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University governing bodies, especially academic boards, play a crucial role in policy formation. However, due to the predominance of managerial values over academic values in the policy-making process, a persistent divide exists between policy formulation and implementation. This divide results from the marginalisation of academics and the dominance of managerial authority figures within these bodies. Our study investigates the latter to determine the precise Foucauldian apparatus used by authority figures to influence policy-making meetings. Using an innovative arts-based method, we analyse ethnographic vignettes through a Foucauldian lens and transform them into collages depicting the apparatus used by authority figures: Strategic Managerial Monumentalism, Managerial Historical Revisionism, Managerial Discursive Dominance, Managerial Panoptic Surveillance, and Managerial Normalisation. We contend that only a well-defined separation of governance powers can effectively counter the encroachment of managerialism and uphold the democratic representation of academic values in university policies to bridge the policy-practice divide.

University institutional policy is poorly understood. While policy is required by law for universities to accept funding and is revered for articulating values, mitigating risk, and guiding practice, policy is frequently considered absurd and resisted in practice. This is the policy-practice divide. To gain a better understanding of this divide and the nature of the resistance, we asked policy actors to describe their experiences with policy development, implementation, enactment, and review. We asked: "If policy is absurd, what is the nature of the relationship between policy and university management, and how do those who enact policy deal with this absurdity?" We discovered that university management has an infinitely regressive self-fulfilling relationship with policy because they intentionally exclude the workforce from policy-making and see themselves as solely responsible for policy interpretation and implementation. However, when Kierkegaard's concepts of absurdity, faith, hope, and doubt are applied to policy actors' experiences, we see that resistance can be characterised positively as a "leap of faith," where those who enact policy overcome their doubts and reinterpret it to achieve some semblance of good. This is an unintended consequence for managerialism, as deliberately creating a policy-practice divide solicits resistive "good" practices from policy actors.