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1 – 9 of 9Elin K. Funck, Kirsi-Mari Kallio and Tomi J. Kallio
This paper aims to investigate the process by which performative technologies (PTs), in this case accreditation work in a business school, take form and how humans engage in…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to investigate the process by which performative technologies (PTs), in this case accreditation work in a business school, take form and how humans engage in making up such practices. It studies how academics come to accept and even identify with the quantitative representations of themselves in a translation process.
Design/methodology/approach
The research involved a longitudinal, self-ethnographic case study that followed the accreditation process of one Nordic business school from 2015 to 2021.
Findings
The findings show how the PT pushed for different engagements in various phases of the translation process. Early in the translation process, the PT promoted engagement because of self-realization and the ability for academics to proactively influence the prospective competitive milieu. However, as academic qualities became fabricated into numbers, the PT was able to request compliance, but also to induce self-reflection and self-discipline by forcing academics to compare themselves to set qualities and measures.
Originality/value
The paper advances the field by linking five phases of the translation process, problematization, fabrication, materialization, commensuration and stabilization, to a discussion of why academics come to accept and identify with the quantitative representations of themselves. The results highlight that the materialization phase appears to be the critical point at which calculative practices become persuasive and start influencing academics’ thoughts and actions.
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David S. Bedford, Markus Granlund and Kari Lukka
The authors examine how performance measurement systems (PMSs) and academic agency influence the meaning of research quality in practice. The worries are that the notion of…
Abstract
Purpose
The authors examine how performance measurement systems (PMSs) and academic agency influence the meaning of research quality in practice. The worries are that the notion of research quality is becoming too simplistically and narrowly determined by research quality's measurable proxies and that academics, especially manager-academics, do not sufficiently realise this risk. Whilst prior literature has covered the effects of performance measurement in the university sector broadly and how PMSs are mobilised locally, there is only little understanding of whether and how PMSs affect the meaning of research quality in practice.
Design/methodology/approach
The study is designed as a comparative case study of two university faculties in Finland. The role of conceptual analysis plays a notable role in the study, too.
Findings
The authors find that manager-academics of the two examined faculties have rather similar conceptual understandings of research quality. However, there were differences in the degree of slippage between the “espoused-meaning” of research quality and “meaning-in-practice” of research quality. The authors traced these differences to how the local PMS and manager-academics’ agency relate to one another within the context of increasing global and national performance pressures. The authors developed a tentative framework for the various “styles of agency”. This suggests how the relationship between the local PMS and manager-academics’ exerted agency shapes the “degrees of freedom” of the meaning of research quality in practice.
Originality/value
Given that research quality lies at the heart of academic work, the authors' paper indicates that exploring the three matters – performance measurement, the agency of manager-academics and the meaning of research quality in practice – in combination is crucial for the sustainability of the academe. The authors contribute to the literature by detailing the way in which local PMS and manager-academics' agency have material impacts on what research quality means in practice. The authors conclude by highlighting the pressing need for manager-academics to exercise the agency in efforts to safeguard a broad and pluralistic understanding of research quality in practice.
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Dominic Detzen and Lukas Löhlein
This paper studies the interactive valuation discourses of an online user community (transfermarkt.de) that seeks to determine market values for soccer players. Despite their…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper studies the interactive valuation discourses of an online user community (transfermarkt.de) that seeks to determine market values for soccer players. Despite their seemingly casual nature, these values have featured in newspapers, transfer negotiations, academic research, and capital market communication – and have thus become reified.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper employs netnographic research methodology to collect and thematically analyze a wide range of user entries on the platform. These entries are studied using theoretical insights from the sociology of quantification and valuation.
Findings
The analysis reveals how values are constructed in constant interaction between value-proposing users and value-justifying “experts.” This dynamic form of relational valuation positions players relative to one another as well as to actual transactions on the transfer market. In the absence of authoritative guidelines, it is this possibility and affordance for interaction that enacts a coherent valuation regime. The paper further reveals the platform's response to a disruptive event, which risked bringing the user-expert dynamics to a halt, requiring intervention from the platform to repair its valuation frame.
