Empowered or constrained? the paradox of faculty agency under university autonomy reforms

Ahmet Aypay, Saule Yeszhanova, Alper Çalıkoğlu, Aida Sagintayeva, Zhadyra Makhmetova

2026

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DOI 10.1080/03075079.2026.2739396
Data confidence 70 medium
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Abstract

This article examines how faculty members at Kazakhstan’s regional universities interpret and enact autonomy reforms, focusing on the paradoxical relationship between expanded formal autonomy and constrained institutional capacity. While Emirbayer and Mische’s (Citation1998) concept of agency as a temporally embedded process was the main analytical framework, Oliver’s (Citation1991) strategic response framework and Thomas and Kilmann’s (Citation1976) conflict model were also used to complement it. The study analyzes how academics negotiate autonomy under conditions of uncertainty and resource constraint. Based on 18 semi-structured individual interviews and focus group discussions (FGDs) involving 24 additional faculty members, this study draws on data from 42 participants across five regional universities. The findings reveal that faculty agency is relational, emergent, and context-dependent. Faculty respond to autonomy reforms through a range of strategies from acquiescence and compromise to defiance and manipulation. While autonomy expands faculty’s projective agency in curricular and pedagogical domains, it simultaneously constrains agency in governance and conflict, producing what this study conceptualizes as an agency paradox of university autonomy. Overall, the findings reconceptualize autonomy not as a fixed entitlement but as a negotiated and conflict-mediated process shaped by institutional capacity, leadership, trust, and regional conditions, with implications for the design of autonomy reforms in resource-constrained higher education systems.