New Public Management (NPM) is a “reform model arguing that the quality and efficiency of the civil service should be improved by introducing management techniques and practices drawn mainly from the private sector” (Bleiklie, 2018: 1). NPM works under the neoliberalist paradigm, which is an “ideology and policy model that emphasizes the value of free market competition” (ibid.: 1). With increased dependence on external funding, whether from government or from the private sector, academic institutions have undergone neoliberalist reforms since the 1980s (Lorenz, 2012). In order to serve the interests of stakeholders, such as funders and tax payers, hierarchical structures have been put into place “to provide leaders with authority and managerial resources to make and enforce strategic decisions within the organization” (Bleiklie, 2018: 2). Today, most of our organisations – whether private or governmental – are exposed to the “tyranny of the market” due to neoliberalism being the prevailing ideology in policy making (Moosa, 2018: 15). Academic freedom has been increasingly circumscribed by the organisational structures, resulting from this operating system [1].
The neoliberalist understanding of efficiency calls for measuring individual’s performance by quantitative indicators. While intended as proxies for qualitative work output, performance indicators resemble quality inscriptions (Dahler-Larsen, 2019). A quality inscription is a “documentation of quality, usually in the form of quantification” (ibid.: 19). Quality inscriptions enable allegedly objective comparisons, ratings and rankings. That way conceptualising quality has an important social function: it helps structuring reality. However, because quality itself is a social construct, which depends on time and context, quality does not merely “’indicate’ and underlying objective reality”, but “defines reality in a particular way” (ibid.: 10). That way quality inscriptions have constitutive effects on social reality and actors’ behaviour: “Once the quality of a phenomenon is expressed through an indicator, practices turn toward what is seen as important in the light of the indicator” (ibid.: 143). This is the basis for Goodhart’s law and the reason for a shift from autonomous to controlled motivation. By fixing quality by a few numerical indicators, professional values, especially more tacit and context-dependent ones, may be undermined (ibid.).
Because the notion of quality is inherently positive and quantitative quality inscriptions in form metrics give the impression of objectivity, quality indicators are desired neoliberal instruments (Dahler-Larsen, 2019). Quality inscriptions therefore are powerful rhetorical tools, often imposed by decision makers (such as stakeholders on top of the hierarchy), rather than those affected by the decisions and, given the positive notion of quality, difficult to question by the ones affected: “the measurement arrives as a fait accompli rather than an object for discussion” (ibid.: 202; italics in the original).
“In order to secure commensuration and transferability, qualitization cuts public matters into small pieces that are compared and assessed, traded and exchanged. Quality not only promotes a neoliberal agenda; it helps extend it into domains that monetarization has yet to penetrate”. (Dahler-Larsen, 2019: 209).
Arguably, the most prominent quality inscription in academia is a scientists’ publication rate. This is because “the ‘paper’ is, for historical reasons, a holy cow” in terms of what counts as an output (Albrecht, 2007: 144). The number of first author publications is crucially important for a researcher’s career. This gives rise for the prevailing “publish or perish” (POP; Moosa, 2018) culture in academia, which is deeply intertwined with the neoliberalist reforms of the academic institution. The perceived benefits of the “publish or perish” imperative, from an NPM perspective, is that it generates a pressure to publish which supposedly separates the wheat from the chaff, letting only the most productive scientists – those who return the biggest value to their stakeholders as measured by the quality indicator – survive on the career ladder. This causes a rat race to produce ever more research at the expense of qualitative aspects that are not being measured; such as replicability, readability, comprehensiveness and value for the research community. Moreover, there is no merit in non-article publications, unpublishable negative results and non-research activities, such as teaching, community service and acting on one’s research findings (ibid.).
“Reporting of the results of scientific research must be governed by the principle of telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” (Moosa, 2018: 66)
Under POP, however, the researcher’s motivation shifts from an autonomous one of discovering truths to a controlled one of generating publications. Publishing has become an end in itself, rather than the means to an end (ibid.). Under the pressure to hit targets not only researcher’s physical and mental well-being are decreasing, but also a tendency to indulge in research misconduct in all shapes and forms has arisen (Tijdink, 2014; Moosa, 2018; Wellcome, 2020). It may not be an exaggeration to worry that gaming (ranging from questionable research practices to outright fraud) may has become as necessary for a scientist to survive in academia as doping is for a cyclist to win the Tour de France. In a culture where ever more is what is aimed for, even the most honest among us will eventually cut some corners.
“If university funding is determined by the rules of POP, then university management has no alternative but to oblige.” (Moosa, 2018: 22)
“This is chokepoint capitalism at its finest: publishers’ primary ‘asset’ is a legally defensible barrier between academics and their career prospects, so it can coerce them into accepting all kinds of abusive conduct.” [2]
Not only the POP culture arguably impedes the discovery process, but ever more voices criticizing the prevailing organisational culture in academia come to light. A survey titled “What Researchers Think About the Culture They Work In” (Wellcome, 2020) found that 78% of the researchers think that high levels of competition lead to an unkind working culture. While respondents accept competition as part of their job, they perceive the obsession with quantity of outputs, and narrow concepts of what counts as such, as a source of high pressure to meet metrics. 43% of the respondents perceive that their workplace puts more value on metrics than on research quality and 58% disagree with the statement that “current metrics have had a positive impact on research culture”. Next to the perceived decrease in research quality (such as reproducibility and cherry-picking of results), long working hours, widespread concerns about job security and a decrease in physical and mental health are the consequences of this culture.
