Accessibility navigation


Supported or stressed while being assessed? How motivational climates in UK university workplaces promote or inhibit researcher wellbeing

Weinstein, N. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2200-6617, Haddock, G., Chubb, J., Wilsdon, J. and Manville, C. (2023) Supported or stressed while being assessed? How motivational climates in UK university workplaces promote or inhibit researcher wellbeing. Higher Education Quarterly. ISSN 1468-2273 (In Press)

[img] Text - Accepted Version
· Restricted to Repository staff only
· The Copyright of this document has not been checked yet. This may affect its availability.

648kB

It is advisable to refer to the publisher's version if you intend to cite from this work. See Guidance on citing.

Abstract/Summary

Academic culture now places high expectations on researchers to demonstrate research productivity alongside teaching, leadership, and knowledge exchange. In two studies of researchers across career stages in UK higher education institutions (HEIs), we examined workplace climate within academic departments as 1) supportive of researchers’ needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness, 2) publish-or-perish focused, and 3) hyper-competitive. In Study 1 (multiwave from 2018-2020), need support predicted researchers’ lower turnover intention two years later, even when controlling for concurrent need support, and career and economic conditions. In Study 2, need support correlated with academic well-being (lower job strain and turnover intention, greater job satisfaction) in a nationwide sample of 2,951 researchers. Study 2 found that need support related to improved, and a hyper-competitive competitive motivational climate related to undermined, well-being. Results were mixed for publish-or-perish climate. Performative demands can have deleterious effects on researcher well-being.

Item Type:Article
Refereed:Yes
Divisions:Life Sciences > School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences > Department of Psychology
ID Code:110291
Publisher:Wiley

University Staff: Request a correction | Centaur Editors: Update this record

Page navigation