During the last decade or so, performance measurement
(PM) has become an everyday activity in the higher education sector. Owing to
the adoption of PM, previously collegial university management has taken steps
towards a managerial model that emphasizes accountability, efficiency and
cost-effectiveness. However, the new judgmental PM systems seem to undermine
important aspects of academic work, such as creativity and quality of work and
cause increased stress and pressure to publish.

Foucault invites us to look at the ways various
techniques of power and control impact and structure human behavior. His
concept of ‘governmentality’ refers to the organizational governance, but also
to self-governance, which the individuals under the organizational governance
engage in. According to Foucault individuals internalize the norms, ideals and
targets of the control system, and start to self-discipline and regulate their
own behavior accordingly. Internalizing the control mechanisms makes
individuals aim at achieving a ‘normative self’, which at least in the context
of academic work remains out of reach for many academics. Somewhat
surprisingly, however, it has been found that found that despite
dissatisfaction and disquiet, most academics are complicit with the demands of
performance measurement. However, the genuine interest in the work itself – the
labor of love – is being stretched and at the risk of being lost.

In this paper, we use
the framework of Michel Foucault in looking at the ways in which various
techniques of control impact and structure human behavior, and aim at
problematizing the use of PM practices in the context of academic work. We
examine the PM systems introduced into universities in the Foucauldian sense as
forms of surveillance and self-surveillance, and explore how academics deal
with the norms and ideals of the PM system. The empirical data of the study
consists of open-ended questions collected from a large survey for university
employees collected in 2015 with 672 respondents. The analysis is still
ongoing, but the preliminary results show that the PM impacts the university
employees’ relationship with their work. Partly, it seems to have guided the
academics’ working towards the ideals of PM, yet there are also those who
resist the PM ideals.