Page 76 - Through the gate of the neoliberal academy • Herschberg

74 CHAPTER 3
therefore, do not apply international experience as a decisive criterion. This is in line with Clarke and Lunt (2014), who found that university-level assessment criteria for the evaluation of PhD research give guidance to examiners, but the discipline- specific context plays an important role in formulating criteria. When it comes to excellence, however, no disciplinary differences were found, as both the Natural Sciences and Social Sciences department have adopted the discourse of excellence in their policies. This might confirm the pervasiveness of the macro-discourse of excellence, yet, interestingly, this is the criterion in which most resistance was found by committee members in both departments.
The third and final contribution is the discovery of three different ways that committee members at the micro-level relate to articulations of the discourses of internationalisation and excellence. The majority of committee members in both departments consent to university policies and macro-discourses. They appropriate formal criteria, actively reproduce them as self-evident and sometimes even raise the bar. This is what Teelken (2012) refers to as formal instrumentality: “the reliance on formal arrangements” “without a critical perspective” (p. 278). However, it could be that the respondents have taken ownership of the macro-discourses and frame them as their personal preference rather than imposed on them by the organisation (Ashcraft 2005). Some committee members do problematize criteria but still comply with them, because they feel pressured by the organisation to do so. The type of compliance found is different from the symbolic compliance that Teelken (2012) found in her study, as respondents in this study did not seem to symbolically or cosmetically comply but actually adhere to imposed organisational criteria. However, compliance can also be a way to resist resistance (Kärreman & Alvesson, 2009) or contain elements of resistance (Ashcraft, 2005). A few committee members in both departments openly resist applying the criteria and do not take them for granted, recognising the disadvantages and narrowness of criteria of internationalisation and excellence. Committee members specifically resisted the university requirement of hiring excellent staff, as they argue that it is either unfeasible or undesirable. Overall, this study finds that macro-discourses and university policies shape how a majority of committee members evaluate early-career researchers, but a smaller group questions and resists these criteria.
This chapter concludes that discourses of internationalisation and excellence that dominate the current neoliberal university create increasingly demanding criteria for tenure-track assistant professors. With only a few committee members critically questioning and resisting these criteria, their application by committee members may exclude talented early-career researchers. They limit the pool of ‘acceptable’ candidates