articles on women in academia and a subanalysis of 17 articles on women in Political Science published in academic journals between 2004 and 2013.

In the case of metaphors about academic institutions, the most popular metaphors are the glass ceiling, the leaky pipeline, and the old boys’ network, and, in the case of metaphors about women academics, strangers/outsiders and mothers/housekeepers.

Usage of metaphors in the literature analyzed suggests that the literature often now works with a more nuanced conception of the structure/agency problematic than at the time Husu was writing: instead of focusing on either structures or agents in isolation, the literature has begun to look more critically at the interplay between them, although this may not be replicated at a disciplinary level.

We highlight the potential benefits of interdependent metaphors which are able to reflect more fully the structurally situated nature of (female) agency. These metaphors, while recognizing the (multiple and intersecting) structural constraints that women may face both within and outwith the academy, are able to capture more fully the different forms female power and agency can take. Consequently, they contribute both to the politicization of problems that female academics may face and to the stimulation of collective responses for a fairer and better academy.