Page 73 - Through the gate of the neoliberal academy • Herschberg

SELECTING EARLY-CAREER RESEARCHERS 71
excellent candidate (SSH, 4, M). Another respondent argued that it is hard to attract excellent candidates because the department is not “(inter)nationally renowned” and, therefore, not appealing to excellent scholars (SSH, 2, F). She explained that excellent researchers opt for better-known universities in the field or wait for an offer. She confirmed the pressure of the university board on academic staff to strive for excellence and revealed the difficulties of this. Another committee member does not take selecting for excellence for granted either:
Personally, my strategy is that if I can choose between an A-candidate and a B-candidate: –very excellent or good – and I know that with the good candidate, I would hire an outstanding team player, but the excellent candidate may be less adept at team work, I would pick the good candidate over the excellent one. The full team are required to be present for work every morning at nine, and have to work hard all day. I do not want to have to deal with team or individual staff issues the entire day. [...] Striving for excellence, also triggers certain processes, you know. The others, who are not excellent, might feel unappreciated. (SSH, 3, M)
This quote illustrates that the implicit norm of excellence does not encompass being a team player. Here, the committee member reproduces the dominant discourse of excellence, i.e. excellence equals individual research achievements. This makes excellence a narrow conception. Furthermore, the respondent explains how the presence of an excellent person in the team can create feelings of disadvantage among other staff and, therefore, endanger the ethos in the group. Thus, he resists the macro- and meso-level preoccupation with excellence. Here, a tension is found between what the university and department want and what an academic manager says they need for successful daily operation of their group.
3.5 Discussion and conclusion
This study aimed at providing a better understanding of how academic selection criteria for early-career researchers are constructed at the meso- and micro-level in the context of macro-discourses of internationalisation and excellence. Hitherto, early-career researchers were an understudied group in evaluation studies. This study shows how they need to be evaluated on their potential, rather than on track records of performance available for the assessment of senior researchers. This multi-level study contributes to the literature on academic staff evaluation (Lamont, 2009; Musselin,
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