Bureaucratisation of worth: how business schools demonstrate scholarly impact?

This study provides qualitative insights into academic research management in Chinese business schools. We conceptualize research performance measurement and value-based judgments as tests to explore the potential for compromise. Our argument is grounded in qualification and valuation studies and draws on Boltanski and Thévenot’s concept of orders of worth. In this article, the compromises are called into question when the research performance measurement (RPM) system is constructed as an end goal rather than for the common good. Close observations of how RPM systems foster dynamics of controversy, compromise, or both between different orders of worth over time help us to make sense of the trajectories of tensions inherent to performance measurement in the Chinese business school arena, and the justification, critique, compromise, and domination at play.