Introduction

Being the first to publish a result, writing a grant proposal, applying for a new job, submitting an abstract to a conference or a paper to a journal, applying for a prize or a prestigious scholarship, fostering a unique research profile — it is difficult to imagine academia without competition. Some forms, such as the competition for priority in research discovery, are long established (Merton, 1957). However, in recent decades, competition has become a key instrument in the governance of higher education (Naidoo, 2018). Traditional forms of competition have thus been complemented by a multitude of new forms of competition for a variety of resources that range from prestige to funding, jobs, and publishing space (Krücken, 2021; Musselin, 2018).

Competition in higher education is usually considered a policy instrument that governs the allocation of scarce resources (cf. the overview in Hart & Rodgers, 2023). When universities compete, the resources at stake are students (Civera et al., 2021), researchers (Reymert et al., 2023), or status and prestige (Brankovic, 2018). For individual actors, some of the scarce resources that are allocated through competition are jobs (Herschberg et al., 2018a), visibility (Oldac et al., 2023), funding (Serrano Velarde, 2018), or space in journals (van Raan, 2004). In this paper, we complement the literature on competition and extend its prevailing focus on resource allocation by examining the socializing effects of competition. We argue that competition does not only allocate resources but also provides a normative orientation to actors. More to the point, competition exerts socializing effects because it conveys field-specific orientations and values by informing participants which actions and activities will be rewarded and which will not. With this argument we add to the literature that examines the reactivity of social measures (Espeland & Sauder, 2007), the performativity of indicators (de Rijcke et al., 2015), or the institutional evaluation systems (Robinson-Garcia et al., 2023).

The authority of the orientation and values conveyed by academic competition is not the same across career stages. It can be expected to be especially pronounced for groups that, first, are most exposed to and dependent on the dynamics of competition, and, second, lack other sources of orientation. Both characteristics apply to the postdoctoral career stageFootnote 1: although academics across all career stages participate in different competitions, it is the postdoctoral stage at which individuals are subjected to competitive dynamics in a rather unmediated way. In comparison, Ph.D. students can draw on supervisors as well as programs and courses for orientation and are expected to participate only in selected forms of competition (e.g., it is not possible to apply for third-party funding without having obtained a Ph.D.). Tenured professors require less orientation due to their experience. They can engage in the entire spectrum of different competitions, but they do so from a permanent position, a backdrop against which acquiring scarce goods is less of an existential question. The postdoctoral career stage is characterized neither by the relatively limited scope of tasks of the Ph.D. stage nor does it provide the security and stability of permanent positions. Drawing on previous research that depicts the postdoctoral career stage as open, complex, and uncertain (Laudel & Bielick, 2018; Nästesjö, 2021; Sigl, 2016), we argue that postdocs represent an ideal group to study socialization by competition.

Our study draws on 60 interviews with postdocs in experimental particle physics and modern history. The two disciplines can be considered most different cases regarding the temporality of research (higher paced in physics and lower paced in history), the social form of research (group-based in physics and individual in history), and non-academic labor markets that may be perceived as alternatives to competitive pressures within academia. These disciplinary differences increase the validity of findings made across quite different fields. In addition, they allow for comparative perspectives on the socializing effects of competitions. All our interviewees were employed at German research institutions when we approached them. Although it is important to note that the situation for postdocs in Germany is different from other higher education systems for reasons we elaborate in the methods section, it is also true that employment conditions for this group have emerged as an issue in countries as different as Australia (Spina et al., 2022); Sweden, Finland, and Norway (Griffin, 2022); Belgium, Switzerland, and Italy (Herschberg et al., 2018b); and the USA (Stephan & Ma, 2005). Although the postdoctoral career stage has to be contextualized in specific career systems which are always shaped by national traditions and policies, we consider our study as going beyond an individual case study because Germany may provide valuable insights for other systems in which ubiquitous competition has an impact on a prolonged and precarious postdoctoral career stage.

The aim of this paper is thus twofold: first, it should allow for a more nuanced understanding of academic competition by assessing that competitions not only allocate resources but also provide normative orientation to those participating in it. Second, the paper contributes to the growing literature on a career stage that is becoming more prevalent across many higher education systems. In order to pursue these aims, this paper examines what postdocs learn about themselves, their work, and academia when they compete for funding, jobs, or resources, and how these different forms of competition coalesce into a normative expectation framework that is, at best, challenging — or worse, burdening.

