Evaluation at Work

Rezensionen / Stimmen

'Vidaillet takes the critique of the evaluation society to a new level by showing that we cannot understand the evaluation society without attention to the psychic need for evaluation in the subject. We cannot escape the trap of evaluation unless we fundamentally reconsider our own engagement in it. Vidaillet?s analysis is brilliant and provocative. Read it if you dare!' - Peter Dahler-Larsen, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

'In this timely book, Benedicte Vidaillet sheds instructive light on an everyday conundrum-why subjection to formal means of performance evaluation is widely dreaded and despised, yet also grudgingly desired. "We complain but we come back for more". Formality removes some of the heat and uncertainty from more direct and personal kinds of appraisal. But compliance with the process invariably increases pressure to raise performance. It is shown how the allure of faux objectivity condemns the evaluated to turn a treadmill that is not of their making but whose unremitting motion can prove hard to resist. Evaluation at Work deserves to be widely read." - Hugh Willmott, Bayes Business School, London, England, and Cardiff Business School, Wales

'As concerns evaluation, the enemy is within us, not outside. Vidaillet's book opens our eyes and provides the most effective antidote to the metastatic effects of evaluation in the workplace! We are now ready to dismantle the plague of evaluation that limits the individual freedom and undermines the functioning of institutions around the world.' - Davide Borrelli, University Suor Orsola Benincasa of Napoli, Italy

'If most employees believe individual evaluation is inaccurate and detrimental to their work, why do they crave being evaluated? What is the root of our appetite for assessment? Benedicte Vidaillet draws upon psychoanalysis to answer this question and thus sheds new light on a fundamental issue of our times: our contradictory love and hate relationship with the neoliberal system in which we live. This book is not only original and enlightening, it is also wonderfully clear and well written, which is no mean feat given the complexity of the subject matter.' - Olivier Tonneau, University of Cambridge, UK