Mapping Academic Excellence and Evaluating Cultures

Recruitment and selection are often emphasized as key factors in explaining the persistent gender and ethnic inequalities within academia. However, we know little about the evaluative practices and power dynamics involved. Academic recruitment processes and evaluative cultures have been found to vary considerably across countries and institutions. Moreover, researchers have illustrated noteworthy field-specific variations in academic recruitment practices and their gendered outcomes.

Recruitment is often viewed as the key process for understanding the reproduction of gender and ethnic segregation in the labour market and within organizations. However, most studies on gender difference in academia focus on the outcome of the hiring process rather than the process itself. In order to make sense of varying evaluation standards and the meaning that is attributed to them, we aim to study recruitment processes. We will investigate this by observing all stages, from the design of job advertisements to the final hiring decisions.

The aim of this work package is to provide systematic research on perceptions of excellence in different disciplinary contexts in Norway. We will study evaluative disciplinary cultures and what competence profiles that dominates in three different disciplines, namely biology, political science, and history, where the gender division varies. Central questions: How do scholars in these fields perceive, conceptualize, and evaluate competence? What do they consider as the core knowledge in their research field? What is excellence, “the cream of the crop”, “the best of the brightest”?

Our aim is to investigate how academic competence and excellence are defined, and how the meritocratic ideals are played out, in these processes.

After conducting an in-depth study of the recruitment processes in academia, two main findings can be highlighted. Firstly, there is a tendency during the hiring process to narrow down the understanding of what is relevant qualifications of the candidates, resulting in the primary focus being placed on the number of articles published in high-ranking Anglophone journals. Secondly, although the recruiters incorporate both norms of diversity and excellence when evaluating merit, we find that in the crucial stages of the process – in which hiring outcomes are determined – diversity must ‘give way’ in favour of narrow criteria of excellence.

Publications

Orupabo, J. & Mangset, M. (2021). Promoting Diversity but Striving for Excellence: Opening the ‘Black Box’ of Academic Hiring. Sociology, 56(2),  316-332. https://doi.org/10.1177/00380385211028064

Orupabo, J. & Mangset, M. (2021). Academic hiring in Norway. Institute for Social Research