Väitös (kasvatustiede): MA Yoojin Kim

MA Yoojin Kim esittää väitöskirjansa ”Academics in a Performative Ethos: Analysing Negotiations, Temporality, Emotion and Identity under Performance-Based Management in Finnish and Korean Universities” julkisesti tarkastettavaksi Turun yliopistossa perjantaina 25.9.2026 klo 12.00 (Turun yliopisto, Educarium, Edu2, Assistentinkatu 5, Turku).

Vastaväittäjänä toimii dosentti Jani Ursin (Koulutuksen tutkimuslaitos ja Jyväskylän yliopisto) ja kustoksena emeritusprofessori Arto Jauhiainen (Turun yliopisto). Tilaisuus on englanninkielinen. Väitöksen alana on kasvatustiede.

Yleisön on mahdollista osallistua väitökseen myös etäyhteyden kautta. https://utu.zoom.us/j/68056234708 (Meeting ID: 680 5623 4708, salasana: Kim).

Tiivistelmä väitöstutkimuksesta:

My dissertation examines how academics in Finland and South Korea experience a performance-oriented academic culture shaped by performance-based management, or PBM. PBM is one of the management approaches associated with New Public Management, which seeks to improve the competitiveness and excellence of universities through efficiency, competition, measurement, and accountability. In universities, this means that academic work is increasingly assessed through targets, indicators, rankings, publication records, funding, and other measurable results. My study uses the idea of a performative ethos as a lens for understanding how these expectations become part of everyday academic life, shaping not only how work is evaluated, but also how academics experience time, emotion, identity, and their relationship to the university.

One of the main findings is that academics in both countries were often critical of these systems, but for somewhat different reasons. In Finland, interviewees more often questioned whether performance systems actually improved academic work or created sensible incentives. In South Korea, interviewees more often connected these systems with existing hierarchies, career insecurity, and questions about whether academic success was really based on merit. In both countries, however, criticism did not automatically lead to resistance. Many academics adapted strategically to the system because their careers and working conditions depended on it.

A second finding concerns time and emotions. Performance pressures did not only change what academics were expected to achieve; they also affected how they experienced their working lives. Interviewees described pressure to work faster, remain productive, stay visible, and continuously plan for future evaluations or career opportunities. These pressures could generate anxiety, guilt, exhaustion, and uncertainty. At the same time, academics still tried to protect time for meaningful research, teaching, and other work they considered valuable.

The research also shows that performance management can influence how academics understand themselves and what they believe a university should be. Many interviewees still valued academic freedom, meaningful research, teaching, collegiality, and the public role of universities. Yet they also had to respond to demands for measurable achievement and professional visibility. This created tensions between what academics personally valued and what institutions rewarded.

The comparison between Finland and South Korea shows that performance management does not work in exactly the same way everywhere. Similar management ideas travel internationally, but their effects depend on local conditions such as employment security, university hierarchies, organisational practices, career structures, and opportunities for recognition. This means that the same performance system can be experienced very differently by people in different academic positions and institutional settings.

The wider significance of the research is that it encourages us to think beyond whether performance measurement is simply “good” or “bad”. The more important question is what kinds of academic behaviour, working conditions, and values these systems encourage. If universities rely too heavily on measurable performance, they may unintentionally strengthen insecurity, competition, and inequality, while making it harder to protect forms of academic work whose value is not easily measured.

The study therefore suggests that improving universities requires more than changing individual indicators or encouraging academics to cope better with pressure. Attention also needs to be paid to employment security, fair recognition, workload, participation in decision-making, and the conditions that allow academics to do meaningful work. More broadly, the research argues for universities to remain places not only of measurable achievement, but also of knowledge, public value, creativity, and social responsibility.