Literature review: The socialization of postdocs

While there is no shortage of literature on different aspects of Ph.D. training (Delamont et al., 2000; Hakala, 2009) and socialization is a common theoretical framework to understand the doctoral student experience (Gardner, 2010), scholarly concern with processes of socialization seems to fade as soon as the postdoctoral stage is reached. This is remarkable for two reasons: first, the role of the postdoc is not only complex and uncertain but also increasing in numbers and duration (Stephan & Ma, 2005). Second, the neglect of socialization at the postdoctoral stage is surprising because it is not only a “default” waiting period encouraged by challenging non-academic labor markets (Sauermann & Roach, 2016) or a signal that provides information about the candidate’s abilities to future employers (Recotillet, 2007). It is also a period of learning and qualification. Following this latter framing, there is a growing amount of research that sheds light on how postdocs learn about themselves, others, and the workings of academia, calling attention to a variety of sources of socialization. For example, Nästesjö (2021) shows how academic mentors help postdocs navigate the tension between their own career aspirations and the uncertainties of the academic labor market. Roumbanis (2019) reveals how lectures by seniors and successful professors at Swedish universities provide guidance to postdocs on how to navigate funding conditions. Other studies do not focus on sources of socialization but highlight more conscious learning processes that rely on individual agency. For example, McAlpine et al. (2014) describe the identity development of postdocs as an ongoing learning process that proceeds from individual agency, rather than institutional structures. Müller (2014a) shows how, in a succession of fixed-term contracts, postdocs develop an individual agenda and prioritize tasks that are geared towards their future careers. Two themes emerge across the literature on socialization and learning at the postdoctoral stage: first, underlining what is at stake at the postdoctoral career stage, processes of socialization and learning revolve either around issues of uncertainty and insecurity or they are concerned with academic identity and autonomy (see also Laudel & Gläser, 2008). Second, existing research attends to various sources of socialization and learning, from mentors to lectures to individual agency.

Building on this literature, we shift the focus to academic competition as a hitherto neglected source of socialization that does not only allocate resources but socializes postdocs by providing orientation about their justified ambitions, their visibility, their successes and failures, as well as their identity (Nästesjö, 2023). We define socialization as an interactive learning process through which actors acquire field-specific orientations and values (Guhin et al., 2021) — in our case, orientations and values that are deemed requisite for a successful postdoctoral career. When socialization is driven by competition, the interaction takes place by observing other competitors or through feedback loops such as reviews or appointment committees. While traditional notions of socialization have been criticized for neglecting issues of power, more recent accounts emphasize that socialization can also enforce specific orientations and values (Bourdieu, 1995). In our case, the authority of the orientation that is provided by competition results from regimes of scarcity and performance. Drawing on the concept of socialization to understand the normative orientation that competition provides for postdocs has two analytical advantages. It highlights the ongoing asymmetries of power between individual postdocs, on the one hand, and academic institutions like career systems, funding agencies, and journals, on the other. Socialization also allows us to explain both how and why postdocs become accustomed to field-specific rules and values.

Proposing that competition does not only allocate resources but also conveys orientation about postdocs’ justified ambitions, their visibility, as well as their successes and failures, we join other scholars who have highlighted the reactivity of social measures (Espeland & Sauder, 2007) and the performativity of indicators more generally (de Rijcke et al., 2015). The respective measures and indicators are crucial devices of competitive evaluation (Hamann et al., 2022). However, in order to arrive at a more nuanced picture of the socializing effects of academic competition, we propose a notion of competition that goes beyond a universalized “race” with generalized effects like exhaustion and self-doubts, on the one hand, and excellence, on the other (Müller, 2014b; Ortlieb & Weiss, 2018). A more nuanced understanding of the socializing effects of competition can be achieved by studying the interconnectedness of different forms of competition (Musselin, 2018) — a phenomenon that recently has been coined “multiplicity” (Griffin, 2022) or “multiple competition” (Krücken, 2021) and in which different forms of competition for funding, positions, or publications interrelate. Such interrelations have been studied empirically by Sigl (2016), for example, who reveals how employment uncertainty at the postdoc stage generates epistemic uncertainties which then relate to publication strategies. In a similar vein, Laudel and Bielick (2018) investigate the mechanisms through which early career researchers balance the competitive requirements of their epistemic and organizational careers so as to develop and establish an individual research program. Drawing on these insights, we provide an account of the socializing effects of competitive configurations – or multiple competition – experienced by postdocs.

