Management and organisation scholars are constantly calling for engagement with pressing social issues. However, the form this engagement should take has sparked significant debates, such as whether academics can and should actively and subversively intervene in managerial practices. As part of our contribution to positive performativity, we focus on an issue that is undeniably within the reach of ‘academic performativity’: the mental health crisis among PhD students. Using an ethics of care framework, we argue that the failure of academics to consider and address the wellbeing of doctoral students demonstrates misguided human care under the guise of ‘care for research’. We present a collective auto-ethnography of a case in a French business school where the ‘freezing’ of the PhD programme—in which students were characterised as costly, invisible and voiceless resources—revealed and exacerbated their suffering. We contribute to debates on academic performativity by focusing on often overlooked internal academic practices and how they affect the potential for positive performativity. We highlight blind spots in academics’ performance of ‘desirable realities’ and call for a systemic approach to addressing the suffering of doctoral students as part of academic responsibility.
