Rumbling on performativity_Frits Simon

This narrative is about what happened during a period of four months (September
– December 2011) in the deliberations of a coordination team about an evaluation of
the results of an internal branding programme (see 4.1). The narrative as such was
written between September 2011 and September 2012. The narrative is followed by
some analytical and reflexive orientations on shifts in the way the evaluation of the
internal branding programme was interpreted (see 4.2 and 4.3), on what happens
during the four months of working together in this specific coordination team (see 4.4.
and 4.5), and on my role as the manager of the branding programme and an adviser to
the board (see 4.6 up till 4.8). The analytical and reflexive orientations on this narrative
are presented in their 6th version.
The narrative is an account about what happened from interpreting the first draft of
an evaluation report up till the conclusions drawn after the presentation of the report
to the executive board, and the circulation of the report throughout the UAS. I focus
on how interactions between participants writing and commenting on the report
change first and later interpretations of the report, interpretations which become
condensed in the conclusions and recommendations to the executive board of the
UAS.
I approach the drawing up of a summary and the formulating of conclusions as potentially
rather influential in what happens afterwards. To my experience principals often
read only summaries and conclusions. A summary and conclusions thus may have
great influence on the decisions afterwards. The deliberations amongst the members
of the coordination team therefore can be seen as micro-politics with potentially institutional
consequences.
The internal branding programme
Formally the internal branding programme ran from 2009 up till 2013. In 2009 the
President of the Board and the then head of the office of communications had concluded
that our policy regarding marketing and communications needed modernization.
Eight years after the merger which founded the UAS, their conclusions were that our
brand architecture was a mess. Jointly they concluded that given the size of the organization
our efforts on marketing and communications were of a low standard and our
corporate identity was diffuse.
A commercial company which connected identity-management and human resource
policy into ‘internal branding’ was contracted (Eck et al., 2008). Together with the
company an internal branding-programme was designed. The programme was managed
by a project-manager for the practical organization, a coordination team for
developing and coordination of the programme and an advisory committee of a dean,
an associate professor and a head of an office, presided by the President of the Board.
Being aware that identity was a touchy subject, the point of departure was to involve
as many as possible representatives of faculties and offices in discussions concerning
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