Global university rankings: The macro-micro contradiction in public university management

Abstract

Performance measurement and management has become a passion, even approach-ing a mania, of Australian public universities. In a world of multiple, competing global rankings of universities, known as global university rankings (GURs), our public universities pit themselves against each other competitively in seeking to ascend selected ranking regimes that best suit and reflect their institutions. This Australian study delves into this New Public Management (NPM) driven mantra, by examining the explicit mission or purpose statements (hereafter “missions”) and the vision or ambition statements (hereafter “visions”) of the 37 public universities in Australia in late 2021/early 2022, based on their public disclosures. This study provides widespread evidence of the formal aspirations of these institutions to act in the public interest and to serve and advance society, communities and people. At the same time, however, the main operational game, or rather the passion being played out by these institutions, is facilitated by means of the transformative (or potentially corrupting) power of GURs in moving Australia’s public universities progressively towards a self-interested corporate culture and associated dysfunctional behaviours in creating competition within and across public universities. This dichotomy is identified as the “macro-contributions” approach to university management as opposed to the “micro-measurement”, metrics-driven approach to university management, described herein as “the macro-micro contradiction” in public university management. Accounting as performance measurement is portrayed as transformative, influencing human behaviour, shaping organisational culture, and impacting the organisational and social functioning and development of these institutions. Moreover, public universities, in substance, become what they are not.

COVID-19 and accounting as multidimensional technical, social and moral practice: a framework for future research

“…This new space often involves the production of sterile, unchallenged accounting numbers and reports and a mania for KPI-driven performance measurement. Importantly, this state of play delivers often unidentified and unevaluated implications under national or international ranking regimes, such as under global university rankings (see, for instance, Carnegie, 2022b; Carnegie and Lucas, 2022; Carnegie and Parker, 2022).…”

“…Performance measurement is indeed accounting by another title (see, Carnegie and Lucas, 2022;Carnegie, 2022b).…”

“…An example arises in performance measurement systems of public universities which are directly linked to the determination of global university rankings. Performance measurement is indeed accounting by another title (see, Carnegie and Parker, 2022; Carnegie and Lucas, 2022; Carnegie, 2022b).…”

“…A few fields of research in accounting are outlined and some examples of recent studies in these areas are shown for indicative purposes only. These includes research on the social impacts of accounting, including performance measurement (Power, 2015;Yang et al, 2021;Carnegie, 2022aCarnegie, , 2022b, the audit society (Jeacle and Carter, 2022), social and environmental accounting or sustainability accounting (Gray and Laughlin, 2012;Kaur and Lodhia, 2019;Lai and Stacchezzini, 2021;Atkins and McBride, 2022), corporate social responsibility (CSR) (Cho et al, 2021) and integrated reporting (Eccles and Krzus, 2010;Eccles and Saltzman, 2011;Dragu and Tiron-Tudor, 2014) and extending beyond such notions (de Villiers et al, 2022b(de Villiers et al, , 2022a as well as, more recently, the impacts of COVID-19 (Lodhia et al, 2021;Leoni et al, 2021Leoni et al, , 2022[2] Carnegie et al, 2022aCarnegie et al, , 2022d.…”

Management accounting and control systems as devices for public value creation in higher education

“…This study uses the latter perspective and analyses how accounting and control systems are used in order to create public value in the context of higher education institutions (HEI). Several recently published articles observe that these organizations have been greatly influenced by New Public Management (NPM) reforms, which has introduced several mechanisms (e.g., marketization) and incentives (e.g., a focus on research output instead of outcomes) that may be counter‐productive (Broucker et al., 2018; Carnegie, 2022; Manes‐Rossi et al., 2022). Therefore, a plea is made for using a broader, public value, perspective that puts back the “publicness” perspective in higher education (Manes‐Rossi et al., 2022).…”