Critics of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) argue that

KPIs culture rewards the immediate production of tangible outcomes sometimes at the expense of social engagement and cooperative behaviour. The need to gain immediate outcomes in the current KPIs performance culture focuses many individuals onto forms of productivity that gain high KPIs but at what cost? What effect does this single minded focus have on developing organisational loyalties and commitments? Some scholars have suggested that a singular focus on performance indicator success may crowd out other positive social capital in institutions (Falk et al., 1999; Gächter & Falk, 2000; Falk & Fehr, 2001). A critical question for policy makers in institutions is the extent to which the KPIs culture in organisations acts to encourage people to focus their energies on increasing the number of measurable indicators they can acquire irrespective of the intrinsic value of such indicators. What are the broader consequences of KPIs culture for social cohesion, collegiality and ethical norms that we traditionally associate with higher education institutions? Other theorists have brought our attention to the way that the reduction of rewards to calculable benefits has the unintended effect of negating or dissipating altruistic or non competitive motivations for achievement in academia (Gächter & Falk, 2000; Frey & Jegen, 2001). Frey and Jegen argue that in many cases the reduction of motivation to extrinsic rewards, (in our case KPIs) may lead to a diminution of intrinsic motivation which may in some cases be a far better motivator for people to perform (Fre