Stop the blame-gaming, gaslighting, and deflection

It’s become painfully clear over the last year that the leadership management at Bournemouth University treats systemic problems as though they were random, isolated misfortunes. When workloads remain unnegotiated, when over‑allocations go unaddressed, when disability adjustments vanish and the university’s own procedures are bungled, the response from management is never accountability — it’s deflection. Management passes EDI issues to the EDI committee, health crises to the Health & Wellbeing team, workload chaos to sub‑groups that meet sporadically at best.

Not once has the senior management team acknowledged that their actions are what are causing these systemic issues and crises. This is not leadership; this is blame avoidance dressed up as governance.

This pattern isn’t unique to BU. In organisational science, it’s recognised that blame‑shifting, avoiding accountability, and deflecting systemic problems onto others are hallmarks of toxic or ineffective leadership. Leaders Managers who prioritise their own comfort, reputation, and authority over organisational health tend to “outsource” responsibility for failures to subcommittees, middle managers, or procedural mechanisms that are ill‑equipped to fix core problems. These behaviours correlate with poor communication, fear‑based culture, and systemic stress — precisely what we are seeing on the ground. (See Tavanti 2011, p.130).

Take the university’s handling of workload planning. Six months in, leadership management has still not delivered meaningful progress: the WLP governance and policy sub‑groups have met, revised documents marginally, and now postponed meetings until the New Year. In practice, this means no publication of agreed workloads, stagnant processes, and continuing ambiguity for staff who remain uncertain about what they’re expected to deliver — or whether those expectations make sense. This isn’t procedural refinement. It’s a shrug dressed up as a strategy.

Similarly, when confronted with the fact that over 50% of colleagues do not have agreed workloads, the institutional response was confusion and silence — not solution‑driven action. In one meeting, management representatives seemed unable to explain how they were counting, let alone fix the fundamental breakdown of dialogue between staff and school leads. Meanwhile, staff report that declining workloads in the WAMS has no practical effect on their published plans; those who have followed procedure to indicate their workloads are not appropriate have had little, if any, follow-up from management. By all indications, management is ignoring declined workloads. That is organisational malpractice, not negotiation.

The chronic deferral of accountability to committees mirrors documented organisational failure dynamics. Research shows that when institutions fail to face problems systemically, they embed failure into their culture. Instead of addressing structural causes — poor decision‑making, lack of transparency, inconsistent procedures — they scatter responsibility across working groups and procedural hoops, producing fragmentation instead of solutions. deficiencies “Leadership deficiencies are a significant cause of organizational failure” (Hariyani, et al. 2024, n.p.).

What’s worse, this avoidance behavior feeds back into the organisation, creating a vicious cycle. Studies on leadership and organisational stress link ineffective leadership directly to heightened burnout, anxiety, low morale, and health problems among staff — exactly what BU UCU members are reporting (Pyc, Meltzer, & Liu 2017).

This is more than semantics: it’s organisational pathology. Leadership that consistently refuses to own systemic breakdowns and hides behind subcommittees is not just inept — it is harmful. The decision to pass systemic problems off to siloed groups while claiming the executive team isn’t at fault fits classic patterns of blame avoidance. When leaders refuse to engage with the root causes of dysfunction, they inadvertently encourage a culture where problems are managed downwards — onto lower tiers of staff or onto procedural minutiae — rather than solved.

The damage of this approach is multi‑fold:

1. Erosion of trust: Staff quickly learn that “EDI committee” or “WLP sub‑group” are euphemisms for no response. Trust dissolves when leaders talk about fairness yet ignore fundamental issues like disability adjustments and workload equity.

2. Worsening mental health: Chronic lack of clarity, compounded deadlines, and mismanaged grievance procedures are stressors — and research ties this to occupational stress triggered by ineffective leadership (Jacobs 2019).

3. Decline in institutional reputation: When leadership declines to take responsibility, organisations become brittle. The UK sector has seen universities collapse or nearly collapse due to leadership failure and poor governance — like Dundee, where senior managers’ “‘overbearing leadership style'”, “dislike of ‘awkward’ questioning”, and routine shut-downs of dissent or challege led to financial collapse (Cameron 2025, n.p.) — reminding us what happens when leadership management fiddles while the institution burns.

4. Systemic avoidance of innovation or improvement: Blaming others for systemic flaws — or acting as though they are insolvable — means the institution never learns or evolves. Organisations that own their failures are able to transform; those that hide from them spiral deeper into dysfunction.

We have reached a tipping point. Passing unresolved issues to committees is not the same as accountability. Let’s stop equating motion with progress. Leadership Management must acknowledge that systemic problems are systemic — and systemic accountability is the only antidote.

Real leadership looks like this: clear, transparent action plans, genuine engagement with staff experiences, and ownership of problems rather than deflection to committees. Everything else is just theatre.

