The pressure to "publish or die" in universities is actually making researchers get way less work done.
April 3, 2026
Original Paper
Publish and Perish? Hyper-Competitive Culture, Performance and Well-being in Academia
SSRN · 6509739
The Takeaway
It is a common belief that extreme competition drives scientific excellence, but the data shows it actually lowers research output. Even the most successful scientists produce less work when they operate in cutthroat, hyper-competitive environments.
From the abstract
Do aggressive, hyper-competitive workplace cultures drive success, or undermine it? Although such cultures appear across a wide range of industries, from tech and consulting to academia, their link to workplace performance remains largely unexamined. Drawing on survey and archival data from over 1,000 faculty and staff across five European business schools, we measure individual perceptions of masculinity contest culture (MCC) and construct novel indicators of shared beliefs at the reference gro