Methodology

Our contribution draws on 60 qualitative interviews with postdocs employed at German universities. The German career system is a typical representative of a chair system in which full professors hold a prominent position with significant influence on Ph.D. students and postdocs. This means that postdocs are usually both employed and supervised by a professor and at their chair. Despite recent introductions of intermediate status positions such as junior professorships and tenure track professorships, the period between the Ph.D. and a tenured professorship is characterized by a high formal dependence on a chair holder. The postdoc stage is also prolonged: the average age for postdocs to receive their first appointment to full professor is 43. The vast majority of postdocs is on fixed-term positions: 77% of the non-professorial academic staff at German higher education institutions between 35 and 45 years of age are on fixed-term contracts. The average length of these contracts is 28 months (BuWiN, 2021).

We employ a most different case design and focus on the postdoctoral career stage in modern history and experimental particle physics. The two disciplines differ at least on three dimensions: first, in their temporality and the rhythm of work. Experimental particle physics is fast moving, and the concern to be the first to solve a problem is prevalent. Modern history has a much slower pace when it comes to producing findings and publication cycles. Second, the two disciplines differ with regard to the social organization of their work. Experimental particle physics is conducted in larger collaborations of up to several hundred researchers. In modern history, research first and foremost assumes an individual form. Third, the two disciplines are different with respect to non-academic labor markets that serve as an alternative to the respective academic labor market. Physicists can orient themselves towards non-academic labor markets where jobs are not too difficult to find and better paid, while historians usually have less attractive outside options (Fenkner & Gottschalk-Rayling, 2024). This most different case design not only enables us to compare the two fields. More importantly, it also increases the validity of our findings across very different fields.

The interviews were conducted in late 2021 and early 2022. We interviewed 31 postdocs in modern history and 29 postdocs in experimental particle physics. The interviews lasted about 90 min in history and 70 min in physics. Fifty-five percent of the postdocs did their Ph.D. in Germany. On average, at the time of the interview, the postdocs in our sample were in year seven after obtaining their Ph.D. The interviews focused on career trajectories and career decisions. When conducting exploratory interviews before the actual interviews, it turned out that “competition” is a term that has a strong normative connotation among postdocs. For this reason and to avoid that postdocs would ex ante frame their careers and decisions in terms of competition, we omitted any explicit reference to competition in the interviews. Rather, the interview questions aimed at common situations and postdocs’ everyday practices.

The interviews were recorded, transcribed in full, and pseudonymized.Footnote 2 Our analysis of the interview transcripts draws on a grounded theory perspective (Strauss & Corbin, 1990) with an emphasis on iterative analysis that goes back and forth between data and theoretical concepts. Together with our research team,Footnote 3 we conducted two rounds of systematic coding which allowed us to identify the main aspects of how competitions socialize postdocs (Charmaz, 2006). In the first phase of open coding, we drew on a sub-sample of the interviews and categorized data according to content in order to identify prevalent themes in the interviews. Several recurring codes, for example, regarding hierarchies in the working context or outlook on the academic job market, emerged in this initial step. In a second round of axial coding, we coded the entire sample to condense and interconnect the codes in order to establish connections within and across different types of documents. The coding system that emerged from these two steps and that was used to code all interviews comprises 108 codes which distribute across 13 meta-codes. The reliability of coding between the team members was ensured by several collective coding sessions. The analysis that follows is based on the quantitative and qualitative prevalence of codes as well as the co-occurrence of codes relevant for the research questions.

Findings: Academic socialization by multiple competition

While our interviewees described their Ph.D. as a natural prolongation of their studies, the first postdoc position comes with the realization that circumstances have changed. Since there is no formal training that is comparable to graduate education, everything postdocs know about their role is the result of either direct interactions with postdocs at a time when they were still Ph.D. students themselves or pearls of wisdom handed down to them by their Ph.D. supervisor. What postdocs do understand when they enter the new career stage is that there are almost no permanent positions beyond professorships. Thus, they are aware that a likely future scenario is a transition either to a professorship or into the non-academic job market. They are less clear, however, about the intricacies of the postdoctoral career stage that often consists in juggling different projects at once while developing their own research agenda. Freshly minted postdocs only find out gradually how to compete for visibility, jobs, or funding. There is thus little choice but to embrace competition by simply doing it.

