As of the 18th September 2017 I am no longer unemployed and stuck in a post-PhD hole. Instead, I am a Lecturer in Organizational Behaviour/HRM at the University of Kent. While I’m still job insecure because I don’t know what I’m going to do next year when my contract ends, and somewhat petrified that I have to convene my first  module on managing contemporary HRM, I have a post at a University which is more than I expected to have a month ago.

Canterbury is an absolutely beautiful city that I’m still exploring and aside from my overly letigious landlord and a few HR hiccups, I’m relatively happy and settling in. I do however have to note something that happened in my first departmental meeting. At one point the former department head did a count of the number of three and four star papers in the room to assess whether the department was meeting university targets. While it was a mundane gesture in the context of the conversation (one about university targets and advertising the excellent research done by the department) to me it seemed to shift the atmosphere of the room from collegial to administrative and gave the entire meeting an uncomfortable tone that seemed slow to pass.

I thought that I understood the importance of publishing but really had no concept of how gripping “4* fever” was. I don’t think that I appreciated that it was a complex collective and personal identity project and not just a managerialist control measure (i.e., a loved torture and not an administrative box to tick). That is, that one might feel personal and collective pride for publishing in a 4* outlet and intense shame for having not done so (or not done so enough). I wonder if Hugh Willmott appreciated the full extent to which the publication becomes a fetish-object when he wrote about journal fetishism and its dangers? That is, that the 4* publication itself becomes an object imbued with supernatural and almost mystical powers (to save a job, to secure a pay rise, to gain departmental leverage) as well as being one associated with obsession and eroticized preoccupation- more 4*’s can save us.*

What most concerns me is what this does to my own publication aspirations. I still find myself drawn to journals which rank at either 2* or below or do not appear on the CABS list at all and concerned that these outlets seem increasingly less attractive. I find myself anxious that I do not have any 4* publications and thus I find myself troubled by both the immorality of the cultivation of that anxiety and the hypocrisy of capitulation as I try to pressure my co-author to get a paper into Organization Studies as soon as possible.

*I do wish to note for the record that my new department is far from publication obsessed and indeed, has been nothing but welcoming and supportive of me and my research.