Over the last thirty years, institutional and socio-economic development and globalization have played a crucial role in changes seen in the higher education sector. These changes have impacted aspects such as governance, organization, financing, management systems, and the academic and social legitimacy of universities (Burke & Associates, 2005).

Previous studies have focused on changes in performance measurement (PM) and the management of universities, for example in the implementation of PM, the assessment of academic performance (Lewis, 2014), the use of key performance indicators (Guthrie & Neuman, 2007), and the measurement of institutional and individual performance (Modell, 2006; Kallio & Kallio, 2014; ter Bogt & Scapens, 2012). The common factor in these studies seems to be a transition in institutional logics from academic to business logics (Pettersen, 2015).

In line with this recent development, universities in Nordic countries have faced increased competition for students, researchers, and resources and they are now managed using different PM tools (Vakkuri & Meklin, 2003; Kallio et al., forthcoming). Universities are complex and heterogeneous organizations characterized by the multiplicity of ‘institutional logics’ that compete, shift, and interact (Thornton & Ocasio, 2008). 

The present study uses institutional logics to analyze how the renewal of the PM system in Finnish universities has led to a change in the operating logics of individual university employees. The study is based on a survey conducted in 2015 including 672 respondents from three different universities in Finland. The preliminary analysis revealed that despite the way in which university employees’ perceive the PM system in use, this system has initiated a change in the institutional logics of individual researchers and lecturers.