Rumbling on performativity_Frits Simon

panoptical psychological pressure, provoking uncertainty through the certainty to be
judged, without knowing exactly how and on what to be judged. Shared was a feeling
that sometimes more time or opportunity for reflecting on policy was wished for, in
times that there is little time allowed for. Reflecting on how to realize dissent made
reflexivity rise as an important issue.
In retrospect I see that the demands of and discussion about performativity are present
in all the narratives, analyses and reflections. Apparently somehow in the UAS
there is a sort of not well articulated – underground - discussion going on about the
whereabouts of performativity or NPM. However, this discussion and the various
positions which are taken by those involved in the discussions were not obvious at the
beginning of my research. Performativity as a subject emerged in my projects, the
subject became socially constructed in the discussions as apparently an important
subject, although labelled as such by me.
Therefore next I will connect the subject of performativity to the UAS and with some
broader discussions about performativity with regard to education. After that I will
return to the subject of interrupting, as this subject emerged out of the many discussions
we had about dissent. These discussions clarified a lot about the apparently
underlying subject of performativity.
7.3 Swimming with the tide: managerial developments in the
UAS
At first sight there is nothing special to the UAS. Nothing special in regard of other
UAS’s and nothing special in regard of organizational development. From the 1980s to
be able to cope with societal and political developments through mergers the UAS has
scaled up to an institution of around 14.000 students, 1800 members of staff, 9 faculties
and 5 services in 2014. In due course systems of quality assurance are installed,
accreditations have been organized, and high rankings are celebrated. Ongoing reorganizations
of faculties and services - sometimes labelled as reshuffles - were accompanied
by the introduction of a vision, a mission, a strategy, by the introduction of
HR-policy including for instance performance appraisal and career-planning, and
supported by a programmatic or project-based approach of organizational change. In
due course my colleagues of the UAS learned and is still learning to use the new NPMlanguage
of strategy, critical performance indicators, identity-management and
core-values, scenario-planning, planning and control-cycles and budgetary accountability.
Instead of speaking about ‘the UAS’ from a complex responsive process-perspective it
is more proper to speak of the people within the UAS who are busy with these subjects.
For members of the board, for deans and directors, for advisers and programmemanagers
the development and implementation of the above is part of their concern,
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