Organisational change is inevitable, if you stay in any one organisation long enough. BU was an outlier for quite a while, having had a VC that stayed in post for over a decade. Far more common are UK HEIs with revolving doors for that top post, as ladder-climbers use them as stepping stones to positions in industry or government.

Some manage change well. Others, less so. Let’s talk a little about this latter case: the experience of going through large structural changes, bringing concerns to the people in charge (often repeatedly), only to to be met with the same pattern. A flurry of apologetic meetings, vague reassurances, and sometimes a small, cosmetic fix. But no strategy. No accountability. No structural response.

We’ve come to realise: this is not incompetence. This is a tactic.

The Firefighting Model

In organisational theory, this approach is known as reactive firefighting: management rushes to extinguish visible flames (minor issues), but does nothing to address the systemic arson. According to Barber and Warn’s 2005 model of reactive vs proactive leadership, organisations stuck in firefighting mode often treat symptoms rather than root causes, leading to burnout and perpetual crisis. Sound familiar?

From Outlier to Overwhelming: How They Control the Narrative

Every time we present systemic evidence of trust erosion, procedural opacity, or workload breaches, management tells us the same thing: “These are isolated incidents.”

Then, when we insist it’s widespread and documented, they pivot: “Systemic problems can’t be fixed overnight.”

They frame our concerns as either irrelevant (“just one bad line manager”) or unfixable (“the whole culture needs changing, but that takes time”). Conveniently, this means they never have to act. It’s very reminiscent of the discourse over the abominable state of policing in the USA that has been exposed to a wider public by the Black Lives Matter movement.

This tactic of first minimising then deflecting has a name: scapegoating and gaslighting.

Gaslighting in the Workplace

Gaslighting at work isn’t always overt. It happens when institutions:

• Deny promises previously made (like a non-existent appeals process)
• Rewrite reality (“you’ve already been given that documentation”)
• Pretend transparency while withholding the core data

As Kukreja and Pandey (2023) argue in their study on workplace gaslighting, these behaviours lead to a breakdown of trust and make staff question their own perceptions. This is not a bug in the restructuring; it’s a feature.

Scapegoating as a Defensive Reflex

Scapegoating is a classic organisational defence mechanism. It redirects attention from leadership failures by attributing blame to a convenient target — often someone lower in the hierarchy. By isolating an issue to a “problematic” individual or department, senior leadership avoids scrutiny, preserves its authority, and undermines solidarity. It’s not only demoralising; it actively erodes trust. As organisational researchers note, persistent scapegoating leads to a culture of fear and disengagement, where staff feel expendable and unsupported.

Who Gets Blamed? Not Senior Management.

Notably, responsibility is always deflected. It’s the line managers. It’s HR. It’s someone on annual leave. It’s a past administration. It’s a misunderstanding. Anyone but the VC, the DVC, or the senior team actually responsible for strategy.

But if the entire forest is on fire, and the fire captain keeps blaming the crew, you don’t need a new crew. You need a new captain.

What Good (Proactive) Management Looks Like

If the patterns described above are hallmarks of poor leadership, then good leadership must look very different. Proactive, ethical management:

• Acknowledges systemic issues rather than disavowing them
• Owns institutional responsibility instead of blaming others
• Plans and communicates transparently, ensuring staff understand not just what is happening, but why
• Invests in trust-building, not just wellbeing services, recognising that safety comes from being heard and respected
• Engages meaningfully with staff voice, treating trade unions as partners, not nuisances
• Implements structural reform, not performative gestures

Leadership means more than occupying a title. It means being accountable to those whose labour sustains the institution. It means acting not to preserve power, but to uphold collective purpose.

Until that becomes the norm, we will continue to do the work they should be doing. We will protect each other. We will push for what higher education should be.

In Solidarity

We see the pattern. We name the tactics. We resist the narrative.

Illegitimi non carborundum.