Excellence has become a 'hoorah' word which is widely used in higher education institutions to legitimate practices related to the recruitment/progression of staff. It can be seen as reflecting an institutionalised belief that such evaluative processes are unaffected by the social characteristics of those who work in them or their relationships…

This article is concerned with the macro-cultural ideal or institutional myth of excellence as defined and used in the evaluation of academic staff as part of an institutional logic. Such logics "prescribe what constitutes legitimate behaviour and provide taken-for-granted conceptions of what goals are appropriate and what means are…