The considerable transformation of higher education (HE), driven by the South African government's demand for accountability of resources for the attainment of its mandate has altered the "business" of academia. In response to the financial austerity measures, performance management (PM) systems have been implemented in South African HE to monitor and enhance staff performance. This article conceptualizes PM in higher education using agency and stewardship theories. Data emanates from a phenomenological study of academic heads of department's (HOD) experiences of PM. There is evidence that agency theory may be an appropriate mechanism to achieve explicit accountability, and to monitor and enhance performance. However, it is fraught with problems within academic contexts. The findings demonstrate limitations of agency theory with regard to the stewardship of academics. Thus foregrounding the need for the retention of approaches underpinned by stewardship theory. This article thus makes a contribution in terms of providing a proposition for an analytical framework that integrates agency and stewardship theories in researching PM in HE. Central to this proposition is working within a continuum of these theories to mediate the apparent tension between control and collaboration/collegiality.