Scholar’s Online Organizational Engagement and its Consequences for Higher Education Sustainability

Maria Jose Sá

CIPES-Centre for Research in Higher Education Policies, Matosinhos, Portugal.

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0991-3669

Carlos Miguel Ferreira

ISCTE – University Institute of Lisbon, Av. das Forças Armadas, Lisbon, Portugal; Interdisciplinary Centre of Social Sciences – CICS; Estoril Higher Institute for Tourism and Hotel Studies, Portugal.

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0130-4650

Sandro Serpa

University of the Azores, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Department of Education; and Interdisciplinary Centre for Childhood and Adolescence – NICA-UAc, R. da Mãe de Deus, Ponta Delgada, The Azores, Portugal.

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4286-4440

DOI: https://doi.org/10.20448/journal.509.2020.72.153.158

Keywords: Online organizational engagement, Psychological contract, Academic profession, Scholar, Organizational socialization process, Higher education sustainability.


Abstract

Currently, there is an increase in online organizational engagement in the academic profession. This paper fits in this context and aims to analyze the scholar’s online organizational engagement in higher education sustainability. For that purpose, the authors carried out a collection and documentary analysis of publications on this topic. The results of this conceptual analysis allow concluding that some academics may perceive the requirements for online engagement as excessive. These academics question the confidence they have in their institution and, consequently, the psychological contract itself and the distinction between professional life and personal and family life, which they may perceive as a new form of control and monitoring. However, it is worth highlighting the difference in expectations between academics themselves, caused, among other factors, by the type of contractual experience and by their digital literacy, as well as by their ideological representations about the academic profession and, consequently, in the relative importance of their professional autonomy. In this scenario, the pre- and initial organizational socialization processes are critical in the (re)definition of the psychological contract of scholar’s online organizational engagement in the context of higher education sustainability.

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