Still rector, no longer in charge: symbolic displacement and managerial governance in a Polish private university

Abstract

This article examines how academic authority can be hollowed out without formally abolishing academic leadership. Drawing on 23 repeated interviews conducted over 21 months with the rector of a Polish private university, supplemented by observations and organisational artefacts, I trace how the appointment of a chief executive officer reconfigured the relationship between the rectoral office and the authority attached to it. I develop the concept of symbolic displacement to describe a process in which a formal leadership office remains visible and continues to perform legitimating functions while practical authority over agendas, resources, institutional representation and the academic core increasingly migrates elsewhere. The analysis identifies four mechanisms through which this occurs: spatial reassignment, ritual reordering, representational capture and managerial extension into the academic core. It further shows that displacement does not require passivity: the rector continued to object and invoke academic authority but increasingly lacked the organisational leverage to make that resistance consequential. The article extends institutional accounts of decoupling by locating the separation between formal legitimacy and practical authority within leadership offices themselves. It also specifies the conditions under which hybrid governance may become asymmetrical, allowing collegial forms to remain institutionally visible while managerial actors acquire increasing practical authorship over university activity.