Originality/value
The paper responds to increased scholarly interests in the valuation of professional athletes. It contributes to the extant literature on valuation, first, by analyzing the dynamic valuation work that feeds into the social construction of values and, second, by studying platform participation and user interaction in a socially engineered online space.
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Nico Cloete, Nancy Côté, Logan Crace, Rick Delbridge, Jean-Louis Denis, Gili S. Drori, Ulla Eriksson-Zetterquist, Joel Gehman, Lisa-Maria Gerhardt, Jan Goldenstein, Audrey Harroche, Jakov Jandrić, Anna Kosmützky, Georg Krücken, Seungah S. Lee, Michael Lounsbury, Ravit Mizrahi-Shtelman, Christine Musselin, Hampus Östh Gustafsson, Pedro Pineda, Paolo Quattrone, Francisco O. Ramirez, Kerstin Sahlin, Francois van Schalkwyk and Peter Walgenbach
Collegiality is the modus operandi of universities. Collegiality is central to academic freedom and scientific quality. In this way, collegiality also contributes to the good…
Abstract
Collegiality is the modus operandi of universities. Collegiality is central to academic freedom and scientific quality. In this way, collegiality also contributes to the good functioning of universities’ contribution to society and democracy. In this concluding paper of the special issue on collegiality, we summarize the main findings and takeaways from our collective studies. We summarize the main challenges and contestations to collegiality and to universities, but also document lines of resistance, activation, and maintenance. We depict varieties of collegiality and conclude by emphasizing that future research needs to be based on an appreciation of this variation. We argue that it is essential to incorporate such a variation-sensitive perspective into discussions on academic freedom and scientific quality and highlight themes surfaced by the different studies that remain under-explored in extant literature: institutional trust, field-level studies of collegiality, and collegiality and communication. Finally, we offer some remarks on methodological and theoretical implications of this research and conclude by summarizing our research agenda in a list of themes.
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Blerita Korca, Ericka Costa and Lies Bouten
As the comparability concept has recently garnered increased attention of policymakers and standard setters in the sustainability reporting (SR) arena, this paper aims to provide…
Abstract
Purpose
As the comparability concept has recently garnered increased attention of policymakers and standard setters in the sustainability reporting (SR) arena, this paper aims to provide a reflexive viewpoint of this concept in this context.
Design/methodology/approach
To inform the authors’ viewpoint and disentangle the concept of comparability into different facets, the authors review policymakers’ and standard setters’ (including the Global reporting initiative) comparability principles, as well as relevant studies in the field. To provide insights into the different ways in which the comparability facets can be approached, the authors use multi-perspective reflexive practices and focus on the multiple purposes that reporting can serve. To empirically animate the authors’ reflection on the facets, the authors analyse the sustainability disclosures of two Italian banks over three years.
Findings
This study reveals that three facets form valuable starting points for extending the understanding of the meanings the comparability concept can carry in the SR arena. These facets are materiality and comparability, benchmarking/monitoring and comparability and operationalisation and comparability.
Practical implications
This study is intended to elicit policymakers’ and standard setters’ thoughts on the role of comparability and its complexities in SR.
Social implications
By taking a critical and reflexive approach, the authors encourage policymakers and standard setters to reconsider the comparability principle, so it effectively embeds the accountability purpose of SR.
Originality/value
In this paper, the authors propose three facets for disentangling the concept of comparability.
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Petra Pekkanen and Timo Pirttilä
The aim of this study is to empirically explore and analyze the concrete tasks of output measurement and the inherent challenges related to these tasks in a traditional and…
Abstract
Purpose
The aim of this study is to empirically explore and analyze the concrete tasks of output measurement and the inherent challenges related to these tasks in a traditional and autonomous professional public work setting – the judicial system.
