Women without Peers: The Formalization of Cue-Less Academic Promotion Practices at a Leading Swedish Business School

This paper traces the introduction of a tenure track system at a Swedish business school. To counteract problems of “secrecy, subjectivity and amateurism” in academic promotion (Association of University Teachers 1992, p. 13 cited in Bagilhole 1997, p. 130), a strategy of formalization has been pursued for many decades. However, dissatisfaction remains regarding its effects on the advancement of individuals from persistently un(der)represented groups such as women. Numerous organizational factors, many linked to the design of promotion processes, have been found to impinge on women academics’ career trajectories (e.g. Bagilhole 1993). Notably, teaching and service activities have been undervalued in relation to research – and asymmetrically assigned to women (e.g. Acker and Feuerverger 1996; Packer 1996). Studies in Anglo-Saxon settings, which dominate the extant literature, have also linked organizational discrimination with societal barriers to equitable treatment, including limited parental leave, poor access to affordable childcare, and weak labour laws. These circumstances differ markedly from those in Sweden, an advanced welfare state with strong societal and political support for gender equality (e.g. Elg and Jonnergård 2010). How, then, does formalized academic assessment operate in such a site? To address this question, we followed the successive articulation of explicit performance metrics and formalized evaluation procedures to probe the everyday ‘construction of excellence’ (van den Brink and Benschop 2012). The case organization’s promotion process was historically characterized by a system of patronage and assessment of research merit. Following a critical accreditation review in the late 2000s, the organization introduced a strict  ‘up-or-out’ tenure track system. This formalized the steps and roles in the promotion assessment process, and – importantly – introduced teaching and service as dimensions of performance assessment. While the probationary time was substantially extended (from six months to six years), the rules of the game were seemingly made more explicit, transparent – and equitable.Through a close reading of a chronology of internal and external documents, we trace how metrics and standards – two cornerstones of any management control system (Anthony and Govindarajan 2007, p. 2) – were articulated. We identify characteristics of both metrics and standards which previous research has found to undermine the substantive pursuit of equitable performance assessment. We further situate the observed differentiation of performance metrics and absence of stable standards in the broader organization of the assessment process. Here, the creation of a highly stratified, and collectively anonymous, judgment of individuals’ absolute and relative performance, left those assessed without peers to serve as benchmarks or arbiters of satisfactory, much less excellent, academic conduct. In this way, the operation of the now-formalized tenure track system aligned with previous practices of selective informal patronage. In contrast to Anteby’s (2013) analysis of vocal silence at Harvard Business School, we find that the studied tenure track system was more ‘cue less’:  transparency of the assessed was paired with increased secrecy of the assessors, and opacity of their assessment criteria. Thus, our case highlights how organizational commitments can persist despite formalization, even in a societal setting that supports gender equality.