Is Commitment to Performance-based Management Compatible with Commitment to University “Publicness”? Academics’ Values in French Universities

Abstract

Individuals' values in the context of NPM-based reforms are a central theme in studies of public professional organizations. While organization studies mainly focus on "professional" values, research on public administration primarily addresses the issue of "public" values. This article brings these two research streams together in order to investigate the relationship between two sets of individual values-commitment to performance-based management and normative publicness-in the context of French public universities. It draws on a quantitative survey of academics involved in university governance. The study demonstrates that a positive attitude towards performance-based management is negatively correlated with commitment to university publicness; furthermore, it delineates different groups within the academic profession-according to professional status, managerial position within the organization, and the department's reputation and ability to generate revenues-which have differing attitudes regarding performance-based management and university publicness.

Organizing in the Shadow of Academic Entrepreneurship, Excellence and Omnipresence

“…Universities have "to compete against each other in attracting the 'best' students and scholars as well as funding from the market in order to deliver a high-quality service" [13: 688]. These reforms, reinforced by new public management, contributed to shift academic organizations from a collegial towards a managerialist model [14: 557] driven by a market-oriented regulation [15,16]. At the same time, academic funding bodies, governed by researchers, are structuring research performance (see infra) and the institutional norms of academic research, shifting from a collegial to an entrepreneurial ethos [17].…”

Research ethics between regulation and reflexivity

“…These objectives, however, are not all compatible at the same time in one person throughout an entire career: often the individual ends up choosing a particular path, but must then abandon the other criteria. The distribution of functions according to individuals seems statistically normal: few researchers publish prolifically, while the majority publishes little -probably because these people perform other tasks often less valued in the university -even if this choice is often solitary, without the institution recognising the impossibility of combining all these criteria (Drucker- Godard et al, 2013;Chatelain-Ponroy et al, 2013;Chatelain-Ponroy et al, 2017). In short, research is experiencing a silent crisis, often experienced as a form of malaise by those in the field (Doucet, 2010), the trivialisation of conflicts of interest (Friedman, 2002) and interrogation by citizens.…”

“…In a very general way, values must provide a normative consensus on (a) the rights, advantages and prerogatives being allocated (or not) to citizens; (b) the obligations of citizens towards society, the state or one toward the other; (c) the principles on which governmental policies should be founded (OECD, 2009). Applied to research, this approach results in a tension at the level of both institutions and researchers: on the one hand, research must contribute to the public good through the production of knowledge, and on the other hand, it must be efficient in justifying investments in a highly competitive environment (Musselin, 2017;Chatelain-Ponroy et al, 2017;Gumport, 1993;Fochler, 2016;Lam, 2010;Texeira et al, 2004). 23 The integrity-deontology-ethics triptych is then mobilised to harmonise these two injunctions which enter into tension and to guide the resolution of complex problems in a context completely in transformation, where the authority of the state, the internationalisation of scientific and student communities, the logic of excellence, but also new technologies, lead to strong restrictions.…”

Editorial

“…Performance lies at the heart of contemporary management and organization thought and practice; performance drives business strategy, underlines strategic human resource management, informs marketing campaigns and is central to decision making at all levels of the firm. Perhaps too close for comfort, performance is also shaping academe, its core values and modus operandi (Chatelain‐Ponroy et al ., ). EMR, as a general management journal naturally concerns itself with performance issues.…”