Abstract
The introduction of a performance assessment model based upon the measurement of merit through explicit, standardized, and objective criteria of productivity has provoked significant changes in the academic profession within the public higher education in Portugal. Given that employment security was made contingent upon obtaining adequate positive scores and promotion upon achieving maximum scores, a new institutional culture framed by precariousness and competition seems to have emerged. Moreover, as a consequence of austerity and with it the freezing of the pay awards associated with a promotion, the positive effects of excellent performance have been suppressed, while punitive measures for inadequate performance have been maintained. Based on ongoing qualitative research consisting of analysis of union position statements, interviews with union representatives, and interviews with academic staff of a Portuguese higher education institution, this article advances the hypothesis that evolution has taken place from resistance to routinization and acceptance of assessment procedures.
Highlights
The introduction of a performance assessment model based upon the measurement of merit through explicit, standardized, and objective criteria of productivity has provoked significant changes in the academic profession within the public higher education in Portugal
The sample was diversified by both academic discipline and type of contract. This analysis will focus on four aspects of the issues at hand: 1) the positions and conduct of the teachers’ unions in relation to performance assessment (PA); 2) opinions of the interviewed union activists; 3) the opinions of the interviewed teachers regarding the implementation of the new models of PA applied in their institution; and 4) the possible sources of accommodation and acceptance behaviours with regard to PA
No serious and honest system of assessment can leave out a rigorous and thoughtful analysis of the content of the work of an academic,... which is contrary to the idea of permanent assessment that is based upon metrics, which, for its part, encourage bad practices. (SNESup, on Performance Assessment in Higher Education, 2010)
Summary
The introduction of a performance assessment model based upon the measurement of merit through explicit, standardized, and objective criteria of productivity has provoked significant changes in the academic profession within the public higher education in Portugal. The generalized influence and rising hegemony of NPM ideology, with its presumption of the superiority of private management models, together with the external pressures of context, provided fertile breeding ground for discourses regarding the ineffectiveness and indulgence of the traditional models of administration of public HE institutions (HEIs), supposedly founded upon the inefficient logics of academic development and collegiality (Barr, 2004; Lorenz, 2007) From these it has been easy to concludec—ideologically and not necessarily empirically—for the necessity of changing its existing management models as in the rest of public administration (Amaral, Magalhães, & Santiago, 2003; Anderson, 2008; Field, 2015; Kallio & Kallio, 2014; Olssen & Peters, 2005; Pollitt, 2003; Reed, 2002) in favour of organizational decentralization and autonomy and a convergence upon a results-based model of human resources and careers. In this context academic productivity becomes a key element to organizational competitivity and success and, systems of individual PA were almost universally introduced with the pretext of objectively measuring the productivity of teachers and researchers
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