Based on data from interviews conducted with 14 academic managers at two Swedish universities, this article investigates the consequences of the increasing prevalence of performance measurement in the higher education sector. The study contributes to the discussion of how performance measurement impacts academic work, focusing specifically on its influence on how meaning is created and recreated by academic managers. By applying the sensemaking perspective, as proposed by Weick ([1995. Sensemaking in Organizations. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications]), the article explores seven properties of the sensemaking process. The study results demonstrate the influence of metrics on the process by which managers give meaning to academic work. Performance measures are interpreted by academic managers as important in acquiring resources, supporting decision-making, and enhancing organisational legitimacy. They also reinforce social scripts of competition and success, although they are often understood as being unable to indicate scientific quality. The consequence for sensemaking in teaching and research activities is that measurable performance is understood to be increasingly important. However, a notable finding from the study is that the managers are aware of how metrics promote specific forms of academic work and often attempt to balance these incentives by acknowledging the values and priorities that these metrics are unable to assess. This finding highlights the important role of academic managers as they counteract some of the pressure caused by various performance measures.

In recent years, performance-based research funding systems (PRFSs) have been introduced in all of the Nordic countries. In this chapter, we compare these systems and explore how their introduction is reflected within universities. Through interviews with academics, managers and administrators, we study how the performance measures of these systems are used at the university level and how that affects research activities. The results indicate that the introduction of PRFSs at the national level have had significant effects at the institutional level. The PRFSs contribute to the institutionalisation and consolidation of research metrics as the main way to describe research performances, and thus as the organising principles of research. Differences are also noted between the countries in the reactions of the university actors, which are believed to be a consequence of the variations of the PRFSs.

As performance measurement has become increasingly common at Nordic universities, concerns have been raised that disciplinary differences create difficulties in comparing academic performances. To better understand the potential of utilising performance measures for the management of academic work, this study explores how academics perceive governance and steering based on performance measurement. Building on an established typology of the disciplines that distinguishes the hard sciences from the soft and the applied sciences from the pure, we ask how academics perceive performance measurement depending on their disciplinary affiliation. The empirical material consists of a survey sent to academics in four Nordic countries. Our results show there are clear differences in the attitudes toward performance measurement between academics from different disciplines. Academics from the hard applied sciences are more positive about performance measurement than any other group, and academics from the soft pure sciences are more negative. These findings are consistent with notions about the poor adaptation of metrics to publication practices within the soft sciences and greater sensitivity to performance measurement among the applied sciences. The main contribution of the article is to provide empirical data that support the notion that performance measures are accepted to different degrees in different disciplines.

As bibliometrics becomes ever more prevalent, universities have started to implement bibliometric evaluation systems to monitor and improve their research productivity. Because these systems are costly and can be stressful for staff, it is important that they provide substantial benefits to the organisation. However, previous research has indicated that the extent to which performance data are actually being used is not always satisfactory. Therefore, this article aims to study the reasons for use of bibliometric evaluation systems as provided by university managers. A number of factors that have been suggested as influencing evaluation use are explored through qualitative interviews with heads of department at a technical university in Sweden. The results show that a range of factors influence whether the managers use the evaluation system or not. The conclusions suggest that it is important to pay attention to the way in which bibliometric evaluation systems can support learning and development, but also to recognise the limits of their potential.