ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines how university managers have constructed their institutions as knowledge businesses, and how they have suppressed critical discussion of the knowledge business in order to present their agendas for change as self-evident. It provides critical examinations of how the commercialisation of the academic environment has influenced the way in which universities are conducting themselves in the worlds of government and business where research funds can be obtained. The book concerns two dimensions of the knowledge business: the management of the institutions that academic researchers work within; and how this is changing the context within which academic knowledge production takes place and the changing nature of the academic labour process itself. It also includes the discussion of the institutional politics of contract research by providing an overview of the pressures for a commercial approach to academic research.
