Understanding and Resisting Audit Culture and the Politics of Performance and Accountability

• In Event: 15.059 - Fairmont Royal York Roundtable Session One
  In Roundtable Session: 15.059-9 - Philosophical and Methodological Explorations of Complex Phenomena

Abstract

What counts as an acceptable "product"/"output" of our scholarship continues to be contested, disrupted, and broadened to include artefacts and engagement well beyond the scope of traditional peer-reviewed articles and impact factors. Yet, just as these enticing possibilities invite us to broaden and deepen our scholarship in ways unimagined a decade before, a parallel counterbalancing shift towards an ubiquitous neoliberal and accountability-focused culture – both in the academy and in society – imperils this shift. As audit culture spreads, it gives rise to a new managerialism bent on measuring us against rigid conceptions of research and performance criteria regardless of how inappropriate, unethical, limiting, or insignificant such narrow conceptions of scholarship and impact may be to ourselves and our communities.

Author

• Marc T. Spooner, University of Regina