Individual performance management: enabler or threat to academic performance?

The quality and quantity of academic work is increasingly becoming a managerial concern in universities. As a consequence, department heads are expected to engage in intensified individual performance management and conduct systematic performance appraisals. In this chapter we review research on individual performance management and its effects. We posit that traditional performance management systems make an uneasy fit with the academic context in which middle managers possess limited power and academics have multiple loyalties and high expectations of freedom and autonomy. After reviewing some current trends in performance management in academia and research evidence of intended and unintended consequences of common practices, we end the chapter with suggestions for how individual performance management could be carried out more effectively in universities.