Secrets of the beehive: Performance management in university research organizations

Abstract

This article explores how universities have implemented research performance systems. It considers how researchers working as managers assume the responsibility for research groups, and how they deal with managerial pressures from higher levels of management and outside forces. Drawing on in-depth interviews with research managers, we discuss how this particular responsibility is shaping up in their practices and perceptions. This article shows how role ambivalence enables research managers to view stricter performance requirements as being both problematic and challenging. These managers engage in alternative ways of moulding and legitimizing their activity by negotiating its terms and conditions with the universities and researchers alike. The notion of resilient compliance is put forward to convey the idea that research managers’ ambivalence regarding prevalent pressures is subsequently reconciled by introducing new organizing elements into the workplace. We argue that because a focus on agency appears lacking in analyses of performance management in universities, academics’ power to deal with potentially adverse situations imposed by managerialism has been largely underestimated.