MULTILEVEL ACADEMIC PRODUCTIVISM: PERFORMATIVE MERCHANDISE IN BRAZIL’S GRADUATE SCHOOLS OF MANAGEMENT

ABSTRACT

The objective of this article is to analyze academic productivism in graduate schools of management in Brazil from a multilevel perspective. First, we discuss the emergence of productivism, in addition to reflecting on the conflict between teaching and research as a manifestation of productivism. Next, we analyze this phenomenon at three levels-governmental, institutional, and individual-which may help management researchers examine its impact on productivity, working conditions, and professor well-being. Based on the reflections presented here, we recommend defining academic productivism as a performative act that institutionalizes a set of actions and behaviors, characterizes a social representation as a field of knowledge, delimits a system of beliefs and values oriented to a performative culture incorporated socially into action, and affects the working conditions, health, well-being, and careers of the professors who are part of the community.

KEYWORDS:
Academic productivism; graduate studies in management; multilevel perspective; professor; performative act

RESUMO

O objetivo deste artigo é analisar o produtivismo acadêmico na pós-graduação em Administração no Brasil a partir de uma perspectiva multinível. Inicialmente, aborda-se o surgimento do produtivismo, além de refletir-se sobre o conflito entre o ensino e a pesquisa como uma manifestação do produtivismo. Em seguida, discute-se o fenômeno em três níveis: governamental, institucional e individual, o que pode auxiliar os pesquisadores da área a refletirem sobre o seu impacto na produtividade, nas condições de trabalho e no bem-estar do docente. A partir das reflexões apresentadas no artigo, propõe-se uma definição de produtivismo acadêmico como um ato performativo que institucionaliza um conjunto de ações e comportamentos, caracteriza uma forma de representação social de uma área do conhecimento, delimita um sistema de crenças e valores orientados para uma cultura performativa incorporada socialmente na ação e afeta as condições de trabalho, a saúde, o bem-estar e a carreira de professores que integram a comunidade da área.

PALAVRAS-CHAVE:
Produtivismo acadêmico; pós-graduação em Administração; perspectiva multinível; docente; ato performativo

RESUMEN

El objetivo de este artículo es analizar el productivismo académico en el posgrado en Administración en Brasil desde una perspectiva multinivel. Inicialmente, se aborda el surgimiento del productivismo, además de reflexionar sobre el conflicto entre la enseñanza y la investigación como una manifestación del productivismo. A continua ción, se discute el fenómeno en tres niveles: gubernamental, institucional e individual, lo que puede ayudar a los investigadores del área de administración a reflexionar sobre su impacto en la productividad, las condiciones de trabajo y el bienestar del docente. A partir de las reflexiones presentadas en el artículo, se propone una definición de productivismo académico como un acto performativo que institucionaliza un conjunto de acciones y compor tamientos, caracteriza una forma de representación social de un área del conocimiento, delimita un sistema de creencias y valores orientados hacia una cultura performativa incorporada socialmente a la acción y afecta las condiciones de trabajo, la salud, el bienestar y la carrera de profesores que integran la comunidad del área.

PALABRAS CLAVE:
Productivismo académico; posgrado en administración; perspectiva multinivel; profesor; acto performativo

ACADEMIC PRODUCTIVISM IN GRADUATE SCHOOLS: WHERE ARE WE?

Academic productivism has been a subject of discussion for several decades. According to De Paula and Boas (2017), the phenomenon arose in the last century in the United States and became known by the expression “publish or perish,” since universities used the number of publications as a determining factor in the progression of an instructor's career, based on indicators established by institutional agencies.

In Brazil, the phenomenon has been approached by several researchers who emphasize certain aspects involving academic publication (Alcadipani, 2011; Rossoni, 2018; Sguissardi & Silva, 2009), including the precariousness of the work (De Paula & Boas, 2017) and the health of the professors (Godoi & Xavier, 2012; Leite, 2017), among others.

Academic productivism is also influenced by public policies aimed at stimulating the internationalization of academic publications as well as the need to improve a country’s position in international rankings (Adler & Harzing, 2009). In a more critical light, Machado and Bianchetti (2011) point out that academic productivism “provides the key that translates market mechanisms to the academic intellectual world” (p. 251) and can be considered a form of “academic capitalism.”

The Higher Education Personnel Improvement Coordination (Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior [CAPES]) has a consolidated postgraduate assessment system based on academic productivity indicators centered on the dimensions of Graduate Programs (GPs) in the context of the process of student development, academic publication by professors, and the social position of the program.