Although we avoided any explicit reference to “competition” or similar concepts in the interviews, our interviewees referenced activities that we can clearly ascribe to analytically distinguished forms of competition. In the first step, we reveal the orientations and values that three prevalent forms of competition convey to postdocs. In the second step, we examine how postdocs cope with being subjected to these interrelated sources of socialization.

Competitions as sources of socialization

The activities that postdocs described in the interviews can be ascribed to three analytically distinguished forms of competition for different scarce goods: competition for publications or space in journals, for funding, and for academic jobs.

Socialization by competition for publications

Competition for publishing space is the form of competition that postdocs in our sample seemed to be most familiar with. Publication practices and the organizational aspects of publishing were already known to our interviewees before they entered the postdoc phase. However, what was new to them was the necessity to put this practice into regular use so as to increase the visibility of their contribution to the field through the regularity and quality of their publication output. Despite the differences between modern history and particle physics, postdocs in both disciplines understand publishing as a necessary step to ensure their rightful place in their field. Margaret, a postdoc in modern history, elaborates:

I am in that place where I feel like I can’t turn things down. I can’t turn down opportunities. If people want me to contribute to things, I don’t feel like I can say no because I need the publications. I need my name to be out there.

The quote illustrates how important postdocs deem the competition for publications for their career. Indeed, highlighting that competition for publishing space interrelates with visibility, postdocs comment profusely on the necessity to produce enough output to claim their place in their research community. Most interviewees closely monitor their publication output over time, thereby developing an acute sense of their comparative performance in the field:

And then, throughout the next few years, I published one or two research papers each year. And it was only in the last two years that there has been a leap in the number of publications for me. So now I’ve had about ten conference papers, I think, for the last two years, some of them journal papers. (Hans, particle physics).

While the quantity of output is an omnipresent concern for our interviewees regardless of their disciplinary background, the interviews suggest disciplinary differences in the way individual visibility is achieved through publishing. Competing for publications conveys to historians a preference for journal articles. Beyond a first book (the dissertation) and a second book (the Habilitation), which is still perceived as a fundamental condition to become a professor, historians describe publications in renowned peer-reviewed journals as the most important currency. Some report that they received corresponding advice from senior colleagues to concentrate their work on journal articles. We also found evidence, however, that our interviewees were struggling with this publication norm, as in the case of Laura, a historian in her fourth postdoc year:

Unfortunately, I think that’s pretty good advice, in any case pretty much the only thing my current boss has always said since I’ve been with him: don’t do all these other things, it all just takes time, but write your articles. […] And this year I’ve been very busy with it, because I kind of had an existential crisis: you get rejections and so on and you realize, quantitatively, I just have fewer publications, so it’s going to become more and more difficult.

While the perceived difficulty to keep up with the expectations of the professor she is working for leads Laura to rethink her future employment prospects, Bernd highlights the inherent conflict between the quantity and quality of publication outputs: “In general, I’m impressed by prolific writers. I mean, I’d like to write more, but at least I know how to write” (Bernd, modern history).

Particle physicists, on the other hand, are faced with a different visibility dilemma. Most publications in this field are written by a team of authors of up to several thousand individuals. Our interviews reveal that postdocs struggle in these collaborative constellations to deliver a constant output of publications that can be attributed to their group, or even better, to themselves (e.g., featuring among the first 10 to 20 author names of a paper). Confronted with the necessity to demonstrate competence and performance, postdocs in particle physics approach the visibility dilemma by using their curricula vitae to describe in detail their contribution to co-authored papers.

Especially for younger postdocs, the constant publication stream can be overwhelming, causing anxiety by mapping and comparing the research output of peers on a regular basis. Massima, a seasoned postdoc with 15 years of work experience, said:

We have a daily approach which is almost, you know, it really creates a lot of anxiety […]. We call it the arXiv. It’s where our papers appear and the papers of our colleagues. And so, every morning, we have these new publications, and really there is a production which is incredible, impossible. It’s like people writing one paper per month.