“These results paint a shocking portrait of the research environment – and one we must all help change. A poor research culture ultimately leads to poor research. The pressures of working in research must be recognised and acted upon by all, from funders to leaders of research and to heads of universities and institutions.” – Jeremy Farrar, Director of Wellcome (Wellcome, 2020: 3)
The importance of all involved parties, such as policy makers, university leadership, professors and supervisors, taking responsibility with respect to the prevailing research culture is also recognised by the discussions held under the hashtag #IchbinHanna (“I am Hanna” [3]). This hashtag first appeared in social media in Germany in 2021 to speak up about the precarious working conditions in academia, which are identified as the symptoms of an underlying unhealthy system. A system which not only involves the systematic exploitation of young researchers, but also fosters individualism – every researcher represents their own “academic me-inc.” [4]. #IchbinHanna inspires the call for a more agile [5], resilient, transparent and participative culture instead [6]. The science journalist Jan-Martin Wiarda poses that “modern leadership in science means a professional leadership of science through itself” (ibid.). Many other discussions on (social) media [7] focus on the need of a transformation [8] of research culture, system change and reinvention of leadership in science. This development fits in with a general uneasiness regarding the adequacy of our current organisational models and management methods, slowly arising in the last decades.
<aside> 💡 Box 2 – Paradigm changes in organisational models
Laloux’s “Reinvening Organisations” [9] is perhaps one of the most influential and forward-looking management books of the last decade. He colour-codes the different ways people have been organising themselves from the smallest tribes around 100.000 BC up until today. He describes how shifts in human consciousness change the way we structure and manage our organisations, because they are “simply the expression of our current world-view” (ibid.: 15).
Since the age of enlightenment and industrial revolution, achievement-orange has been the prevailing paradigm. The breakthrough aspects, compared to the earlier paradigm, are innovation, accountability and meritocracy. In this paradigm, we have made big leaps towards (however, certainly not fully accomplished) social fairness and accumulated (material) wealth. As its name tells, what counts in this paradigm, is achieving profit and growth. Success is mostly measured in terms of money and recognition, or other quantitative quality inscriptions. By placing a carrot, shareholders motivate workers to work ever faster and more efficiently. This paradigm thinks of organisations as machines, where predict & control resemble the order of business.
However, our life style has accelerated under the achievement-orange paradigm, which comes with an ever lager need to accept that we live in a VUCA world; The machine metaphor and linear thinking (such as the bad apple narrative) are too simplistic in a world that is inherently volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous.
In contrast, “evolutionary-teal” organisations accept VUCA and view organisations as living organisms. Concepts, such as hierarchy or power, are not abandoned but transcended, which means that they may be evoked depending on the context. Self-management is the order of business, which enables more flexible responses to change, rendering teal organisations more resilient. Moreover, they value working together towards a purpose and the health of the members of the living organism above all else, accepting non-quantitative and inter-subjective indicators as evidence.
While “Reinventing organisations” is evidence-based, it is not strict scientific research. There are certainly many parallels between what we refer to as “participative” in this paper and what Laloux calls “teal” leadership/ culture/ organisations. In what ways these concepts differ and overlap could be subject to further research.
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Discussions among scientists from various disciplines during the symposium “Führen(d) in der Wissenschaft” (“Leading in science”; Eitel & Mlynek, 2014) held in Berlin in May 2014, underline the call for the current science system to be transformed into a more participative organisation. The global and complex organisation we call academia may benefit from leadership which supports self-organisation, (self-) reflection and motivation through purpose and praise. “Leadership is about visions and people”; It may draw on management’s “facts and figures” (ibid.: 17), however does not perceive see numbers as the only way to describe reality. Participative leadership [10] in science has the potential to foster and support researchers in various ways needed and to facilitate enough room for creativity and academic freedom (ibid.: 57-58). The autonomous motivation of scientists to do research out of curiosity, which is arguably one of the biggest purposes of basic science, could be fostered by allowing for self-management and praise (ibid.: 107). A “healthy” research culture is one that allows for making mistakes, fostering strengths and guidance in weaknesses (ibid.: 44). This could foster innovation, the capacity to work in a team and self-organised informal or semiformal (interdisciplinary) collaborations (ibid.: 78). In such a culture flat hierarchies and a discourse on eye level could be the order of business. In the discussants’ vision, leadership in science could sustain the ambivalence between facilitating structures and granting freedom. For example, the momentum of the self-organised system could be appreciated, while at the same time a culture of research quality is established (ibid.: 30). This may involve the development of evaluation criteria, that are, on the one hand, scientifically acceptable (evidence-based), and, on the other hand, not too rigid too allow for context and innovation. Such an academic organisational model of the future may already be “integrated in the DNA of a scientist” (Eitel & Mlynek, 2014: 120).
In a participative organisation, such evaluation criteria would neither be developed, nor implemented top-down, but in cooperation with the people involved – the researchers on “the shop floor”. We believe that the evaluative inquiry could serve as a starting point to work out the narrative of the academic institution, with a focus on its purpose, together with the members of the institution. On that basis, also participatively, evaluation criteria may be developed, that would have the potential [11] to actually foster researchers’ autonomous motivation to perform quality research.