Performance Management at Universities: The Danish Bibliometric Research Indicator at Work (Public Sector Organizations)

"Mouritzen and Opstrup's book is a most welcome addition to the subject of the management of academic performance. It is certainly well-worth reading and considering."

―Bruno S. Frey, Permanent Visiting Professor at the University of Basel and Research Director CREMA - Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts, Switzerland

"Performance Management at Universities could not possibly be more timely. With universities and university faculty throughout the world being pressed to give more evidence and more precise indicators about their productivity, this thoughtful contribution provides a much needed and unusually thoughtful analysis of the possibilities and pitfalls found in current approaches to university performance evaluation. Given policy-makers’ and politicians’ calls for evidence-based management and evaluation, let us hope that policy-makers heed their own rhetoric and act on the evidence provided here. The authors show that performance measures, while sometimes beneficial, are subject to gaming and manipulation and that more precision does not necessarily equate with better performance, but rather altered performance. This superb book should be read by anyone interested higher education evaluation as well as by those who are subjected to it."

―Barry Bozeman, Regents' Professor, Arizona Centennial Professor of Technology Policy and Public Management, School of Public Affairs, Arizona State University, USA

"In Performance Management at Universities, Mouritzen and Opstrup definitively answer the question: What are the effects of national university performance-based funding schemes that use bibliometric indicators? As these schemes have proliferated, the question has become urgent. The authors marshal comprehensive data on the Danish university system to sift through the many predictions commonly made by academics newly subject to these systems to identify what actually happened to Danish research as the system took hold."

―Diana Hicks, Professor, School of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA, and first author on the Leiden Manifesto on research metrics

Poul Erik Mouritzen is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Political Science, Aarhus University, Denmark. His research interests include local government studies, public policy, political leadership and university governance.

Niels Opstrup is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science and Public Management, University of Southern Denmark. His research interests include performance management, psycho-social work environment, relations between politicians and bureaucrats, incentives and university governance.