Socialization by competition for third-party funding

In contrast to the competition for publications, where performative norms and expectations vary significantly between fields, postdocs in both modern history and particle physics described the same pressures and dilemmas when talking about the values and expectations that the competition for third-party funding conveys to them. Our interviewees have a clear sense that career advancement as a postdoc is conditional on attracting research funding. Most postdocs in our sample have had previous dealings with grant makers as many of them did their Ph.D. in externally funded research projects. The idea to write their own grant proposal, however, emerges only after becoming a postdoc. Jürgen, for instance, a senior postdoc in particle physics, recounts how the department he was working at tried to convince him to apply in the prestigious Emmy Noether Programme of the German Research Foundation:

And then I realized that at the department at which I had applied… they kind of… well, I had the feeling that they had pushed me into it and that it would be more interesting for them to have an Emmy Noether junior research group leader than it was actually interesting for me.

Much in the same vein, the following statement by Dirk, a postdoc with nine years of work experience in modern history, illustrates how clearly postdocs perceive the expectation to obtain third-party funding:

I should be much further advanced in my career and have a research proposal that I can submit somewhere. In case I don’t end up with a permanent position I have to secure third-party funding, and that’s kind of the problem.

The seminal role of extramural funding for academic careers seems to be an idiosyncrasy of the German academic system. For example, Carmen, who came to Germany after previous stays in Chile, the USA, and Switzerland, told us that she first had to learn that “[German research organizations] don’t hire people, they hire money.”

Due to the importance of third-party funding for their careers, many of the postdocs we interviewed had to develop a pragmatic approach to the application for research funds. Indeed, postdocs in both disciplines seem to adopt a downright opportunistic orientation according to which you “just focus on what they [the grant makers] want to hear” (Laura, modern history). This finding supports existing research about the epistemic effects of research funding on research practices (Gläser & Serrano Velarde, 2018).

Funding competitions also convey the ideal that research funding facilitates a researcher’s autonomy from professorial expectations and organizational pressures. Since postdocs in the German academic system are nearly always part of a research group or a chair, their work time is effectively assigned to someone else’s project. Securing one’s own third-party funding, our interviewees argued, would be an opportunity to lead their own research project, and thereby free them from the dependency on senior academics, thus creating time to pursue their own research interests and develop their academic profile. This finding is consistent with Laudel and Bielick’s (2018) argument regarding the quest for research autonomy in history and physics.

Socialization by competition for jobs

As per definition, at least in the German system, postdocs occupy temporary positions. They constantly have to keep an eye out for a new job, that is, either one of the highly coveted tenured professorships or a new postdoctoral position that will allow them to stay a little longer in the run for tenure.

In a remarkable parallel to competition for funding, the competition for jobs conveys to postdocs that they should approach the job market with strategic pragmatism and even opportunism. Both historians and particle physicists learn to decouple their actual preferences from their strategy of application by applying to “everything that comes [their] way” (Dirk, modern history).

Postdocs also learn that job competitions are closely related to concrete ideas of performativity. The performative character of this particular form of competition is conveyed by the pursuit of what our interviewees labeled “a profile.” Reiner, a physicist in his sixth postdoc year, describes this expectation as finding a “sweet spot, where you say, what I’m doing is interesting to others, but at the same time it is my very own topic.” While competing for funds is seen as depending on one’s ability to address the interests of a grant maker, competing for jobs is about honing a distinctive identity narrative:

Especially at the postdoc stage, you are always in some kind of application process for jobs. And if you do not happen to be in an application process, you have to introduce yourself, present yourself, portray yourself, on the internet, on the website. How many hours have I spent in the last years, again and again, to cut into shape what is my profile, what is the narrative behind my biography and so on! (Laura, modern history)

Competing for jobs can also provide clues as to where one stands in the career path leading to tenure. Indeed, different phases of the postdoc stage come with different career market expectations and employability patterns for our interviewees. More experienced postdocs in our sample report that they slowly outgrow positions where they have to work for a professor. The further their career is advanced, the more developed is their research profile and their professional autonomy. While this is desirable regarding the development of their own career, postdocs feel that it makes them less valuable as a workforce for a professor and their chair.

Summing up the first step of our analysis, our interviews reveal the orientations and values that three prevalent competitions convey to postdocs. The competition for publications orients postdocs towards the value of visibility and indicates that publications are a means to position themselves in their field. To do so, postdocs navigate field-specific notions about the quality and quantity of publications. The competition for jobs orients postdocs in both modern history and particle physics towards the development of an independent research profile and towards a pragmatic approach to job hunting. The similarities in the values and orientations that competitions for funding and jobs convey to postdocs in both fields are remarkable. The parallels suggest that the socializing effect of these competitions has a formative power that can override disciplinary and epistemic cultures, enforcing a degree of conformity even between two very different fields by orienting postdocs towards similar values.

