Higher education has been subject to substantial reforms as new forms of performance management are implemented in universities across the world. Extant research suggests that in many cases performance management systems have disrupted academic life. We complement this literature with an extensive mixed methods study of how the performance management system is understood by academics across universities and departments in Finland at a time when new management principles and practices are being forcefully introduced. While our survey results enabled us to map the generally critical and negative view that Finnish scholars have of performance management, the qualitative inquiry allowed us to disentangle how and why our respondents resent the ways and means of measuring their work, the assumptions that underlie the measurement, and the university ideal on which the performance management system is rooted. Most significantly, we highlight how the proliferation of performance management can be seen as a catalyst for changing the very ethos of what it is to be an academic and to do academic work.

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In this article, the authors analyze some of the developments and weaknesses in organizational environmental studies and make an effort to evaluate the field's current status, role, and future prospects. During recent years, the field of management and organizational studies has witnessed environmental research gaining a secure foothold, especially in quantitative terms. It is questionable, however, whether it is actually organizational environmental studies that has arrived or whether the discourse is in fact only a minor annex or a slight modification of the same old themes in management and organizational studies. This is because of the fact that it is still too early to say that organizations and natural-environment-related research would have been able to develop its own theory base and legitimate posture in relation to the management and organizational studies.

Purpose This purpose of this study is to understand how the spread of audit culture and the related public sector reforms have affected Finnish universities’ organization principles, performance measurement (PM) criteria and ultimately their reason for being. Design/methodology/approach Applying extensive qualitative data by combining interview data with document materials, this study takes a longitudinal perspective toward the changing Finnish higher education field. Findings The analysis suggests the reforms have altered universities’ administrative structures, planning and control systems, coordination mechanisms and the role of staff units, as well as the allocation of power and thus challenged their reason for being. Power has become concentrated into the hands of formal managers, while operational core professionals have been distanced from decision making. Efficiency in terms of financial and performance indicators has become a coordinating principle of university organizations, and PM practices are used to steer the work of professionals. Because of the reforms, universities have moved away from the ideal type of professional bureaucracy and begun resembling the new, emerging ideal type of competitive bureaucracy. Originality/value This study builds on rich, real-life, longitudinal empirical material and details a chronological description of the changes in Finland’s university sector. Moreover, it illustrates how the spread of audit culture and the related legislative changes have transformed the ideal type of university organization and challenged universities’ reason for being. These changes entail significant consequences regarding universities as organizations and their role in society.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyse the way in which the factors influencing a transformation towards or away from modularity, according to general modular systems theory, appear in the context of health services, and the extent to which the special characteristics of health services might support or prevent its application. Design/methodology/approach – The arguments constructed in the study are based on the theme of modularity, reflected against the special characteristics of health services identified in the context of health economics. Findings – The results include 11 proposition pairs that direct health services both towards and away from modularity. Research limitations/implications – Health services are highly heterogeneous in nature and the authors illustrate this with a wide range of examples from elderly care as the authors discuss the application of modularity in this context. Nevertheless, the authors recognise that modularity might suit some health services better than others. The findings provide potentially important information to health service managers and providers, enabling them to understand how modularity would benefit health service provision and where contradictions are to be expected. Originality/value – This study contributes to the discourse on service modularity in general, and complements the literature on modularity with reference to both public and private health services.

Corporations today have been engineered by CEOs and other business advocates to look increasingly green and responsible. However, alarming cases such as Enron, Parmalat and Worldcom bear witness that a belief in corporate goodness is still nothing other than naïve. Although many scholars seemingly recognize this, they still avoid touching on the most sensitive and problematic issues, the taboos. As a consequence, discussion of important though problematic topics is often stifled. The article identifies three ‘grand’ taboos of CSR discourse and explicitly raises them for discussion. They are the taboos of amoral business, continuous economic growth, and the political nature of CSR. It is suggested that CSR can only be as advanced as its taboos. The critical potential of the field remains underdeveloped as a consequence of the taboos, and in many cases the CSR discourse merely produces alluring but empty rhetoric about sustainability and responsible business. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2007taboo, CSR, corporate greening, growth, politics, amoral,

PurposeEmploying institutional logic and institutional work as its theoretical framework, this study analyzes scholars' reactions to performance measurement systems in academia.Design/methodology/approachLarge datasets were collected over time, combining both quantitative and qualitative elements. The data were gathered from a two-wave survey in 2010 (966 respondents) and 2015 (672 respondents), conducted among scholars performing teaching- and research-oriented tasks in three Finnish universities.FindingsThe analysis showed statistically significant changes over time in the ways that the respondents were positioned in three major groups influenced by different institutional logics. This study contributes to the international debate on institutional change in universities by showing that in Finnish universities, emerging business logics and existing professional logics can co-exist and be blended among a growing group of academics. The analysis of qualitative open-ended answers suggests that performance measurement systems have led to changes in institutional logic, which have influenced the scholars participating in institutional work at the microlevel in academia.Social implicationsWhile most scholars remain critical of performance measurement systems in universities, the fact that many academics are adapting to performance measurement systems highlights significant changes that are generally occurring in academia.Originality/valueWhile most extant studies have focused on field- and organizational-level analyses, this study focuses on understanding how the adoption of performance measurement systems affects institutional logic and institutional work at the microlevel. Moreover, the study's cross-sectional research setting increases society's understanding of institutional evolution in academia.