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(2012) calls “deceptive identity forged by concepts” (p. 41), A final fantasy is that of inevitability, which refers to the
as if the concept of your sticker price would fully define who idea that the post-Browne Review pro-market changes in
you are as a university. The cherry on top of the cake of this public policy were unavoidable. This represents a fantasy,
fantasy is that somehow people forget that if every university insofar as for the implemented policies, alternatives actually
actually became Oxford and Cambridge, then nobody would existed. Something acknowledged by the Browne Review
be Oxford and Cambridge, because no one would be top: By itself, which addressed other alternative models. However,
definition, everyone would be average. Therefore, the dream inevitability might be fulfilling the wish to escape the para-
of all being top, reputable, ultra-prestigious universities can- doxical position, by envisioning this as unavoidable, as if the
not by definition ever be reached. Thus, the idea of the pres- leader could not do anything to prevent it. Almost as if the
tige emerges from the wish of liberating oneself from a changes had to happen, as if they were meant to be. More
difficult position, while the wish remains impossible, mak- importantly, the inevitability of the natural and mundane
ing this, then, a fantasy. More importantly, as this is a fantasy paradoxical position is natural and mundane too, and thus,
that did not require the invocation of the supernatural or any this fantasy presents itself once more as a magical realist fan-
sort of fissure between the natural order and the fantasy, it is tasy too. Table 2 illustrates the three fantasies with quotes.
a magical realist fantasy to be more specific. Here, that which
is fantasized—the magic of a sticker price fully defining the Discussion
identity of a university—has been disguised as part of the
essence of the mundane reality. Now, the question is, how do the three discussed leaders’ fan-
A second fantasy was that of the independent agenda. tasies bestow on leaders some liberation from their paradoxi-
This, simply put, is about how post-Browne Review pro- cal position? It is difficult to understand fully how liberation
market policies might not make sense and put university might be working. Yet there are some indications of this if
leaders in a paradoxical position, yet there is something one looks closer at the three magical realist fantasies. In the
beyond all these mundanities that is much more important: prestige fantasy, liberation might not be as romantic as it
an independent agenda that the university will follow regard- sounds, as it might require simply to change one type of
less of the hassles of the so-called real world. Hence, the power for another. In short, leaders, by focusing on becom-
independent agenda fantasy changes the meaning of the ing the most prestigious university, might be enabled to over-
higher education reforms by saying: forget about things come the frustration regarding the policy changes and the
pointing to the market, things are actually pointing to some- power that these policies had on them. Yet the irony emerges
thing that is independent of it. For instance, a Vice-President as it appears like this fantasy is liberating them from their
from UniY, about the Browne Review, said, paradoxical position, by making them now enslaved to the
delusion of aiming at all cost to look and feel as a so-called
top university. Therefore, here, we have simply an exchange
Well it was on the radar, but I don’t think that we were doing
anything specifically to anticipate what it was coming from the or transformation of power. First, the leader might have been
review, because it didn’t matter what the review said, we needed subjugated to a paradoxical position. However, once the
to implement changes. So really you know increasing the leader turns to the prestige fantasy, the leader quickly
quality, extending the breath of what we were doing was going becomes subjugated to another form of power in another sort
to be important irrespective of what would come out of the of paradoxical position, which this time requires from the
review. leader to obsess with turning her university into a sort of
Oxford and Cambridge. Thus, one subjugation has been
So the independent agenda fantasy is about a mystical— turned into another.
almost metaphysical—kernel that cannot be touched by the In the second fantasy—that is, the independent agenda—
mundanities of the so-called real world. The idea of the inde- liberation might be working differently. Here, leaders down-
pendent agenda lies in a popular metaphysical ethos that played the role of their paradoxical position, by arguing that
there might be in organizations (or other types of entities) a there was a protected unchanged kernel in universities. This
kernel that is not affected by the disturbances around them fantasy if it liberates, it does through resistance. In short,
(Schoeneborn, 2016). However, organizations actually leaders acknowledged their paradoxical position; yet they
define their environment and the environment defines orga- resisted the power that this position had over them by argu-
nizations, making it qua impossible to define a clear-cut line ing that universities have actually been protected given their
between them (Stacey, 1992). Thus, there might be a kernel, unchanged kernel, which in spite of whatever power, remains
but who knows what or where exactly it is. And, therefore, always untouched. This echoes the Foucauldian realization
this probably remains a fantasy. Yet, it is in particular a magi- that “where there is power there is also resistance” (Lukes,
cal realist fantasy, as that untouched kernel, even if perpetu- 2005, p. 100). The independent agenda, hence, is important,
ally fictitious, is still part of the mundane order of what a because it provides leaders with the experience or feeling
university allegedly is. that even if they cannot control the external environment that