Rumbling on performativity_Frits Simon

In 2012 as any UAS the UAS had to draw up proposals for performance agreements
which had to be fixed in an agreement with the Dutch State Secretary for Higher
Education. As indicated before these agreements are outcomes of long-standing
societal debates regarding Higher Education. Main concerns are quality, funding,
autonomy, accountability and governability of universities. Given the actual political
context the performance agreements potentially have a great impact on the reputation,
profile and financial position of a university.
To forestall a lack of performances these agreements are connected with conditional
financing of a part of the yearly budget of the various UAS’s. The end of December 2011
the State Secretary unilaterally decreed the performance agreements as the Netherlands
Association of the UAS’s and he did not reach an agreement. On the quality and
ambitiousness of the agreements the State Secretary is advised by a review commission.
The review commission designed a framework for reviewing the proposals for
the agreements. The proposals were to be sent to the commission at the very latest
the 5th of May 2012.
I became involved in the process of formulating our performance agreements. In my
narrative from the point of my involvement I exemplify how in practice this governmental
policy is appropriated by the senior managers of the UAS, becoming in some
way part of their responsibility. I also narrate on what I suggested for the communication
about and realization of these agreements.
I start with describing - for readability reasons ordered in months - my involvement
with the drafting and finalizing of the performance agreements up till the 5th of May
2012 (see 5.1 and 5.2). I end the narrative with the general appeal by the President of
the Board to realize them (September 2012). Thereafter I take up my exploration of my
position as a corporate jester and explore how a jestership might be connected with
what I came to understand from what I did in what happened from January till September
(see 5.3). From there on I elaborate on the dynamics of the different situations
during the months of drawing up the performance agreements predominantly from
the perspective of a complex responsive process-approach (see 5.4). Finally I reflect in
a more general way upon a position of a corporate jester related to what I experience
as today’s organizational reality in Higher Education (see 5.5).
The narrative presented here is was written between January 2012 and March 2013.
The analytical and reflexive orientations on the narrative are presented in their 4th
version.
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