Shifting Identities and Blurring Boundaries: The Emergence of Third Space Professionals in UK Higher Education

communicative relationships and networks as more significant than the observance of
organisational boundaries, so much so that third space work may occur in spite of,
rather than because of, formal structures.

Respondents in the study also suggested that an entree to, and understanding of,
academic space was essential to ‘growing’ new forms of activity and integrating them
within the institutional portfolio, for instance, collaborating with staff from further
education providers, or incorporating foundation-degree students. A key element was
developing an appropriate language, for instance about partnership activity, that
‘spoke to’ both academic and professional world-views. This required being able to
use language that resonated with academic colleagues, appreciating the disinterested
nature of academic debate, and being able to hold their own in such an arena.
Individuals, therefore, worked backwards and forwards across internal and external
boundaries, translating and interpreting between different constituencies, and creating
new institutional spaces, knowledges and relationships. Where such joint working
occurs, it becomes difficult to pinpoint, for instance in a discussion about an
academic development and how it relates to institutional strategy, where ideas emerge
from, or whether they are attributable to a manager from an academic or a
professional background. The emergence of such activity in third space exemplifies
Mode 2 forms of working (Gibbons et al, 1994), confirming the suggestion in
Whitchurch (2006b) that these may be applicable to professional, as well as to
academic staff, mirroring the process by which disciplinary boundaries have broken
down in interdisciplinary forms of knowledge production.

The activities in third space also reflect Taylor’s suggestion that the development of a
“creative commons”, involving “networking, laterality, hybridity, flexibility, multi-
tasking and media capability” would assist universities to “identify continuities
between the beliefs and allegiances of the ... ‘golden era’ and the current era of
‘super-complexity’” (Taylor, 2008, p. 38). The study also suggests that growing
numbers of professional staff are well placed to contribute to a “re-interpretation of
collegiality” (Taylor, 2008, p. 38), in a “community of professionals” (AUT, 2001),
in which there is a “.reconsideration of the nature of the academic (and non-
academic) professions” (Pratt, 1997, p. 320). Third space working may, therefore, be
suggestive of future trends in professional identities, whereby they increasingly
coalesce with those of academic colleagues who undertake project- and management-
oriented roles to create a new, generic form of third space professional.

Implications for individuals

A sense of belonging to a particular project or team, as opposed to a specific
organisational or professional location, has implications for the credibility of
individuals in their current roles and for their future career paths. Thus, one
individual commented that “There’s no kind of authority that you come with”, and
another that her relationship with her academic colleagues was characterised by an
unspoken contract that: “If you solve a problem for us, we’ll come back and work
with you again”. At the same time as legitimacies associated with administration and
management are contested in the literature, there is evidence that staff are

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