Do Evaluative Pressures and Group Identification Cultivate Competitive Orientations and Cynical Attitudes Among Academics?

Abstract

AbstractThis article theorizes and analyzes how two aspects of the increasing accountingization of academia in the form of evaluative pressures and group identification, independently and interactively, work to cultivate academics’ self-interest for their social interactions with the scientific community, forming them to adopt more competitive orientations and cynical attitudes. Using data of a large number of faculty members from the 17 universities in Sweden, it is shown that evaluative pressures and group identification perceived by academics jointly reinforce each other (interact) in affecting their competitive orientation, and that group identification strengthens (moderates) the positive relation between evaluative pressures and academics’ rivalry notions and cynical attitudes. It is shown, contributing further to research on performance evaluation and the cultivation of self-interest and an egoistic ethical climate in academia, that it is evaluative pressures from peers rather than from performance measurements that are the major driver of an individual’s competitive (less cooperative) orientation and cynical attitudes. It is also concluded that while evaluative pressures are related to an increase in academics' competitive orientations, which may be viewed as an intended effect from control designers in universities, such an orientation is inversely related to cooperativeness and openness toward others and goes hand in hand with an increase in having cynical attitudes about peers and the work environment. Control designers in universities may thus not be able to have the one without the other, something that raises ethical concerns for academic leaders to reflect upon when aiming at cultivating self-interest orientations of academics.