The sector faces extraordinary pressures right now. But pretending that governance “sub‑groups” are meaningful solutions to deep, persistent dysfunction is not leadership — it’s avoidance.

And we, the academic community, deserve better.

BU UCU recognises that many of our members are managers in this institution. So how can you do better while senior management is failing you?

Advice for Line Managers: How to Lead Well When Senior Management Isn’t

Leadership doesn’t stop at the executive suite (and in some cases, doesn’t even start there!). In times of organisational dysfunction, good line managers become the real frontline defence for staff wellbeing, fairness, and sustainable workloads. You may not be able to fix systemic failure from above — but you can influence how it plays out in your team.

Below are clear, evidence‑based practices you can adopt now.

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1. Protect Your Team’s Workload Sanely

a) Track and Document Real Work

If management’s workload planning process is incoherent, create your own workload tracker (feel free to use ours!) for your team that accurately reflects real responsibilities — not management’s best‑case assumptions.

Research on workload management shows that transparent, bottom‑up accounting of tasks increases fairness perceptions and reduces burnout (Han et al. 2025).

b) Encourage Staff to Decline Unreasonable Workloads

Staff often keep quiet about unrealistic allocations for fear of reprisal. But silence feeds the illusion that workloads are agreed.

You can lead here by:

• Encouraging staff to formally decline workloads that are inaccurate or unsustainable.
• Helping them draft respectful, fact‑based decline notes.
• Follow up with them to negotiate their workloads properly.

Psychological safety — the belief that “I can speak up without negative consequences” — is linked to better performance and lower burnout (Edmondson 2018).

2. Be the Advocate for Fair EDI Practice

Senior management repeatedly passes EDI issues to committees or health services without addressing underlying barriers. Line managers can make a difference:

a) Proactively Check Reasonable Adjustments

Don’t wait for HR to act.

Actions:

• Review each team member’s documented adjustments.
• Ensure they match practice, not just policy.
• If adjustments aren’t being implemented, escalate it in writing (email + documented request).

The CIPD highlights that effective implementation of adjustments is critical for inclusion and staff retention (CIPD 2023).

b) Normalise Open Conversations (Safely)

Many colleagues from cultural backgrounds where self‑promotion is uncomfortable feel lost in appraisal or promotion processes.

Encourage:

• Practice conversations about achievements early and often.
• Construct evidence folders together to make appraisal evidence less daunting.

This builds equity and reduces vulnerability to biased evaluation.

3. Build Team Psychological Safety

When senior leadership is tone‑deaf (using internal comms as their own little travel blog, maybe), unpredictability increases anxiety and sick leave.

Psychological safety means: staff feel safe to share concerns without fear of reprisal.

You can build it by:

• Holding regular one‑to‑ones with consistent agenda + action items.
• Sharing what you do and don’t know honestly.
• Acknowledging uncertainty openly.
• Enabling anonymous feedback mechanisms

Psychological safety strongly correlates with team performance and wellbeing (Edmondson 2018).

4. Establish Your Own Communication Norms

Senior communication failures (e.g., ad‑hoc notices, cancelled meetings) demoralise staff.

Set better norms within your team:

• Weekly team check‑ins with clear summaries.
• Shared documents with actions and deadlines.
• Explicit communication about expectations and timelines.

This compensates for systemic failures in communication and reduces team stress.

5. Escalate Systemically — but With Evidence

Senior management responds to data, not just urgency.

Compile evidence for escalation:

• Document the number of declined workloads + reasons
• Track unimplemented adjustments
• Record patterns of unilateral changes to unit specs
• Collect testimony (anonymised where preferred)

Then escalate systematically:

1. Written record to HR/management
2. Submission to management, committees
3. Copy to Trade Union representatives

Research on organisational escalation shows that systematic, documented escalation increases the likelihood of institutional response compared to sporadic complaints (Ashford & Tsui 1991).

6. Manage Your Own Resilience (Yes, It Matters)

Leading amid dysfunction strains your own physical and mental health. Burnout isn’t heroic — it’s avoidable.

Do this:

• Block regular time off in diaries — and protect it.
• Use supervision/peer support with other line managers.
• Set boundaries around email outside of work hours.

Line managers’ wellbeing is a key predictor of team wellbeing (Skakon et al. 2010).

7. Reinforce Autonomy Within Your Sphere

When senior management is top‑down and unpredictable:

• Delegate ownership of small tasks
• Invite team input on processes and decisions
• Let people lead solutions where you have authority

This restores agency, countering the learned helplessness that comes from systemic dysfunction.

In Short

Although senior leadership management at BU is failing to take responsibility, line managers have real power to:

• document and correct workload misalignment
• protect staff wellbeing
• implement EDI in practice
• normalise psychological safety
• communicate coherently
• escalate evidence systematically

By acting as a buffer, line managers don’t just protect individuals — they preserve institutional integrity.

In solidarity,

BU UCU