In 2018, CAPES approved changes to the assessment instrument, which now has three requirements or dimensions (program, development of scholars, and impact on society) and 12 items (indicators) with minimum weights. The definitions of, and comments on, the dimensions and indicators, as well as the assessment metrics, are defined by a committee with specific knowledge of a field. The changes indicate the need for GPs to adopt a strategic orientation and self-assessment system, place greater emphasis on training processes, and focus on outcomes from GPs that impact assessment, innovation, and internationalization.

Even with the proposed changes, it is believed that academic productivism, from the perspective proposed in this article, will continue to be widespread in graduate schools because institutional relations will continue to be permeated by pressure to produce results, with repercussions on the working conditions and the lives of those involved.

It is assumed that the graduate assessment system in Brazil has made academic productivism a complex phenomenon with some anomalies because the amount of time devoted to various activities, whether in one or more graduate programs, influences the potential impact of the publication of professors’ work, causing unintended consequences like the “serial production” of papers (Rigo, 2017), ceremonial co-authoring (Rossoni, 2018), and the “global” proliferation of the “publish or perish” mentality (Alcadipani, 2017), with articles in English appearing in national journals that should resist this “global” logic and instead promote publication in Portuguese.

Another relevant discussion involves the careers of professors at Brazilian universities, especially public ones, that has to do with the value placed on teaching. At many institutions, there are departmental conflicts between professors who develop the activities of graduate programs and others who do not, because sometimes the latter state that those who work in graduate research have a lighter teaching load and that, by prioritizing research, they are relegating teaching to the background.

The discussion involves the paradox of teaching and research in professors’ performance in the university context (Alcadipani, 2017; Balkin & Mello, 2012; Braxton, 1996; Santos, 2017; Smeby, 1996; Vroom, 2007), which is also a consequence of academic productivism, as many universities at the international level do not assign teaching hours to a professor who prioritizes research activities and publication, thus ensuring that a university occupies a good position in international rankings, attracting students and financial support for research and innovation from institutions, and guaranteeing the stability of the professor's career.

This is not the logic of the reality of management professors in Brazil who perform activities in GPs and engage in teaching, research, and management activities (Silva & Costa, 2014) and who, to comply with CAPES indicators, feel pressured by institutional assessments. In addition, they perform several activities that demand a lot of time, such as attending meetings and commissions, evaluating papers, and participating in thesis and dissertation assessment committees, among others (Santos, 2017), which impacts their quality of life and well-being (De Paula & Boas, 2017).

Some professors at Brazilian universities say that working in graduate programs is a choice, especially at a public university, but up to what point? What motivates a professor to work in a graduate program? Could it be the social status associated with it or the desire to contribute to the training of new researchers? Could it be to raise funds and scholarships to conduct research or seek recognition from the academic community for their contribution to the development of an area of knowledge? Could it be the financial reward offered by the institution for publishing papers in high-impact journals? In this case, such financial rewards can only be obtained in the graduate programs of private institutions, since, at public institutions, there are no differences in salary between those who work with only undergraduates and those who concurrently work with both undergraduate and graduate students.

This set of factors also depends on the strategies of the individual GPs, their ranking on the CAPES assessment, and the individual strategies of each researcher. Most likely, several factors work together to illustrate that a career is indeed a process of choice, but the motivational factors that lead professors to work in GPs are also influenced by institutional pressures and a system that creates an environment of competition, individualism, and psychological pressure to maintain a high level of time commitment to productivity and the power play of interests that exists in a field.

At most Brazilian higher education institutions (HEIs), the career of a researcher is not regulated. Thus, all are professors of higher education, without, in fact, a definite idea of what it is to be a professor at a university. There are companies, for example, at which a manager enters the base level of the career structure of Y, and, over time, he or she can choose between two paths: one that is more technical, and one that is managerial. Knowing this, the question follows: Why doesn’t the career of a professor, especially at a Brazilian public university, follow a similar path, since some professors focus their careers on teaching and others on management, with those who teach at graduate schools often engaging in activities related to teaching, research, and, at some point, management? For the latter group, academic productivism is much more detrimental, as it affects the amount of time devoted not only to professional life, but also to personal endeavors, with an impact on the health and well-being of such professors, leading to anxiety disorders, burnout syndrome, and depression, among other issues.

The title of this paper uses the term performative merchandise because productivism, as a performative act in a pragmatic sense, can be associated with merchandise with a measurable, tangible value and financial rewards for good performance, that is, assigning quantitative value through indicators and metrics that generate a ranking, as well as intangible value, which is associated with cultural and symbolic representations that influence the behaviors and actions of the actors involved in the postgraduate context.

