1 Divided communities: introducing the preferences of academics into the analysis of promotion. Luis Sanz-Menéndez and Laura Cruz-Castro CSIC Institute of Public Goods and Policies (IPP) Calle Albasanz 26-28, 28037 Madrid (Spain) Luis.Sanz@csic.es Laura.Cruz@csic.es Draft version, please do not quote! Abstract Academic employment systems have been subjected to policy-driven changes in many countries but the university sector is still governed by collegial dynamics in which academics’ views and attitudes are important. The present study, based on data from questionnaire survey responses of 4460 university faculty members in Spain, attempts to explain the preferences of academics towards the different systems of hiring and promotion in the university sector that have been in operation in the last 15 years, with varying degrees of centralization versus delegation of the evaluation processes to the local academic communities. After two reforms and eight years of operation of the current system, more than half of academics would still prefer a different model. We identify four different sets of explanatory factors conceptually linked to: academics’ self-interest, beliefs and values, personal experience and learning, and socialization and institutional factors. We find that academics’ preferences are not primarily explained by their career advancement interests. Our results show that preferences regarding the recruitment and promotion systems are strongly associated with a set of beliefs, opinions and values, especially the belief in the relative suitability of systems to guarantee a merit-based selection. Interestingly, those with university managerial experience are less likely to prefer the current model. This is also the case for those with higher academic rank, age and academic quality. No significant differences by gender were found. Keywords: academics’ preferences, promotion systems, evaluation practices, university hiring, tenure, meritocracy 1. Introduction There is a considerable body of research aimed at characterising university systems (Clark 1983; Marginson and Rhoades 2002; Olsen 2007; Dobbing et al. 2011) and at identifying which factors are critical for understanding national variation. Different systems create different types of university actorhood (Kruecken and Meier 2006; Whitley, 2012). University governance affects research outputs and a generally positive correlation between the degree of university autonomy (in employment