Performance Metrics as Formal Structures and Mechanisms: How Do They Work and How Do They Influence?

• In Event: The Practice of Data Use

Abstract

Benchmarks and performance metrics (PM’s) are ubiquitous in educational institutions, as both a key lever in policy interventions and a source of perverse unintended consequences. This paper examines these forms of data and their uses in the context of higher education and the effects on fields and practice. I draw on theoretical and empirical literature developed in the sociological and management traditions of organizational theories with the aim of meaningful application to the relationship between data use as interventions and everyday practice. The article argues that a theoretically consistent framework for analyzing performance metrics needs to capture efficacy and failure of the design of PM’s as well as the primary and secondary effects on the settings in which they are introduced. I delineate two core conceptualizations of performance metrics: as a form of formalization that generates abstractions and governs behavior; and as mechanisms that prompt organizations and individuals to react. The paper includes an agenda for further research that mobilizes this framework to address core research problems at the intersection of data use and educational improvement.

Author

• Jeannette Colyvas, Northwestern University