The notion of performativity adopted in this paper is associated with both action and performance (Bispo, 2016). As an action, the performativity of productivism arises from a symbolic discourse about what a productive professor is: that is, one who teaches, researches, produces, manages various administrative activities, and actively participates in the academic community. Regarding performance, performativity is a consequence of a system of social interaction in the graduate context that rewards those who raise funds through research projects, publish their work in high-impact journals, and even receive financial rewards as a result. Performativity is comprised of the relationship between activities, materiality, and temporality (Gond & Cabantous, 2015) that exists in the context of graduate schools.

The paper aims to analyze academic productivism in graduate schools of management in Brazil from a multilevel perspective. The analysis considers the various dimensions that impact teaching performance in the institutional context of graduate programs and aims to reveal that the phenomenon goes beyond concern for the frequency of publication: it is complex because it must be analyzed from multiple integrated dimensions.

Regarding the fact that teaching identity in the field of management is not yet well-defined and that the environment of graduate-level teaching is marked by an array of activities that generate various questions about the meaning of being a professor, this article presents the following contributions: (a) it proposes a new perspective on analysis of academic productivism to help researchers in the field reflect on the impact of the phenomenon on productivity and working conditions, as well as on the health and well-being of professors; (b) it stimulates a critical reflection on the postgraduate assessment process under discussion at CAPES; and (c) it reveals the practical importance of discussion of institutional policies and management actions at universities and GPs in management.

THE CONFLICT BETWEEN TEACHING AND RESEARCH AND ITS RELATION TO ACADEMIC PRODUCTIVISM

The active professor’s environment in the context of the Brazilian university is changing due to a set of factors, especially those related to academic performance and competitiveness at the institutional level. Some of these factors involve a drive for greater efficiency, productivity, and institutional reputation, which impacts practices in the areas of both teaching and research (Balkin & Mello, 2012) in the context of competition among researchers, universities, and journals for better positions in international academic rankings (Adler & Harzing, 2009).

The institutional environment of Brazilian universities is marked by the search for greater scientific productivity by way of pressure from government agencies, such as the Anísio Teixeira National Institute for Educational Studies and Research (Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisas Educacionais Anísio Teixeira [INEP]) and CAPES, which impact the internal policies of universities, either at the undergraduate or graduate level, and affect the work of professors, who are subjected to individual performance metrics in relation to teaching and research, as well as their contributions to society. According to Leite (2017), political reforms in the education system have caused physical and emotional problems among professors, which have still received little attention in the context of higher education.

Authors such as Boas and Morin (2013) and De Paula and Boas (2017) point out that the workload of professors, in general, presents a psychological risk factor, which manifests itself in universities due to the demands of teaching, research, and publication, as well as the uniqueness of the professional duties of university professors’ career, which are marked by the complexity and physical and emotional exhaustion of their workday and have an impact on health (Godoi & Xavier, 2012; Leite, 2017; Santana, 2011), well-being (Frenzel et al., 2016), and susceptibility to stress and burnout (Pignata, Winefield, Boyd & Provis, 2018).

One of the paradoxes of university teaching, especially among graduate professors, is the conflict between teaching and research, essential dimensions of academic work at a university (Light & Calkins, 2015). This dichotomy has been approached for several decades because of the fragmentation and specialization of knowledge that occurred mainly after World War II (Neumann, 1992). This relationship between these activities is complex (Smeby, 1998) because there is competition or “rivalry” between research and teaching (Light, Cox & Kalkins, 2009) involving time, focus, attention, and energy (Balkin & Mello, 2012), which generates conflict (Vroom, 2007) between the two.

Braxton (1996) establishes three perspectives from which to discuss the conflict between teaching and research. The first reinforces that the teaching and research dimensions are independent and that there is no relationship between them. The second perspective is one of conflict, as both involve different expectations and obligations, and thus more time devoted to one dimension causes less time to be devoted to the other. The third perspective is one of complementarity, since teaching and research roles are complementary and mutually reinforcing. Light and Calkins (2015) use a rope metaphor to explain that there is a tenuous relationship between research excellence and teaching quality.

In the context of Brazilian higher education, this paradox takes on an even more complex configuration, since it is influenced by public education policies, a university’s internal policies, specific resolutions of academic departments, and conflicts of interest between professors. CAPES's public and business administration, accounting, and tourism fields, for example, will establish specific descriptors and metrics for the assessment of the quadrennium (2017-2020) that will take place in 2021, which is related to three dimensions: program, development of scholars, and impact on society.

In the “development of scholars” dimension, for example, each GP will be evaluated according to five items. However, the relationship between teaching and research in each GP is already institutionalized and may be one of independence, conflict, or complementarity, that is, it is a consequence of the strategy adopted to address the development of scholars, the professor’s profile, the program’s objectives, and the university’s institutional policies. This reflection on education is pertinent because, according to Balkin and Mello (2012), there are determining factors that reinforce the distinction between teaching and research, with a greater challenge for the first. The authors further point out that research is rewarded globally, while teaching is less externally visible.

