De l'opposition " politiques / administratifs " au clivage " centre / périphérie " : les divergences de perception des outils de mesure dans les universités

The opposition between administrative and academic staff and the cleavage between "central" organizational level and university sub-units: differences in perception of measurement tools in universities. Measurement tools are central to the debate of the management and control of universities. Yet, little is known about how they are used and understood by university employees. Therefore, this article aims to present an overview of these perceptions and practices while highlighting the differences that may exist between different types of actors, in particular between "academic staff" and "administrative staff". For this, we will seek to identify the use of measurement tools by distinguishing uses referring to diagnostic control and to interactive control ; uses of measuring tools of decision support systems and those of organizational rationalization machines (Simons, 1995 ; Burchell et al., 1980). We will also study the perception that the actors have on the way these tools are utilized. This inventory is based on a questionnaire survey sent to all French universities (2,598 responses from people responsible for management and governance positions belonging to both academic and administrative staff). Our results show that the function of "legitimation" seems to prevail over those of diagnostic monitoring, decision-making and interactive control. However, significant variations have been observed depending on the type of data produced and on the categories of actors. Our results suggest that, although there is a clear distinction between "administrative staff" and "academic staff", the perception of measurement tools also depends on a distinction between academic and administrative staff belonging to university sub-units and those belonging to central administrative offices and presidential teams.