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Introduction
Telling the truth is a main characteristic of intellectual academics in higher education institutions. It is a precondition to accommodate the academic freedom of philosophical or democratic values in terms of telling the truth via courage and moral qualities toward the intervening power in the process of knowledge production and dissemination through research, publication and teachings (Giroux, 2002; Tamboukou, 2012). However, in the growing knowledge-based economy of neoliberal society, these philosophical values have increasingly been challenged by the power (politics) through which political and economic interests of the government and society at large are interfaced. Thus, these values may be susceptible to political power manipulation (Steele, 2010). These political economic interests are inculcated in the form of control and punishment mechanisms to obtain a maximum economic function of the body. To achieve this, it is therefore important to understand how this body functions and works via what Foucault calls “the knowledge of the body.” Then, based on this knowledge, it is known that to be a productive body, it must be docile and subjugated. To subjugate the body, a technology of control through political rationality must be applied ‒ a form of technology that has widely been adopted in the modes of governance and has been embedded in several management theories and techniques, namely the taylorism of scientific management, bureaucracy and new public management (NPM) to date. The latter is purportedly the most used technique in public service management, including higher education institutions, and it is played out in the interface between philosophy and politics.
NPM arose as a technique to improve professionalism via the promotion of business or corporate principles to obtain efficiency, effectiveness and value for money. To achieve these, a set of measurements of controls is introduced that emphasizes the quantifiable and tangible outcomes to assess and evaluate productivities and performances of employees. In higher education, along with the advent of knowledge-based economy, the economic importance of higher education to produce knowledge and innovation for the socio-economic development and advancement of nations has become heightened, and correspondingly it is seen as a machine for economic competitive edge.
With regard to these points, indeed, research and publication productivities have been seen as core indicators to the advancement of nations, the pride and...