ABSTRACT
Academic babble was a force, powerful but ephemeral, was noise, rumour and gossip, something that circulated orally. Ministerial machinations harassed it, transformed it, made it substantial and put it to work (from Clark, 2006)
PREAMBLE
At the end of 1997, about the time I submitted a PhD thesis to the University of Nottingham with the title “Making Managers in UK Further and Higher Education,”1 I had lunch with some Nottingham colleagues including Michael ‘Mick’ Rowlinson. Mick is probably best known for his critical historical analysis of Cadburys (Smith et al., 1990). Over lunch he listened politely to what was probably an overly glowing description of a PhD by an overly committed PhD student. When I fi nished the description he turned to me and asked: “Did you fi nd any managers?”
