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Legitimacy Dynamics of Professional Support Staff at Higher Education Institutions

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The aim of this study is to identify the expressions of legitimacy work available to professional support staff at contemporary higher education institutions (HEIs) and how these expressions can be understood as strategies in their work. Academics are the given audience for this legitimacy work. Professional support staff are commonly described as having blurred boundaries in relation to academics and as actors in a third space. The empirical data comprise 19 interviews with three categories of professional support staff at three HEIs of a technical orientation in Sweden. A finding, in relation to the educational and work experience of these support staff, is that techniques and procedures are at their fingertips in legitimacy work. This also touches upon the more intangible aspects of the categories and structures of the support staff that resemble those of academics. However, one of the main conclusions of this study concerns the strength of the expressions of professional and personal legitimacy in their legitimacy work. This conclusion coincides with the view that they are strong actors in a third space, who use their freedom to form their own roles and the pick and choose among alternative means in their strategies to gain and maintain legitimacy.

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  1. School of Industrial Engineering and Management, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden

    Malin Ryttberg

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  1. Malin Ryttberg
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Correspondence to Malin Ryttberg.

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Ryttberg, M. Legitimacy Dynamics of Professional Support Staff at Higher Education Institutions. High Educ Policy 35, 218–233 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41307-020-00206-w

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