Every little action counts: How cognitive, affective, relational, and agentic (micro-)practices support academic micro-transformation

There is an abundance of lamentations on the ills of academia, and a more modest, but growing, discussion on how to both reimagine academia and delegitimize its dominant micro-practices. What is missing, however, is a clearer understanding of how individual academics can help to move academia from reimagination and delegitimization to transformation. Addressing this lacuna, our article makes three interrelated contributions. First, we conceptualize a novel process that we call academic micro-transformation, where change occurs through small, interconnected acts. Second, drawing on the vocabulary of Positive Organizational Scholarship, we create a typology that demonstrates how cognitive, affective, relational, and agentic change mechanisms can be implemented through daily practices that accumulate and – over time – reshape the academic ecosystem structurally. Finally, we offer readers a practical template with a range of example micro-practices that all of us – from early career academics to emeriti – can enact on a daily basis to support academic micro-transformation.