In the context of graduate programs in general, and in graduate courses in management in particular, this relationship also assumes a more contentious quality because there is a traditional understanding that the goal of graduate school is to train future researchers and, therefore, the teaching dimension ends up taking a secondary position. However, training good researchers requires the establishment of a development process for students and a concept of the professor’s role that involves mastery and mobilization of theoretical, epistemological, and methodological competences for the practice of teaching, conducting research, and producing academic writing (Silva & Costa, 2014), as well as academic supervision, while still involving the intellectual, contextual, social, emotional, political, and moral dimensions of education (Costa, Sousa & Silva, 2014).

In a research conducted with professors involved with GPs in management in Brazil, Santos (2017) identified that teaching practices in this context are complex and involve both a set of knowledge (professional, curricular, experiential, and disciplinary) and various roles (teacher, advisor, manager, reviewer, and researcher). Thus, teaching practices are multidimensional, and they encompass institutional, socio-emotional, and professional dimensions. The performance of professors in the context of their graduate work involves the development of the professors’ career, which is linked to research practices and peer relations, academic supervision, student learning, and teaching vocational practice, as well as a set of academic activities related to their professional actions.

The characterization of teaching practices in the graduate management field in Brazil indicates the existence of a multiplicity of types of teacher knowledge and roles that, while helping to construct a teaching identity, also involve the generation of conflicts because of the amount of time that must be dedicated to each of the roles. This conflict was pointed out by Hattie and Marsh (1996) as a negative factor in the relationship between teacher knowledge and roles. Another factor mentioned by the authors involves personality, since the personal characteristics of researchers also impact their way of acting and tendency to value one dimension more than another.

The fragmentation of teaching, research, and learning is the result of the dominant discourse, which emphasizes accountability and performativity and states that academics must be engaged through critical reflection and action. Leathwood and Read (2014) indicate that demands for accountability and auditing of professors are evident in several countries where performativity is a process of measuring and evaluating the quality of teaching and research. It is a vision centered on a “new” managerialism or, as Kalfa, Wilkinson, and Gollan (2018) argue, it is an academic game that defines the work of teaching from the perspective of a pressure-filled environment to increase the amount of research and the quality of the results (Leathwood & Read, 2014).

Performativity in the postgraduate context is associated with a culture of obtaining results through metrics that make academic work a product that can be measured by productivity indicators. In this game, research turns out to be a metric of success because its products are more tangible and easier to measure than those of teaching. Teaching has more qualitative and subjective indicators. In the United Kingdom, for example, starting in 2016, an indicator called the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) was instituted by the government, with the aim of rewarding learning and teaching excellence according to a set of metrics (Canning, 2017; Rudd, 2017). However, the TEF has received some criticism regarding its effectiveness (Canning, 2017), since such indicators tend to standardize curricula, establish objective and standardized performance metrics, restrict teaching practices, and dehumanize students.

In the context of undergraduate and graduate studies in management, one of the phenomena that have attracted the attention of researchers and that have most contributed to the generation of conflicts between teaching roles in the context of universities is academic productivism. In the next section, this phenomenon is analyzed from a systemic and multilevel perspective.

ACADEMIC PRODUCTIVISM IN GRADUATE SCHOOLS OF MANAGEMENT: BEYOND “PUBLISH OR PERISH”

Academic productivism is not a recent phenomenon in the institutional context of universities and countries, especially because it involves a “game” in which governments, universities, and researchers seek to position themselves favorably in search of legitimation, recognition, and rewards. In this paper, the discussion of academic productivism in graduate schools of management goes beyond “publish or perish.”

The term “academic productivism” is best-known in Brazil, although its origin is in the United States, being associated with the “publish or perish” phenomenon. This is because the governments of these countries have institutionalized public policies for graduate-level assessment and have linked professors’ publication frequency to the quantitative productivity indicators used by universities for performance assessment and career growth, as well as for fundraising provided by public or private agencies. Those who do not achieve high productivity rates end up perishing in their careers, hence the origin of the expression “publish or perish” (Paula & Boas, 2017).

In recent years, many researchers have discussed the academic productivism associated with the quantitative dimension of academic publications, and much criticism has arisen around strategies such as ceremonial co-authoring (Rossoni, 2018) and paper production as student assessment (Bispo & Costa, 2016), and there have also been increased discussions about the quantity and quality of scientific publications (Bertero, Caldas & Wood, 1999; Wood & Costa, 2015).

