Caputo, Simone (2023), Performance as a social system: Examined using the example of the workshop development process of the Digital-Entrepreneurship-Workshop and filMINT of the Smartfeld education lab, Bachelor thesis, University of St. Gallen (HSG).
The phenomenon of performance is strongly anchored in today’s society – especially in the economic system. One reason for this is the assumption that systems that reward effort and initiative are likely to be more productive than those that reward everyone equally, regardless of their contribution. Meanwhile, performance-related monitoring instances in the form of ratings and rankings are increasingly taking a center stage, underlining the relevance of performance in today’s society. Performance therefore appears to be a phenomenon that has established itself in society and can be observed. In order to look at this from a different perspective than before, Spickers (2023) develops a new systemic approach to performance based on the system theory of the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann. The aim of this paper is to examine whether this performance approach can be applied to a specific case study. To this end, the emergence of the interdisciplinary Smartfeld initiative and the associated workshop development processes of the Digital Entrepreneurship Workshop II & III and filMINT are analyzed using this performance-approach. The aim is to describe performance based on the connotation of this approach as a social system. Furthermore, it will be examined whether observational advantages can be identified on the basis of such a systemic analysis. In order to achieve this, the theoretical foundations of the approach are first explained in order to apply them to the case study described in the context of the case analysis. To enable the performance approach to be tested empirically, a qualitative research design is chosen to analyze the interviews conducted. The analysis showed that performance can be understood as a self-referential system and that the concepts introduced in the theoretical framework are fully applicable to the case study. It also became apparent that valuable observation advantages related to the case could be identified. The work has thus contributed to the confirmation as well as marginal further development of Spickers› (2023) systemic performance-approach, and has also shown that it can be empirically investigated as well as generate important insights.