Management Through Metrics

This chapter studies how public and private sector organizations are increasingly using key performance indicators (KPIs) and technocratic procedures to manage work and workers and its consequences. Since the 1980s and the introduction of new public management (NPM) — an approach to running public sector institutions in a more business-like way — various kinds of assessment have been introduced to measure and track performance. Usually, these measures are institutionalized through formalized assessment schemes designed to improve efficiency, productivity, and quality. An entire bureaucracy has developed to oversee this datafication, and the management of institutions has transformed to become more instrumental and technocratic, guided by metrics. Decisions concerning individual promotion, departmental staffing and budgets, and strategic investments are informed by KPIs and rankings. In places like the UK and Australia, management through metrics has become deeply ingrained into the working lives of academics and the management of institutions. While Ireland has managed to avoid the worst excesses of management through metrics, it has not been totally immune. KPIs are now a part of the management regime and are used to guide decision-making, but they are used alongside other forms of information rather than narrowly determining outcomes.