This article seeks to broaden the scope of the definition of academic productivism, which should be analyzed from a multilevel perspective. It is assumed that the analysis of academic productivism must be multilevel because (a) to think about the phenomenon only from the perspective of publication is to disregard the fact that publication is a process that involves dedication and time devoted to research, processes of theoretical construction, and methodological definitions and analyses of applied social phenomena, as is the case in management; (b) it cannot be considered dissociated from other dimensions of teaching practice, such as teaching and management of academic and administrative activities; (c) its manifestations depend on working conditions, institutional pressures, and the professors’ working environment; and (d) it also involves human nature, as researchers’ productivity also impacts their job satisfaction, subjective well-being, and engagement with their work.

Thus, academic productivism cannot be treated solely from the critical perspective of publication or its absence as an exclusive criterion, but it can be analyzed from a multilevel perspective: governmental, institutional, and individual.

Academic Productivism as consequence of performative governmental public policies

At this level of analysis, academic productivism is encouraged by the existence of ranking systems (Adler & Harzing, 2009) created by associations or governments with policies that encourage publication (Frazoni et al., 2011) and that use journal classification indicators to assess the impact of research (Nkomo, 2009) on project appraisal, researcher performance appraisal, and funding grants by research agencies. This perspective is related to a culture of performativity (Moreira, 2009), of regulation as a means of control, and of pressure and change, whose main measure of success is academic performance based on results indicators, which allow the government, in several countries, to assume both the roles of regulator and performance auditor.

In some cases, the process is based on the assessment of research group performance, and, in others, financial reward systems for the best publications are institutionalized. Thus, if the system rewards articles in high-impact publications and institutionalizes a mercantilist view of the graduate school system, its mission to develop researchers ultimately becomes compromised. In addition, institutions use their positioning in international rankings as a strategy to attract students, highly productive researchers, and investments.

In the Brazilian case, public policies linked to academic productivism are institutionalized by the Ministries of Education (Ministério da Educação [MEC]) and Science, Technology, Innovations, and Communication (Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia, Inovações e Comunicações [MCTIC]). CAPES, linked to the MEC, establishes assessment indicators for graduate-level assessment, allocates resources to a graduate support program called "Proap," grants scholarships to researchers at various levels, and establishes criteria for the qualifications of academic journals. The National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico [CNPq]), linked to the MCTIC, also uses teaching performance indicators to determine the recipients of scholarships and financial support.

This performative culture impacts the professor’s actions and “alters the nature of the soul of the graduate professor/researchers’ and the professors’ relationships with each other, contributing to these relationships being guided not by solidarity but by competition” (Moreira, 2009, p. 32), manifesting itself in psychological pressure, stress, and the rhythm of teaching, as well as bullying (Pita, 2010).

At the institutional level, fostering research international ization can also be considered an action that impacts academic productivism because it encourages the construction of strate gic internationalization plans and the strengthening of research networks with international researchers. A clear example of this policy is the Institutional Internationalization Program called CAPES PrInt (Capes, 2017), which aims to improve the quality of graduate-level publications and the mobility of researchers.

Institutional public policies, defined at the governmental level, are fundamental to the development of a country and aim, above all, to improve its position in the international rankings of scientific production. On the other hand, they also cause anomalies regarding academic productivism when they are not properly managed or when research institutions do not provide adequate working conditions or financial support for the realization of internationalization.

There is an expectation that the changes proposed by CAPES for the quadrennial assessment in 2021 will promote reflection within the academic community, since the quality and impact of the descriptions of items related to the “developing scholar” and “impact on society” elevate the value of qualitative actions associated with one of the fundamental dimensions of public education policies, the development of future professors and their destiny and performance, which must be re-signified in the context of graduate studies in management to “contribute to the solution of the chronic problem of uncompensated development” (Silva & Costa, 2014, p. 35), that is the result of a culture of academic productivism that may be compromising the career prospects of young professors and researchers.

The institutional dimension of productivism creates an isomorphic logic in all dimensions (coercive, mimetic, and normative) proposed by Dimaggio and Powell (2005), which is characteristic of Brazilian graduate studies in general, especially in the field of ​​management and its subcategories. This logic causes academic productivism at the institutional level to lead to a precarious situation.

Academic productivism and the precariousness of professors’ work in higher education institutions

At the institutional level, academic productivism has caused many problems for researchers because many universities, departments, and GPs pressure their professors to publish articles in high-impact journals because the universities want to position themselves competitively against other institutions and courses of study, as has already been indicated by Nkomo (2009). CAPES itself has an institutional assessment that classifies GPs based on such a ranking, which creates institutional pressure on professors.

On the other hand, the lack of appropriate working conditions in most institutions, especially in the context of public universities, as well as the need to reconcile teaching with research, academic, and management activities, has led to a precarious work process, since the time dedicated to each of the various activities winds up hindering the capacity of the professor to address the various institutional demands. The precariousness of teaching is more subjective than objective (Bernardo, 2014).

