By joshua 
Universities Are Not Corporations: Why HR Models Need Rethinking
New research challenges the assumption that corporate performance practices work in higher education
EDUCATION REPORT | 14 JANUARY 2026
Universities across the UK have spent the past two decades importing human resource practices from the corporate world, hoping to boost performance and efficiency. But new research suggests these strategies may be fundamentally mismatched to how academic institutions actually operate.
A study published in The Pinnacle Research Journal of Scientific and Management Sciences argues that high-performance work practices, whilst effective in business settings, often fail to account for the distinctive nature of academic work and university culture.
The research team, led by Madiha Hassan, a Senior Fellow of UK’s Higher Education Academy (SFHEA), and including scholars from multiple UK institutions, examined how staff in higher education experience workplace practices designed to enhance performance. Their findings reveal a significant gap between what works in corporate environments and what resonates with academic professionals.
THE CORPORATE TEMPLATE
High-performance work practices, or HPWP, have become a cornerstone of strategic human resource management over the past three decades. The concept is straightforward: certain combinations of HR practices, such as selective recruitment, extensive training, performance appraisal, and employee involvement, can significantly improve organisational performance.
Research in manufacturing, retail, and professional services has consistently shown positive effects. Companies that implement comprehensive HPWP systems report higher productivity, better quality, and improved financial performance.
These findings have encouraged policymakers and university leaders to adopt similar approaches in higher education. Performance management systems, competency frameworks, and structured appraisal processes have become increasingly common across UK universities.
However, the research team argues that this transfer assumes universities operate like businesses, an assumption that deserves closer scrutiny.
WHY UNIVERSITIES ARE DIFFERENT
Higher education institutions are not typical organisations. They are professional, knowledge-driven communities where staff possess high levels of expertise and expect substantial autonomy in their work.
Academic identity is shaped primarily by discipline rather than institution. A historian at one university often has more in common professionally with historians at other institutions than with colleagues in different departments at their own university.
Governance structures reflect this reality. Universities traditionally operate through collegial decision-making processes where academic staff participate in strategic choices, curriculum design, and resource allocation. Management authority is more distributed and contested than in corporate hierarchies.
“Universities are distinctive organisational contexts,” explains Dr Kennedy Oberhiri Obohwemu from PENKUP Research Institute, a renowned interdisciplinary researcher and one of the study’s authors. “Academic work requires high levels of autonomy, intellectual freedom, and peer collaboration. Practices that work well in command-and-control environments often generate resistance or disengagement in academic settings.”
The research draws on the Ability, Motivation and Opportunity (AMO) model, a well-established framework in HR research. The AMO model proposes that performance depends on three factors: whether employees have the ability to perform (through skills and knowledge), the motivation to perform (through incentives and support), and the opportunity to perform (through job design and organisational processes).
Applying this framework to higher education reveals where corporate HPWP models fall short.
ABILITY: BEYOND RECRUITMENT
In corporate settings, recruitment and selection are considered critical HPWP components. Hiring the right people is seen as foundational to organisational performance.
Universities certainly care about hiring quality staff. However, the research notes that recruitment plays a comparatively smaller role in shaping day-to-day academic performance than in other sectors.
Academic staff typically arrive with doctoral qualifications, extensive training, and established research or teaching track records. The variation in performance is less about selecting the right people initially and more about how institutions support their ongoing development.
Professional development becomes particularly important. Academics need continuous opportunities to update knowledge, develop pedagogical skills, engage with disciplinary advances, and build research capabilities.
Yet many universities have reduced investment in staff development whilst increasing performance monitoring. The research suggests this represents a misunderstanding of how ability is sustained and enhanced in academic contexts.
MOTIVATION: THE FEEDBACK PROBLEM
Performance appraisal systems are central to corporate HPWP models. Regular feedback, clear objectives, and performance-linked rewards are assumed to motivate employees.
Universities have adopted increasingly formal appraisal processes over recent years. However, academic staff often view these systems as bureaucratic exercises disconnected from meaningful professional development.
The research highlights a fundamental tension. Academics are motivated by intellectual challenge, disciplinary recognition, and contribution to knowledge. Performance appraisals that focus on metrics, targets, and standardised criteria often feel irrelevant to these deeper sources of motivation.
“The problem isn’t that academics resist feedback,” notes Dr Charles Leyman Kachitsa from Global Banking School (Leeds Trinity University Partnership), another team member. “They engage in constant peer review through research publication, conference presentations, and teaching evaluations. What they resist is generic appraisal processes that don’t connect to their scholarly identity or professional growth.”
The study argues that motivation in higher education depends more on recognition of expertise, opportunities for intellectual development, and alignment between individual interests and institutional priorities than on formal performance management.
