The impact of managerial performance frameworks on research activities among Australian early career researchers

This chapter explores the lived experience of the new managerial research performance frameworks among Australian early career researchers (ECRs) from different disciplines including the professional disciplines of Teacher Education and Social Work. It seeks to make a contribution to the understanding of the transformation of the university under neoliberal governmental rationalities and the impact they have on academic work, identities and subjectivities. It then focuses on common concerns around research performance, which figured strongly across the participants narratives. The chapter discusses some of the implications of these narratives for academic work and for the future of university research. The emergence of the corporate university has involved a formalisation of performance expectations in regard to academic work including research activity. In many places in Australia, and elsewhere, research performance expectations are broken down into a yearly count of publications, PhD completions and amount of research income obtained via external grants