For Santana (2011), the workload of a graduate-level instructor consists of more than 40 hours per week of exclusive dedication to various duties. This workload consists of teaching, academic supervision, management of research projects, acting in administrative positions at the university, participation in scientific events and assessment boards of master’s dissertations and doctoral theses, and preparation of academic papers for publication.

In a study of graduate-level professors in management, based on an analysis of the sociology of science, Melo and Serva (2012) found that the professors under investigation had a workload of approximately 50.65 hours per week, which is considered excessive. Of this weekly workload, 46% was comprised of teaching (preparation and teaching, supervising); 24%, research; 19%, bureaucratic activities; 8%, article reviewing and participation in scientific cooperation networks; and 3% was dedicated to extra activities. One of the most interesting and disturbing results revealed in the survey was that 47% of hours spent engaged in research were on weekends.

Teaching is precarious because its professional practice is marked by the diversity and complexity of its activities, which demand great versatility, dynamism, and high personal costs. In addition, according to the results of the study, research activities, regarded as the most important aspect of graduate-level teaching, tend to take place outside the work environment at the university, in a social space that should be dedicated to private life. A question indicated by Melo e Serva (2012) serves as a motivator for reflection on the subject: What are the risks of being a research professor in this context, with a workload that exceeds 50 hours per week?

Academic productivism may be associated with the precarious nature of postgraduate work, because the time devoted to teaching activities hinders the professor’s dedication and productivity in relation to research, and vice versa. Regarding this context, some strategies are being adopted mainly to comply with the requirements of academic publication. One of them involves ceremonial co-authoring (Rossoni, 2018), a type of co-authoring in which the author does not contribute or, at best, makes a marginal contribution to the preparation of a paper for publication. Another involves writing papers on certain subjects, like an assembly line in a “paper factory” (Bispo & Costa, 2016). Reflections on academic publication and productivism can also be found in Alcadipani (2011) and Godoi and Xavier (2012).

The pressure to publish may end up compromising one of the most important and essential dimensions of graduate programs: the development of scholars through teaching activities. On the other hand, teaching needs to be rethought, as it is common in many GPs in management for professors to author an excessive amount of texts (books and papers), many of them in English, with classes being an event for students to discuss them, by way of seminars, leading them to take a more active role in conducting the class.

What are the professors’ role in graduate studies in management? How can they awake the critical and reflective spirit of students from theoretical discussions of a subject or subareas of knowledge to help them become proactive in the learning process? The time devoted to teaching often winds up being compromised by the productivist logic created by a system in which the indicators established by the professors in a field determine certain behavioral patterns, leading them to adopt teaching strategies that do not promote the development of theoretical, epistemological, or methodological competences (Silva & Costa, 2014), for example, or a more meaningful and transformative learning process (Lima & Silva, 2018).

This context can create anomalies in the training of young researchers, who learn, for example, to write papers as a requirement for studying a subject (Bispo & Costa, 2016), sometimes making little contribution to the field and having difficulty successfully passing exams for the position of assistant professor because of their low level of theoretical competence and lack of substantive knowledge of a field of management.

This highlights that fact that the logic of the precarious work done in the context of GPs also causes issues associated with health and well-being at work. Many professors experience health problems that are closely associated with their working conditions, and in the most serious cases, these problems also wind up affecting students’ health, creating a vicious circle of physical and mental illness. This perspective characterizes the individual dimension of academic productivism.

Academic productivism, well-being, and the professor’s health: publishing is necessary, but so is living well

The logic of productivism associated with publication has considerable implications for the professor. Miller, Taylor, and Bedeian (2011) analyzed the effect of pressure to publish papers and found a positive relationship with stress (mental tension associated with pressure) and burnout (a feeling of emotional exhaustion due to the pressure to publish) and a negative relationship with job satisfaction that characterize the publication process. This indicates that there is a relationship between a pressure-filled environment in which it is necessary to publish and its consequences for professor well-being. Many professors refrain from sharing their physical and psychological health problems or are slow to recognize them “for fear of being seen as incapable” (Pita, 2010, p. 15).

In the individual dimension of academic productivism, the impact of productivity on professors’ health and well-being are analyzed. Reflecting on the individual level is critical, because the professor’s freedom to choose whether to work in a graduate program is marked by both professional dilemmas and factors associated with private life.

De Paula and Boas (2017) point out that the context of such precarious work brings consequences for the physical and mental health of professors and can cause various mental and behavioral disorders, such as depression, anxiety, stress, and alcoholism, a phenomenon that has also been addressed by Sguissardi and Silva (2009), Santana (2011), Godoi and Xavier (2012), Bernardo (2014), and Rigo (2017). The health problems of professors can also affect relationships with students and even lead them to develop mental and behavioral disorders of their own, creating a vicious circle that undermines the entire graduate school system.

