Publish and Perish? Hyper-Competitive Culture, Performance and Well-being in Academia

Source: INSEAD

(text LinkedIn post Robert Durr/AI) Do academic researchers perform better in more aggressive, masculine hyper-competitive cultures? No, in such environments they have: lower publication rates, lower citation impact, lower employee well-being, higher turnover intentions.

This is shown in a new paper by Maria Guadalupe, Daisy Pollenne, and Kaisa Snellman, using unique survey and archival data across leading European business schools.

The negative associations hold for both men and women. Even star performers do not do better in hyper-competitive cultures.

The authors conclude that: "The absence of performance benefits calls into question the view that aggressively competitive cultures are a necessary feature of high-performing academic environments. Instead, our findings suggest that there is scope for advancing alternative ways of organizing academic work that do not rely on hyper-competitive dynamics and that instead better align individual well-being with sustained research productivity."

Read the full study here.

Maria Guadalupe, Daisy Pollenne, and Kaisa Snellman (2026), Publish and Perish? Hyper-Competitive Culture, Performance and Well-being in Academia, INSEAD Working Paper.

Culture is measured in this paper using the masculinity contest culture scale:

In my institution:
“Admitting you don’t know the answer looks weak”
“It’s important to be in good physical shape to be respected”
“Taking days off is frowned upon”
“If you don’t stand up for yourself, people will step on you”