The problem with publish or perish is that it leads to people gaming the system. If pay rises (or employment) solely hinge on the amount of (however graded) publications you have achieved, this leads to people essentually using parts of books they are writing as articles etc. This in turn leads to a doubling of information, inconsistencies etc, alongside the fact that not every topic can be adequately dealt with in a journal article.
The system actively punishes big projects and thoughts in favour of small, more easily digestible (and thus publishable) projects. If a university only looks at the number of publications and not at their nature, they shift from quality to quantity, which in turn is bad, because it fundamentally undermines the purpose of academia.
edit: I just saw _dps also linked to the gamification bit, but the rest holds true nonetheless (and I do agree with him)
I'm not saying that publish or perish is an optimal solution, just that there's nothing special about it. Plenty of people have "file your TPS reports with cover-sheets or perish", but there's not special jargon for it.
Publish or perish is not just about doing your job, rather it limits you in how to do your job, and that limitation runs counter to what your job often requires.
It's not so much "publish" in itself that's the problem[1], it's how publishing is defined and handled, and that a certain form of publishing is seen as right to the detriment of any other form of published material, whereas the preferred method is often not the best method for a given project.
[1]: though it certainly is a big part of the overall problem of uniting teaching, research and publishing
And I think the point that zimbu668 is making, is that such situations are still not unique to academia. Perverse or misaligned incentives are the norm in quite a few industries.
For example, sales guys are compensated based on sticker price, not profit margin, which means that the guy who sells $2MM of work for $1MM (i.e. at a loss) gets more commission than the guy who sells $0.5MM worth of work for $0.75MM. For another example, grading programmers by lines of code... 'nuf said ;). Another totally ubiquitous example: grading office workers by ass-in-seat time rather than value produced. Another also ubiquitous example: Departments in a company encouraged to spend as much money as they can at the end of the quarter, so their next budget doesn't get cut.
I could go on, but I'll stop here. The point is, even if "publish or perish" refers to misaligned incentives, that still means it's basically the same as 90% of other jobs out there.
The problem with publish or perish is that it leads to people gaming the system. If pay rises (or employment) solely hinge on the amount of (however graded) publications you have achieved, this leads to people essentually using parts of books they are writing as articles etc. This in turn leads to a doubling of information, inconsistencies etc, alongside the fact that not every topic can be adequately dealt with in a journal article.
The system actively punishes big projects and thoughts in favour of small, more easily digestible (and thus publishable) projects. If a university only looks at the number of publications and not at their nature, they shift from quality to quantity, which in turn is bad, because it fundamentally undermines the purpose of academia.
edit: I just saw _dps also linked to the gamification bit, but the rest holds true nonetheless (and I do agree with him)