OPPORTUNITY: THE CRITICAL DIMENSION
The most significant finding concerns opportunity-enhancing practices, the aspects of work design that enable employees to use their skills and motivation effectively.
In corporate HPWP models, opportunity practices typically include employee involvement in decision-making, communication systems, and team structures. These are important but often secondary to ability and motivation factors.
The research suggests that in higher education, opportunity practices are paramount. Autonomy over teaching methods and research direction, involvement in governance, effective communication from leadership, and collegial working relationships emerged as the strongest predictors of how academics experience their work environment.
Universities that preserve academic autonomy whilst improving communication and involving staff in strategic decisions appear to achieve better outcomes than those focusing primarily on recruitment, training, or performance appraisal.
This inverts the typical HPWP emphasis. Rather than concentrating on selecting and motivating the right individuals, universities may need to focus more on creating organisational conditions that allow highly capable, intrinsically motivated professionals to do their work effectively.
A SECTOR-SENSITIVE FRAMEWORK
The research proposes reconceptualising HPWP for higher education around several principles.
First, recognise that academic staff generally arrive with strong abilities and intrinsic motivation. The HR challenge is sustaining and supporting these qualities rather than instilling them.
Second, prioritise practices that enhance opportunity: meaningful autonomy, genuine involvement in decisions affecting academic work, transparent communication, and structures that facilitate collaboration whilst respecting disciplinary differences.
Third, design performance systems that connect to academic values. Feedback should support professional development and scholarly growth rather than serving primarily as accountability mechanisms.
Fourth, acknowledge the limits of standardisation. What constitutes high performance varies significantly across disciplines, career stages, and institutional contexts. Overly uniform approaches risk alienating staff whose work doesn’t fit prescribed templates.
Implications for University Leadership
The findings carry practical implications for how universities approach HR strategy.
Leaders should question whether importing corporate practices aligns with institutional values and academic culture. The goal is not to reject HPWP entirely but to adapt them thoughtfully to the higher education context.
Investment in staff development deserves renewed priority. As external pressures increase and academic roles evolve, continuous professional development becomes more important, not less.
Communication and involvement mechanisms need strengthening. Many universities have adopted corporate management structures that concentrate decision-making whilst reducing academic participation. The research suggests this may undermine performance rather than enhance it.
Performance management systems should be redesigned around professional development rather than compliance. This requires moving away from standardised annual reviews towards more flexible, discipline-sensitive approaches that support scholarly growth.
BROADER QUESTIONS
The research raises fundamental questions about the direction of higher education management.
Universities face genuine challenges: funding constraints, accountability pressures, competition for students and research income, and demands to demonstrate public value. It’s understandable that leaders look to proven management techniques from other sectors.
However, the distinctive nature of academic work and university organisation means that practices effective elsewhere may not translate straightforwardly. The risk is that poorly adapted corporate models generate compliance costs without delivering promised performance benefits, whilst eroding the professional autonomy and collegial culture that make universities distinctive.
The study calls for more research examining how HPWP actually affect academic staff wellbeing, research productivity, teaching quality, and institutional outcomes. Most existing evidence comes from corporate contexts. Higher education needs its own evidence base.
Longitudinal studies tracking how different HR practices influence academic careers over time would be particularly valuable. So would comparative research examining variations across disciplines, institutional types, and national systems.
A DIFFERENT KIND OF ORGANISATION
The research ultimately argues for recognising universities as a different kind of organisation requiring a different approach to human resource management.
“The point isn’t that performance doesn’t matter in higher education,” says Dr Ulunma Ikwuoma Mariere from PENKUP Research Institute, a co-author. “It’s that performance in academic work depends on factors that corporate HPWP models don’t adequately capture. We need frameworks that reflect how knowledge work actually happens in professional communities.”
As universities continue adapting to changing circumstances, the question is whether they will develop HR approaches suited to their distinctive characteristics or continue borrowing models designed for fundamentally different contexts.
The answer matters not just for academic staff but for the quality of research and teaching that universities produce and the contribution they make to society.
About the Study
The research, “Revisiting the Ability, Motivation and Opportunity (AMO) Model in UK Higher Education: A Conceptual Expansion of High-Performance Work Practices,” appears in The Pinnacle Research Journal of Scientific and Management, Volume 3, Issue 1. The study was conducted by researchers from Leeds Trinity University, Oxford Brookes University, University of Wolverhampton, and other UK institutions, with support from PENKUP Research Institute in Birmingham, as part of the PENKUP Collaboration.
CHECK OUT THE COMPLETE STUDY HERE:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/399692478_Revisiting_the_Ability_Motivation_and_Opportunity_AMO_Model_in_UK_Higher_Education_A_Conceptual_Expansion_of_High-Performance_Work_Practices_HPWP
https://aimjournals.com/index.php/tprjsms/article/view/450
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