Rumbling on performativity_Frits Simon

The idealized description of social constructionism also served the purpose of presenting
our department as successful. We showed that planning and control is not the
beatific factor of success. Presenting this description was part of a political discussion
about how to run a university other than by the institutionalized mistrust of audits,
budget reports and critical performance indicators. However, I seldom discussed this
with the board or my fellow managers because this approach did not fit into the
dominating discourse of planning and control. Besides all the managers were searching
for their own style in discussion with the ruling discourse and not in discussion
with the discourse of a fellow junior manager.
A manager with potential
By the executive board I was perceived as a high potential, so new career opportunities
became possible. I had grown dissatisfied with my position mostly because of the
repetition in the work. In 2004 I was invited to apply for the position of dean/managing
director of another faculty. The position concerned a newly merged faculty for
information, communication and technology. I was honoured to be invited and choose
for the new position. I was appointed after a selection procedure.
During my time in the new faculty the university intensified control by a detailed
planning and control cycle. General programs about the educational ideology, human
resource policy and cooperation with the market for education and research were
established. A dean became fully responsible for his faculty. With the dictated absence
of middle management I was directly responsible for the work and evaluations of
around 100 employees. Furthermore I had to reduce a structural deficit of € 400.000
and to implement the policy of the UAS.
Six different departments and a centre of expertise with very different cultures and
partly curtailed traditions in innovation were to be seduced to cooperating. I was
expected to resolve old conflicts among colleagues which sometimes had lasted
already for 20 years. Besides, I wanted to stimulate some old fashioned professionals
to redefine themselves as someone else than a traditional lecturing teacher with a
class of 20 students. Moreover, I wanted to break through the omnipresence of the
not-invented-here-syndrome. I stood for an up-to-date organization with up-to-date
members of staff.
Together with the heads of departments and in consultation with the working council
we restructured the faculty into four departments. These departments became
responsible for their budgets, the innovation of their courses and could have their own
identity bound within the cooperation within the faculty. Moreover, I stimulated
colleagues to start some kind of education again. I suppose we partly succeeded in
these matters because of the engagement of the heads of the departments and as
many as colleagues as possible in developing, communicating about and applying of
transparent criteria for all sorts of policy. However, if this supposition is shared by my
former colleagues I am not sure. My rather communicative approach may not have
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