Multiple competition, multiple sources of socialization

Two key observations in our analysis so far are that competition socializes postdocs and that different forms of competitions — distinguished according to the scarce resources that are at stake — serve as different sources of socialization. Thus, postdocs are subjected to multiple sources of socialization. Our interviews suggest that these sources of socialization are not necessarily well coordinated. Accordingly, the orientations and values that multiple competition conveys to postdocs can pile up, compete, or even contradict each other. Drawing from this observation, we can now distinguish different ways in which competitions interrelate at the postdoctoral career stage, and different strategies postdocs employ to cope with this multiplicity.

Interrelations between competitions as sources of socialization

Most postdocs in our sample participate consecutively in the same type of competition, for instance, by submitting successive grant applications or repeated job applications. Succession of competitions of the same type is the first form of interrelation that we observe in our interviews. Participating recurrently in the same type of competition, postdocs are confronted with a tight sequence of competitive events. For example, Margaret, a postdoc in modern history, shared how she was “applying for every postdoc or temporary lectureship, any job that was available.” Echoing this sentiment in particle physics, Niko told us about his repeated attempts to acquire funding. Most of his time, he would “just be busy writing grant applications.” Other postdocs in our sample referred to an “urge to always accept every invitation or not miss out on any opportunity,” which requires “learning to keep moving” and leads to an “intellectual restlessness” (Sebastian, modern history). A steady stream of opportunities — and obligations — to compete breeds the looming sensation that “you’re not enough” (Laura, modern history). It indicates to our interviewees that they must not miss out and keep competing.

A second form in which competitions interrelate is also sequential. However, instead of successive participation in the same type of competition, this form of interrelation is experienced by postdocs as different competitions building on each other. In the sequential overlap between different types of competition, success in one competition is a prerequisite for success in a different type of competition. Funding success is dependent on research experience, which is signaled by publications and requires an institutional affiliation. Success on the job market, on the other hand, relies on publication output and funding success. Our interviewees are acutely aware of the value chain that emerges from the sequential overlap of different competitions. Carmen, an international postdoc in particle physics, recounted how she learned only in Germany that funding success increases the chances for success on the job market:

I kept thinking […] once you get the position, then you get grants so you can expand your group or to make more projects or something. But after joining the German system, it became a bit clearer to me that the preferred path here is that you get money and then you get the position.

The overlap of the competition for funding and for jobs is indeed particularly pronounced in the German system, where 40% of non-professorial staff is financed by third-party funding (BuWiN, 2021). Dirk, a senior postdoc in modern history, shared with us his concerns that he “should be further ahead and have a grant proposal that I can submit somewhere. If I don’t have a permanent position, I have to get funding, and that’s a bit of a problem.” The sequential overlap of competitions goes beyond funding success being an advantage in the competition for jobs. Postdocs in our sample also experience publication output to be an important signal in other competitions. The historian Laura framed her experience with the European Research Council (ERC) as follows: “The evaluations weren’t that bad. I wasn’t invited to the interview, but I was in the top third. […] What is somehow missing are publications. And that’s what I am going to focus on in the next year or two.” The importance of ERC funding is also seen in particle physics, where one interviewee stated: “It’s an extreme stepping stone. Especially if you are in the postdoc stage and you get an ERC, you have secured your permanent position. There’s no question about that” (Dominic, experimental particle physics).

In addition to the previous two types, a third way for competitions to interrelate is to coincide simultaneously. Postdocs experience it as a challenge to address different competitions at the same time because the respective expectations and requirements pile up. Niko, a postdoc in particle physics, describes this challenge when he simultaneously handled applications in different funding competitions:

I have now written the proposal three times because it was rejected by the German Ministry of Education and Research. For the German Research Foundation, the deadline was too short notice, so that we not only submitted the proposal for the research group funding line but also a proposal for a regular funding line for the same project – but in this proposal everything was different, a different strategy, different project goals, different objectives because, of course, no proposal must be the same. Yeah, it’s annoying. It takes a lot of time, and it takes so much time that I can’t take care of myself.