Sguissardi e Silva (2009), after conducting research with professors at seven federal public universities, concluded that the precariousness of teaching has caused existential dilemma, health-related issues, personal problems, psychological distress, and relationship issues. Santana (2011) conducted a study with 914 CNPq research productivity scholarship recipients with a hypothesis that, the higher the number of publications and the number of students advised in a program, the higher the average occurrences of cardiac intervention, coronary heart disease, and stroke (hemorrhagic and ischemic) would be, which was confirmed. These problems often occur due to a lack of physical activity, an unbalanced diet, and an absence of medical checkups, justified by overtime and the need to keep GPs’ quality indicators and curricula up-to-date.

For Godoi and Xavier (2012), these behaviors are suicidal and are consequences of a set of anomalies in the health situation of the researcher-professor, and they conclude that it is urgent to reflect on the effects of chronic overtime on personal life. To meet the governmental and institutional policies governing graduate studies, professors must better manage their emotions and find ways to preserve their well-being.

In a study conducted with professors of a federal public university in Brazil, Bernardo (2014) analyzed the subjective precariousness of professors and found the existence of mental exhaustion, psychic suffering, and illness, which was ratified by Rigo (2017) when highlighting that the “politics” of academic productivism have effects on the psyches and health of researchers.

Regarding the term “perish” as representing the exclusion of professors from the graduate school system when they do not meet the requirement for publication, in this dimension of academic productivism, perishing does not only mean being excluded from GPs, but a process of physical and emotional illness that, many times, occupies an invisible dimension in teaching practices because the professor does not recognize the physical and emotional problems or establishes a process of emotional avoidance to avoid facing the issue. In the long term, emotional and behavioral disorders due to stress (Pignata et al., 2018) and burnout (Chang, 2009; Ghanizadeth & Hahedizadeh, 2005), for example, can lead to absence from work because burnout is a “syndrome” caused by prolonged stress and is related to the work environment (Chang, 2009).

In the field of management, many senior professors who have made major contributions to the training of professors and researchers in the field are excluded from graduate programs because they no longer meet the criteria of publication. In fact, many of them have become ill throughout their lives, and one of the consequences of these problems is a decrease in publication output, which should not be a mechanical process, but an intellectual process of reflection. Despite being excellent postgraduate professors, admired by students as for their knowledge, such professors end up being excluded from the system and treated as “merchandise” that has lost its value; however, such professors should not be excluded from the system solely because of low publication volume because their expertise in other dimensions, such as teaching, supervision, and management, should be assessed as central to the performance of a GP.

This is a face of academic productivism that must be researched and discussed both at the institutional level, as in the CAPES forums, at the events of the National Association of Graduate Studies and Research in Management (Associação Nacional de Pós Graduação e Pesquisa em Administração [ANPAD]), among others, and in the context of universities and graduate programs.

FINAL REFLECTIONS: WHERE ARE WE GOING?

Graduate studies programs in Brazil are experiencing a moment of crisis, which is not only associated with a lack of resources, but also with the need for better demarcation of the educational duties of professors and researchers in all fields of knowledge. In the management field, the discussion about professor and researcher development has already been addressed in publications and forums held within the scope of ANPAD events, especially the National Meeting on Teaching and Research in Administration and Accounting (Encontro de Ensino e Pesquisa em Administração e Contabilidade [EnEPQ]), and at the GPs forum of the Brazilian Society of Public Management (Sociedade Brasileira de Administração Pública [SBAP]).

As a multilevel phenomenon, academic productivism is becoming one of the great challenges of graduate studies in Brazil, especially because of the consequences it can have for institutions, professors, and scholars. This discussion should be part of the agendas of graduate programs, CAPES’s area advisors, university managers, and funding agencies (CAPES and CNPq).

From the reflections presented in this paper, it can be seen that multilevel academic productivism is considered a complex phenomenon resulting from government policies and performative institutional actions, which involve not only the quantity and quality of publications, but also indicators of educational productivity, research, advising, and other academic activities of the teaching profession that are isomorphically institutionalized and affect the working conditions and physical and psychological well-being of the actors in the postgraduate context.

The phenomenon is systemic and multilevel because it influences, and is influenced by, several actors, such as the government, the higher education institutions with CAPES accredited programs, collegiate programs, and program coordinators and professors. Productivism also has several dimensions, but publication assumes a predominant and highly valued role for much of the academic community in the field.

In discussing productivism from a multilevel perspective, I hope to draw the attention of researchers in the field to the fact that the main victim of academic productivism are the professors and to reflect on the consequences of the system on their health and well-being as a warning about the future of the graduate school system.

