Abstract
In this paper we use the notions of play and (finite and infinite) games to analyze performance management practices in professional work. Whilst evaluative metrics are often described as ‘monsters’ impacting on professional work, we illustrate how metrics can also become part of practices of caring for such work. Analyzing the use of evaluative metrics in law faculties and in hospitals, we show how finite games – games played to win – and infinite games – games played for the purpose of continuing to play – are intertwined and how this intertwinement affects academic and healthcare work.
Highlights
Academic and healthcare life have increasingly metricized in the past two decades
In the past three decades, academic research has been increasingly governed through evaluative metrics; i.e. numbers of publications and citations, position in university rankings, and obtained research grants at the individual, group and institute level
We turn to legal scholarship in the Netherlands, scrutinizing how finite and infinite games are played in this particular academic field
Summary
Academic and healthcare life have increasingly metricized in the past two decades. Citation indexes, teaching quality assessment, research assessment, and league tables – and their underlying algorithms – have set a new scene for academic work and academic career development [1, 2]. For instance, physicians actively adopt value-based healthcare instruments to design patient-centered treatment trajectories, simultaneously establishing new and ambitious research lines and prompting new career opportunities [18] This seems to point at another direction than that usually taken by the literature on audit and accountability, and allows for a conceptualization of metrics in more open ways, considering how metrics are used and play out in unfolding professional worlds. For instance, may liberate scholars as they can profile themselves and their research to a wider public (or, more strategically, to a specific public in case of for instance a grant application) through building an online research identity [20] This double-sided view on evaluative metrics is the central concern of this paper: evaluative metrics are seen as monsters threatening the ‘real work’. We apply an experimental and explorative view on evaluative metrics, asking: How do academic and healthcare professionals playfully employ evaluative metrics in constituting academic/care work and professional routines, as well as to the purpose of building a professional position? With what emerging consequences for professional identity construction?
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