The simultaneous interrelation of different competitions as sources of socialization results in stress and a sense of ubiquitous monitoring and assessment. Postdocs recounted that “academia is tough in regards that you’re constantly being assessed. If it’s a publication or proposals for grants and things like that, your peers are constantly criticizing you and… looking at your work. […] There’s always that critique which can be quite difficult to take.” (Margaret, modern history)

Coping with multiple sources of socialization

The different interrelations between competitions suggest that postdocs do not experience competitions for publications, funding, and jobs as neatly choreographed. Our interviews reveal various strategies that postdocs use in order to cope with the orientations and values that multiple competition conveys to them. Participation in different forms of competition means that postdocs are subject to different rhythms and temporalities: they handle deadlines, await decisions, hope for an extension of existing projects, wait for job announcements, and seize opportunities when they come up. As a consequence, postdocs in our sample experience time conflicts. Therefore, the first strategy to meet the variety of expectations that multiple competition confronts them with are efforts to coordinate competitions on a temporal dimension. For instance, Lukas, a postdoc in modern history, recounted:

The research project runs until August, so my position ends in August next year. This means that the next grant proposal must be submitted to the German Research Foundation by November at the latest. And by then I must have accumulated enough substance, that is, have published enough.

Many postdocs in our sample are very much aware of the deadlines and rhythms of different competitions. They were able to present to us an elaborated understanding of “specific dates for some specific grants. So, you know in which month you have to submit that one and in which month you have to submit the other one” (Selma, modern history).

Compensating successes and failures is a second coping strategy for postdocs to deal with multiple competitions as interrelated sources of socialization. Pursuing this strategy, postdocs play out different competitions against each other to compensate failure in one competition with success in another one. This strategy echoes our finding that competitions for both funding and jobs convey to postdocs a pragmatic approach. Marie, for instance, a postdoc in modern history, described how she “applied for a postdoctoral fellowship and was approved. And that came shortly after the rejection of the paper. That was a very positive thing, because receiving another rejection would have put me off even more.” When asked about recent successes and failures, Dominic told us about his ERC application, in which he got to the interview stage,

(…) but then it didn’t work out, quite the opposite. One review was extremely negative and killed the whole thing, and it was also a bit unfair I have to say. This was quite a setback for me. The positive thing at that moment was my boss telling me that I would get the five-year position for the time being, which was a bit of a relief. (Dominic, particle physics)

In addition to coordinating different competitions and compensating them with each other, a third strategy postdocs pursue to cope with multiple sources of socialization is to prioritize specific competitions. Highlighting that processes of socialization are indeed closely intertwined with issues of power, some competitions can force themselves upon postdocs more than others. It is thus not merely an independent decision but a matter of regimes of scarcity and performance when postdocs prioritize specific competitions and neglect others. For example, Marvin, a senior postdoc in particle physics, told us that, because his current position does not have a tenure track, “my priority last year was to write an application for extension. This is, of course, prioritized over everything else. Which is a shame, because I’m actually paid for research and teaching.” The quote reveals that even if postdocs prioritize the competition they deem important, they are aware of the fine-grained network of various expectations they are supposed to live up to in order to perform well. The prioritization of one competition at the cost of others is a prevalent pattern in both disciplines in our sample. Less prioritized competitions, and especially activities that are not organized competitively at all, such as teaching, are displaced by the participation in prioritized competitions. Our interviews show that funding competitions are prioritized over any other form of competition because postdocs feel that funding is an advantage in the competition for jobs. This echoes our previous finding about postdocs learning that funding facilitates their autonomy from professorial expectations and organizational pressures — an orientation that may be specific to the German system with its steep hierarchies. Assuming that multiple competition conveys to postdocs normative orientations, we can thus conclude that postdocs perceive attracting research funding as a key orientation.

Summing up, our interviews reveal that postdocs experience different ways in which competitions interrelate as sources of socialization: a close succession of the same type of competition conveys to postdocs that they must keep competing. Through the sequential overlap of competitions, postdocs learn about value chains in which success and failure cumulate across different competitions. The simultaneous interrelation of competitions signals to postdocs a ubiquitous sense of being assessed. Coping with the challenges of interrelated sources of socialization, our interviewees described different strategies: they try to coordinate their deadlines and rhythms on a temporal dimension, compensate their failures and successes across different competitions, and prioritize those competitions that they deem most important for their career.

