The suppression of ethical dispositions through managerial governmentality: A habitus crisis in Australian higher education

‘Fiscal’ and other so‐called ‘crises’ in Australian universities are more fundamentally, it is argued in this article, crises of government decision and ‘governmentality’. Using an illustrative ‘morality tale’ drawn from their working knowledge of the Australian university sector, the authors take a critically reflexive perspective, working from the sociological concepts of Pierre Bourdieu, to explore the significance of shifts in governance practices in the field of universities. The paper examines the crisis as it is lived and experienced at an inter‐subjective level: what Bourdieu calls ‘habitus’. It is argued that new ‘rules of the game’ are creating severe conflict within the dispositional constitution of professional identities, especially in the suppression of dispositions to be ethical agents in the everyday life of our own field of work. It is suggested that this analytical approach offers important directions for further research in the area of understanding organizational change, with implications for educational leadership.