Design/methodology/approach
The analysis of the tasks is based on a categorization of general performance measurement motives (control-motivate-learn) and main stakeholder levels (society-organization-professionals). The analysis is exploratory and conducted as an empirical content analysis on materials and reports produced in two performance improvement projects conducted in European justice organizations.
Findings
The identified main tasks in the different categories are related to managing resources, controlling performance deviations, and encouraging improvement and development of performance. Based on the results, key improvement areas connected to output measurement in professional public organizations are connected to the improvement of objectivity and fairness in budgeting and work allocation practices, improvement of output measures' versatility and informativeness to highlight motivational and learning purposes, improvement of professional self-management in setting output targets and producing outputs, as well as improvement of organizational learning from the output measurement.
Practical implications
The paper presents empirically founded practical examples of challenges and improvement opportunities related to the tasks of output measurement in professional public organization.
Originality/value
This paper fulfils an identified need to study how general performance management motives realize as concrete tasks of output measurement in justice organizations.
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Caterina Pesci, Paola Vola and Lorenzo Gelmini
This paper discusses the evolution of sustainability reporting and the role of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) in relation to the social and environmental accounting (SEA…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper discusses the evolution of sustainability reporting and the role of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) in relation to the social and environmental accounting (SEA) literature calling for a revolution in the standardization of sustainability reporting and the inherent complexities. This paper focuses on the future role of GRI in light of the changes resulting from harmonization supported by the International Sustainability Standards Board and the European Financial Reporting Advisory Group’s draft European Sustainability Reporting Directive.
Design/methodology/approach
Building on Bourdieu (1983, 1992) and SEA studies, the authors adopt a critical and qualitative approach to theorize power dynamics in the sustainability reporting field. After identifying the main issues arising from the complexity of the sustainability reporting standards and practices according to SEA scholars, the authors connect them with Bourdieu’s (1992, 1983) field theory to discuss the future role of GRI.
Findings
The findings suggest two distinct but intertwined roles that GRI could play in the future, namely, power related and theoretical/technical, aimed at engendering revolutionary rather than evolutionary changes in sustainability reporting.
Practical implications
This study offers practical implications for GRI to strengthen its future role in sustainability reporting standardization.
Social implications
The limited time available to mitigate the disastrous consequences of non-sustainable business on society and the environment calls for urgently addressing the complexities of sustainability accounting to foster a positive impact on society and the environment.
Originality/value
The authors’ reflections reclaim the SEA literature as central to identifying sustainability complexity and Bourdieu’s (1983, 1992) notions of power as key to understanding the role of GRI in the sustainability field. Furthermore, this paper emphasizes the intersection of different critical concepts, including power, complexity, value, capital and materiality.
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This paper examines the qualities of situations wherein hybrid professionals in knowledge-intensive public organizations (KIPOs) vary in their displays of conflicting…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper examines the qualities of situations wherein hybrid professionals in knowledge-intensive public organizations (KIPOs) vary in their displays of conflicting institutional logics. Specifically, it examines the situations when individual researchers vary in their displays of a traditionalist academic- and an academic performer logic.
Design/methodology/approach
Analysis is grounded in an institutional logics perspective and founded on qualitative interviews with university researchers recurrently exposed to performance measurement and management.
Findings
The findings show that individual researchers display a traditionalist academic- and an academic performer logic in situations of lower or higher “perceived control exposure” (i.e. perceptions of (not) being exposed to “what the performance measurement system wants to/can ‘see’”). In more detail, that a traditionalist academic logic is displayed more in situations of lower “perceived control exposure” whereas an academic performer logic is displayed comparatively more in situations of higher “perceived control exposure”.
Originality/value
These findings add insight into when there is room for resistance to pressures to perform in accordance with increasing performance measurement and when researchers more so tend to conform. While previous research has mostly studied such matters by emphasizing variation between researchers, this study points out the importance of situations of lower or higher “perceived control exposure”. Such insight is arguably also more broadly valuable since it adds to our understanding about hybridity of professionals in KIPOs and how to design and use performance measurement systems in relation to them.
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