Conclusion

This paper extends the literature on competition in higher education by examining a hitherto neglected effect of competition: we have shown that competition does not only allocate resources but also provides a normative orientation to actors by rewarding specific activities. Our findings are not differentiated according to postdocs’ gender or socioeconomic background. It is likely that such characteristics can make postdocs more or less resilient towards the socializing effects of academic competitions. Future research that builds on our findings should therefore examine how the socializing effects of competition vary according to individual characteristics. The current analysis rests on the assumption that socialization as an effect of competition is most pronounced for postdocs. A second limitation of the current study is that socialization by competition has not been examined for other career stages. Future research should study the socializing effects of competition in career stages before and after the postdoctoral stage. Special attention should also be paid to the possibly lingering effect of this type of socialization pattern at the postdoctoral stage. The notion of career imprinting (Azoulay et al., 2017), for instance, suggests that experiences at an early career stage have a lasting effect on workers, both with regard to value orientation and behavioral strategies. How does the framework of normative expectations of postdocs then shift (or not) once tenure is reached and what effect does this have on the way they train future generations of scientists?

The most different case design of our study enabled us to increase the validity of our findings across very different fields. This allowed us to reveal not only field-specific orientations in the competition for publications but also orientations of pragmatism and autonomy that seem to override disciplinary and epistemic cultures. Looking further into field-specific and cross-field effects of socialization, future research could therefore aim at a more systematic comparison that also includes the life sciences and engineering sciences.

Connecting the literature on the socialization of postdocs with research on academic competition, our paper makes three general contributions. First, the interviews show that academic competition provides orientations and values that convey what it means to be a successful postdoc. With this finding, we join scholars concerned with the reactivity of social measures (Espeland & Sauder, 2007) and the performativity of indicators more generally (de Rijcke et al., 2015). Given the relative scarcity of information and formal expectations regarding the role of the postdoc, our interviewees take their cues from the ongoing loop of competitions and value judgments they feel the need to engage with once they completed their Ph.D. This socializing effect of competition should be reflected more thoroughly not only by scholarship on academic competition but also by research policy that promotes competition. One advantage of the socialization framework is to sensitize for asymmetries of power between individual postdocs and academic institutions like the different competitions studied here. These asymmetries could be especially pronounced in the German case with its steep hierarchies, insecure employment conditions, and reliance on third-party funding. Previous research suggests that other working conditions could provide postdocs with more agency and resilience towards the socializing effects of academic competitions (Fochler et al., 2016; Robinson-Garcia et al., 2023).

Taking up recent conceptual innovations that distinguish different forms of competition (Musselin, 2018) and their interrelations (Krücken, 2021), the second contribution of this paper goes beyond a generalized notion that only considers socialization as an effect of competition per se. We were able to distinguish orientations and values conveyed by different forms of competition for publications, for funding, and for jobs. This allows for a more nuanced understanding of the socializing effects of different competitions. In the case of competitions for publications, the orientations and values that are conveyed to postdocs vary between the disciplines of modern history and experimental particle physics. These field-specific differences are to be expected from previous research (Nästesjö, 2021). More surprisingly, however, competitions for jobs and funding have been found to indicate expectations that are remarkably similar in both disciplines. Overriding disciplinary cultures and enforcing a certain degree of conformity between history and physics, these competitions orient postdocs towards similar expectations and values.

As a third contribution, this paper reveals how postdocs experience being subjected to multiple sources of socialization. Our interviews show that postdocs experience different competitions to be interrelated in various ways, from linear succession to sequential overlap to simultaneous piling up. The various forms of interrelation convey different orientations to postdocs: they feel that they must keep competing in a close succession of competitions, that the sequential overlap of competitions creates value chains in which success and failure cumulate, and that they are constantly monitored and assessed in competitions that pile up simultaneously. We were also able to distinguish strategies of postdocs coping with the challenges of interrelated sources of socialization. They range from temporal coordination to compensation to prioritization of specific competitions. These insights complement previous research on the socialization of postdocs (Nästesjö, 2021; Roumbanis, 2019). We furthermore found that competition for funding is a particular priority for postdocs — also because funding is perceived to be an advantage in the competition for jobs. This prioritization comes at the expense of activities and tasks that are not organized competitively. The value chains through which competitions are interrelated and in which success (and failure) cumulates across a career structurally reward such prioritization. This finding highlights how the competitive landscapes that are shaped, not least, by research policy form and perpetuate field-specific orientations and values.