Thus, the great challenge for all researchers in management and its subcategories is to foster opportunities to discuss alternatives to academic productivism; the first one involves discussing the process of assessment in the field. Breaking the productivist logic is not an easy process because there is a relationship of dependence between the community of a specific field of knowledge and the dimension of productivism at the institutional level in the context of public policies and the country’s positioning strategies regarding rankings of worldwide intellectual productivity.

Publication is the main instrument of the productivist orientation prevailing in graduate programs nowadays. We must reflect on the personal cost that this logic can demand in the relationship between work and personal life, health and disease, and happiness and depression. On the other hand, the notion of academic productivism reaches many full professors in teaching and research in graduate management programs who, regarding reduced academic productivity and retirement prospects, reduce their interest in academic productivity and end up being “discarded” by graduate programs, disregarding their careers and legacies as professors and researchers.

Recovering the identity of teaching in graduate-level management studies is an opportunity to rethink the field’s mission and values, as well as realize that future master’s and doctoral students must be trained to regard teaching and research as integrated, inseparable dimensions of teaching practice. However, this goal may become increasingly difficult to reach because the environment of a scholar’s development is currently marked more by pressure and psychological suffering than by a process of consistent academic development, both theoretically and epistemologically.

This environment is being created because frequent publication is necessary, but students often wind up producing papers that do not contribute to the advancement of the field, serving only to “fatten” their curricula and contribute to the goals of professors and advisors. This behavior not only emphasizes the logic of ceremonial co-authoring discussed earlier, but it can also create an assembly line for publication that adds no substantive value to knowledge of the field.

Graduate publication in Brazil has become an anomaly created by the institutions’ reward systems, the CAPES assessment criteria, and the project evaluation and research productivity scholarship criteria, the consequences of which have already been discussed by several researchers, such as Alcadipani (2017), Rigo (2017), Rossoni (2018), and Bispo (2018), demanding a critical reflection from the academic community on the direction of graduate school assessment processes, journals, and the researchers themselves.

Does the maxim “CAPES is us!” still prevail, and is our reality socially constructed or imposed on us by an institutional, reified process that makes us producers and consumers of a performative commodity called academic productivism? What collective strategies can we think of to address its consequences? Will the dimensions and indicators proposed for the next quadrennial assessment in 2021 promote changes in the way that academic productivism is conceived in the context of graduate studies in Brazil?

In the final reflections of this paper, the question “Where are we going?” involves examining which possibilities, routes, and itineraries that the management field itself must follow and which will materialize in assessment indicators. Thus, it is hoped that this proposal for the analysis of multilevel academic productivism will serve as a warning because the trajectory of graduate studies in the field of management is the responsibility of every professor in the community, and reconciling conflicting interests is not an easy process.

It is possible to think about strategies that minimize the impact of multilevel academic productivism on graduate studies in management, provided that the academic community in the area discusses, through forums, alternatives to the performative commodity of scores, metrics, and ranking and reflects on strategies and actions for the academic development of professors and their potential economic, social, and cultural impact on the country, considering its diversity and unique regional contexts.

Rethinking, for example, the economic, cultural, and social impact of a graduate program, which, as commodities, still have little weight in the assessment process, as well as the commitment of GPs to the training and development of the scholars in the program, are some guidelines that can serve as a reference for initiating a community debate.

Appreciating the role of research groups in the CAPES assessment is also an alternative for recognizing the joint, active work of researchers involved with GPs based on the results achieved through formative actions, community interaction, and student participation.

Multilevel academic productivism is much more than “publish or perish” jargon. It is a performative act that institutionalizes a set of actions and behaviors, characterizes a form of social representation of a field of knowledge, delimits a system of beliefs and values oriented towards a performative culture socially integrated into the actions of public and private actors as well as GPs, and affects the working conditions, health, well-being, and careers of professors in the field’s community.

We have to find alternative ways to “denaturalize” this performative logic and create a space for reflection so that we can define strategies to reconcile academic performance with the need for good working conditions and relationships, actions that will preserve the quality of life and health of professors and students to make postgraduate education a social space mediated by positive experiences meant to educate and train professors and researchers in search of a better society for all.

Acknowledgement note

This article is part of a research project that received financial support from CAPES through the Senior Internship Program (process no. 88881.119133/2016-01).

• Translated version

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Edited by

This article is authorship by a member of RAE's Scientific Editorial Board and was evaluated by double-blind review process with impartiality and independence. Scientific Editor: Diogo Henrique Helal

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  04 Nov 2019
• Date of issue
  Sep-Oct 2019

History

• Received
  28 Dec 2018
• Accepted
  01 July 2019