Mapping of academic housekeeping

The JML group at the ABE School has identified the need to map the "academic housekeeping" at the School, i.e. non-meritorious tasks performed by faculty members but not included in any employee's job description. 

When the survey results have been compiled, the ABE School's management should have a clear picture of what non-meritorious tasks exist within the School and how they are currently distributed, an answer to whether there are unequal working conditions in this regard, and a basis for decision-making to address any inequalities.

No. The survey is voluntary, but the more people who take part in it, the better the results will be and the better the basis for future management decisions.

The survey is done in the tool Artologik, of which KTH has previous positive experiences. The link between your e-mail address and your answers only remains in the system while you are answering the survey. As soon as you press the "Submit my answers" button, the link is completely broken and cannot be recreated. Neither the ABE School, Stratvise nor Artisan (which provides the Artologik Survey system) will be able to see who has answered what, nor who has answered. However, the system allows for reminders to be sent out later only to those who have not yet responded to the survey at that time.

If you have pressed the "Save" button, you can go back to the survey and change your saved answers. If you have pressed the "Submit my answers" button, you can no longer make any changes.

The term 'academic housework' has been chosen to show the parallel with many tasks that are carried out in a home, but which those who do not carry out the tasks may not think about. They are not the same type of tasks, but the end result is the same - a well-functioning home and a well-functioning institution.

There is no agreed definition of academic housekeeping, but researchers often describe it as internal, non-remunerative tasks that need to be performed in an academic institution for it to run smoothly and that are carried out by some but not all faculty members. 

In other words, it is not about all the work that faculty members do in their core tasks of research, teaching and community engagement. Nor is it about the work carried out by administrative staff within the framework of their duties. Nor does it refer to individual administrative tasks that everyone does, such as timekeeping or learning a new computer program to manage travel expenses. 

The concept originates from the United States and was introduced in Sweden by Sara Kalm at the Department of Political Science at Lund University in her article " Om akademiskt hushållsarbete och dess fördelning "

The questions in the questionnaire are based on a number of qualitative interviews conducted in November and December with different people in different departments and holding different positions at the ABE school.

The reason why you have to answer background factors about yourself in the questionnaire is to make it possible to analyze the results from an intersectional perspective, i.e. how different grounds of discrimination can affect/affect each other and the power relations between people.

The term intersectionality comes from the English word intersection. The term is used to highlight specific situations of disadvantage that risk being created at intersections of power relations based on, for example, ethnicity, gender, age, etc. Intersectional analyses show that people are never "just" their gender or age. An intersectional analysis can, for example, be about paying attention to how a person's gender and ethnicity give them different conditions than people of a different gender, but with the same ethnicity. An intersectional analysis can show that combinations of these categories can put some people at a disadvantage compared to others.

The purpose of the survey is to shed light on how non-meritorious tasks are distributed, but in order to be able to analyze differences in how different types of tasks are distributed, the survey in some cases contains questions about both meritorious and non-meritorious variants of certain tasks. Sometimes there may also be differences in what different people perceive as meritorious.

Stratvise is a network of experienced management consultants with clients in the private, public and non-profit sectors. They have been commissioned to conduct this survey through a procurement process conducted by the ABE School.