The Persuasion of Performative Technologies: Constructing Calculating Selves in Universities

Abstract

In recent decades there has been an avalanche of numbers in public life and academia is no exception. Among Business Schools the competition for status has forced them to apply for various accreditations. While the number of studies pointing to the fact that increased reliance on performative technologies (PT) tends to challenge the academic ethos is quite large, less attention has been paid to the process of how the technologies becomes so powerful that they starts to appeal to the inner mentalities of the professionals. This paper address this by casting lights on an AACSB accreditation process at a Swedish university and how it takes on different roles as it (un)consciously lure people to internalise the underlying logics and construct calculating selves. By applying the CMIS-framework (Englund & Gerdin, 2019) the purpose is to explore the different roles and psychological mechanisms that the PT play and appeal to. The results demonstrate how different roles and psychological mechanisms appear in different stages of the construction process. Early on the PT allows individuals to realise themselves; thereby persuading them to conduct different forms of subjectivising work upon themselves. However, as the PT is put into practice the repressive and coercive forces become more perceptible.