Performance Management as Panopticism: Embedding Intellectually Repressive Conditions in Academia

Seyama, Sadi Mokhaneli; Smith, Clive

doi:10.12803/sjseco.51002

Cited by 3 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…Both academic and administrative staff's performance is managed at various institutional hierarchical levels, with HODs managing academics' performance. Individual academics' PM contract is aligned to institutional strategic objectives and is target-driven and rewards-linked (Seyama and Smith 2016). Performance appraisals at the end of the year determine the extent to which academics have achieved or exceeded the performance targets.…”

Section: Context Case and Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Performance appraisals at the end of the year determine the extent to which academics have achieved or exceeded the performance targets. Performance is rewarded when the targets have been exceeded (Seyama and Smith 2016).…”

Section: Context Case and Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Panopticism as a metaphor borrowed from the prison watchtower (Foucault 1977) explains how academics are forced to behave appropriately under the watch of the disciplinary gaze of line managers. According to Seyama and Smith (2016), panopticism enacted through prescriptive performance contracts enforces visibility, which becomes instrumental in controlling and changing the behaviours of those watched. Inspired by this notion, Gabriel (2008) uses the metaphor of an organisational glass cage to illuminate people's efforts to publicise their idealised personal brands or performative identities.…”

Section: Space As An Enabler Of Control or Freedommentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Unintended though it may be, within the South African context these PM practices are becoming subtle disciplinary forms that, through the manipulation of rewards and punishment, are confining and subjugating academics (Seyama and Smith 2016). As a result of these practices, a captured performance is emerging.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A captured performance in this context is a subjected performance where academics' performance is tied to predefined, marketised and corporatised educational outcomes that primarily serve capitalist interests (Seyama 2018). Such performance has a colonising outcome and is effected through transparency mechanisms that place academics in glass cages under the watch of the panopticon, threatening punishment for failure to adhere to requisite performance demands (Seyama and Smith 2016). As such, academics find themselves trapped under the surveillance glare of the performative masters, which produces a stifling atmosphere in academic spaces, and places academics in controlled subjected positions where their agency is threatened (Clarke and Knights 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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“Hiding within the Glass Cage”: Performance Management as Surveillance—A Case of Academic Spaces as Resistance Spaces

Seyama¹

2020

EAC

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Universities have become toxic sites characterised by anxiety, depression and humiliation. Following new managerialism, leadership and management in universities have been driven by the mandate of achieving efficiency, which has led to the implementation of stringent performance management systems, increasing accountability and authoritarianism. While performance management is justified as an accountability tool that drives efficiency and effectiveness, its demand for absolute transparency has created “panopticons” and “glass cages”. These have produced a stifling atmosphere in academic spaces, often characterised by competing demands for high research outputs and quality teaching, thus placing academics in subjected positions where their agency is threatened. In view of academics silently constructing uncontrolled and uncontrollable spaces to avoid increasing surveillance, I argue that academics are resisting universities’ demand for the invading transparency of performance management. Through a critical social constructionist case study of academics and heads of departments, this article explores the paradoxical position of performing academics—those functioning within the “performative culture” while undermining neoliberal performative inscriptions. Framed by the notion of power and resistance and drawing on critical geography and workplace resistance literature, the study reveals that academics’ acts are going against the controlled daily grind of systematised practices that are often meaningless in relation to quality education. They are reimagining and reconstructing lecture halls, stairs, offices and conference spaces as “invisible” free spaces outside direct managerial control.

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Section: Context Case and Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Context Case and Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Space As An Enabler Of Control or Freedommentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

“Hiding within the Glass Cage”: Performance Management as Surveillance—A Case of Academic Spaces as Resistance Spaces

Seyama¹

2020

EAC

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Performance management technologies and trade union responses: A case study from banking

Murphy

Cullinane

2021

New Technol Work Employ

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Literature in the Performance Management (PM) field champions a shift to more continual forms of worker assessment. Advances in data analytic technologies are claimed to support such developments. However, critical literature finds that PM technologies induce malign consequences for workers and that unions should seek to organise an alternative agenda challenging employers. Based on findings from an action research project in retail and operations banking, the paper considers whether organising enables unions to curb PM technologies' more malign features.

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Subtle activism: Heterotopic principles for unsettling contemporary academia from within

et al. 2023

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Research on academic activism tends to foreground vociferous and explicit forms of activism that pursue predefined political agendas. Against this backdrop, this article proposes that academic activism can take more subtle forms. Writing as an academic activist collective, we unpack what subtle activism might look like within the context of contemporary academia. We use Foucault’s concept of heterotopia to argue that subtle activism can expand the space of what is possible in academia today by experimenting with quietly unsettling norms rather than overtly opposing or rejecting them. We offer a set of principles that might underpin a subtle activist agenda, extrapolated from practices from colleagues and from own activist collective. We hope that these principles may serve to inspire other academics wishing to engage in subtle activism by unsettling everyday practices that discreetly challenge the status quo, thereby contributing to gently shifting the agenda for how it is possible to conduct intellectual work in the contemporary neoliberal university context.

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Performance Management as Panopticism: Embedding Intellectually Repressive Conditions in Academia

Abstract: This paper explores how performance management (PM)

Cited by 3 publications

References 9 publications

“Hiding within the Glass Cage”: Performance Management as Surveillance—A Case of Academic Spaces as Resistance Spaces

“Hiding within the Glass Cage”: Performance Management as Surveillance—A Case of Academic Spaces as Resistance Spaces

Performance management technologies and trade union responses: A case study from banking

Subtle activism: Heterotopic principles for unsettling contemporary academia from within

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