Analysis of academicians' views about academic incentive system - A performance-based allowance practice

Performance, motivation and incentive concepts are considered significant for higher education institutions. This study aims to identify academicians' views related to academic incentive system which started in 2015. The study is a qualitative research in descriptive model. The study group consists of 27 academicians working at different universities. For data collection, "Open-ended Questionnaire Form for Academic Incentive System" was developed by the researcher. According to the repetition frequency of academicians' views on the incentive system, the categories appeared as follows: "Negative Outcomes Related to Scientific Ethics", "Deviation from Dominance of Quantity and Academic Purpose", "Fresh Blood to the Tired Turkish Scientific Society", "Affective Dimension Related to the Academic Incentive", "Discomfort in Academic Community about Scoring Criteria", and "Demotivation in Academic Community". The codes appeared according to the order of importance and repetition frequency are: "dissemination of unethical behaviors" (f=18), "suggestions and expectations from academicians for improvement" (f=15), "response to specific items of scoring" (f=14), "quantitative increase / qualitative decrease" (f=13), "academic incentive as a performance enhancing figure" (f=13), "positive affective attitude" (f=13), "academic incentive as a motivational figure" (f=11); "response to the 30 point criterion for incentive" (f=7), "relating academic effort to money" (f=7), "negative affective attitude" (f=6); "risk of creating a commercial market" (f=6); "institutional competitiveness" (f=5); "academic incentive as a mobbing tool" (f=5); "problem of determining the reputation of academicians according to the incentive system" (f=4). Consequently, academicians state that the academic community did not work well, therefore government's incentive system aims to increase academic productivity; but it leads to unethical issues and demotivation