Research-Management In Management-Research [RMIMR]

A European perspective on new modes of university governance and actorhood

Wilfred Mijnhardt — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 21:41:31 +0000

Via Scoop.it – Dual impact of research; towards the impactelligent university

Higher education systems in Europe are currently undergoing profound transformations. At the macro-level, there is an increase in the number of students enrolled, subjects of study offered, and university missions that have gained legitimacy over time. At the second level changes are evident at the level of university governance. New Public Management reforms have put into question the traditional mode of governance that was based on the interplay of strong state regulation and academic self-governance. Under the current regime, new actors like accreditation and evaluation bodies or boards of trustees are emerging. At a third institutional level, profound changes can be observed at the university level itself. The university as an organization is transforming into an organizational actor, i.e. an integrated, goal-oriented, and competitive entity in which management and leadership play an ever more important role. In the following paper empirical evidence for social inclusion, new modes of governance and the organizational actorhood of universities will be presented. Furthermore, the author outlines an agenda for comparative research. Although the United States is in all three respects a forerunner of what we are observing in Europe, the label “Americanization” is misleading. Instead, a global frame of reference as well as national path-dependencies need to be taken into account. Source: A EUROPEAN PERSPECTIVE ON NEW MODES OF UNIVERSITY GOVERNANCE AND ACTORHOOD by Georg Krücken. CSHE .17.11 (December 2011) Fulltext: http://cshe.berkeley.edu/publications/docs/ROPS.Kruecken.EuroView.12.13.11.pdf

As an academic leader, imagine trying to manage more than 7.000 scientists from eighty-five countries

Wilfred Mijnhardt — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 10:41:10 +0000

Via Scoop.it – Dual impact of research; towards the impactelligent university

Imagine the goal is to recreate the conditions existing a billionth of a second after the big bang. And none of the experts on your team will get personal credit for changing our fundamental understanding of the universe. And, by the way, you don’t have control of anyone’s paycheck. It might seem like an impossible management situation. But that is exactly what is going on at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland. The entire scientific community at CERN operates with an inherent and profound sense of trust. Trust in the process. Trust in their colleagues. Trust in the science. This trust emerges from a mutual “code of ethics” built on a culture of reciprocity. Because their community is close-knit and their most valuable currency is reputation, experimental physicists around the world know who contributes. It’s like a crowd-sourced performance review. Source: A Model for Collaboration By Krisztina Holly, NASA Ask Magazine, 2009 PDF is here: http://askmagazine.nasa.gov/pdf/pdf35/NASA_APPEL_ASK_35s_model_for_collaboration.pdf
Via askmagazine.nasa.gov

Motivation in academic life: a prestige economy

Wilfred Mijnhardt — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 23:48:47 +0000

Via Scoop.it – Dual impact of research; towards the impactelligent university

The introduction of performance-related pay into universities in recent years implies a belief that academic behaviours are modified by money. However, many valued academic activities are poorly paid or not paid at all. Clearly other factors are at work. Academic motivation and new working patterns are explored using the literature. An anthropological term ‘prestige economy’ is defined and located as part of a three-part model, and its application to higher education is explored, using a socio-cultural approach rooted in Bourdieu’s analyses of academic life. The implications for those who seek to bring about change in institutions are considered and further research questions outlined. This paper has focused mainly on the way motivation works at an individual level. However, there are questions for organisations too, as they try to encourage an entrepreneurial culture whilst retaining the discipline-based academic heartlands
How might that interaction be encouraged to take place and what organisational forms would encourage it? Source: Paul Blackmorea & Camille B. Kandiko (2011). Motivation in academic life: a prestige economy. Research in Post-Compulsory Education: Vol. 16, No. 4, pp. 399-411. DOI:10.1080/13596748.2011.626971
Via www.tandfonline.com

The Commodification of Academic Research; Science and the Modern University

Wilfred Mijnhardt — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 23:39:52 +0000

Via Scoop.it – Dual impact of research; towards the impactelligent university

Selling science has become a common practice in contemporary universities. This commodification of academia pervades many aspects of higher education, including research, teaching, and administration. As such, it raises significant philosophical, political, and moral challenges. This volume offers the first book-length analysis of this disturbing trend from a philosophical perspective and presents views by scholars of philosophy of science, social and political philosophy, and research ethics. The epistemic and moral responsibilities of universities, whether for-profit or nonprofit, are examined from several philosophical standpoints. The contributors discuss the pertinent epistemological and methodological questions, the sociopolitical issues of the organization of science, the tensions between commodified practices and the ideal of “science for the public good,” and the role of governmental regulation and personal ethical behavior. In order to counter coercive and corruptive influences of academic commodification, the contributors consider alternatives to commodified research and offer practical recommendations for establishing appropriate research standards, methodologies and institutional arrangements, and a corresponding normative ethos. Hans Radder is professor of philosophy of science and technology at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Source: The Commodification of Academic Research; Science and the Modern University, Pittsburgh University Press 2010
Radder, Hans Table of contents: http://www.upress.pitt.edu/htmlSourceFiles/pdfs/9780822943969toc.pdf
Via www.upress.pitt.edu

The future of research universities…towards a post-modern university?

Wilfred Mijnhardt — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 23:05:13 +0000

Via Scoop.it – Dual impact of research; towards the impactelligent university

The paper considers the future of the research university and finds that it is unlikely to continue adherence to a business model in which strategy is determined and directed from the top. A Mode 2 perspective suggests that the sector will contain a variety of forms, the characteristics of each shaped by the performance of centres of excellence and relevance. One of the conclsions of this paper: For research universities, the key challenge is to diversify and recombine its components, both cognitively and institutionally, into what we have called the ‘post-modern university’. Such a university will have overlaps and/or alliances with centres (of excellence and relevance), public laboratories of various kinds (which are themselves on the move), and various private organizations managing and performing
research. Within such a post-modern university, individual departments (faculties, institutes) are relatively independent and can follow their own trajectories by emphasizing certain areas in response to external developments, and by developing new combinations of research and training. In the strategically important middle
layer in the university, now occupied by faculties and centres competing among each other for resources and favours from the top, an entrepreneurial element is introduced which will increase the flexibility of the institution as a whole. Traditional disciplinary departments and Fakultäten may well disappear in the end, but that is not inevitable; they can remain as one part of this heterogeneous milieu Source: (2011). The future of research universities. Prometheus: Vol. 29, No. 4, pp. 443-453. Arie Rip, School of Management and Governance, University of Twente, The Netherlands
Via www.tandfonline.com

Tools of the Trade: UK Research Intermediaries and the Politics of Impacts

Wilfred Mijnhardt — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 19:59:58 +0000

Via Scoop.it – Dual impact of research; towards the impactelligent university

In recent years questions concerning the impact of public research funding have become the preeminent site at which struggles over the meanings and value of science are played out. In this paper we explore the ‘politics of impact’ in contemporary UK science and research policy and, in particular, detail the ways in which UK research councils have responded to and reframed recent calls for the quantitative measurement of research impacts. Operating as ‘boundary organisations’ research councils are embroiled in what might be characterised as the ‘politics of demarcation’ in which competing understandings of the cultural values of science are traded, exchanged and contested. In this paper we focus on the way the UK’s ‘Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council’ (EPSRC) has responded to contemporary policy discourses concerning the impacts of public research expenditure. We argue that, in response to the shifting terms of contemporary science policy, the EPSRC has adopted three distinct strategies. Firstly, in collaboration with other research councils the EPSRC have emphasised the intellectual and metrological challenge presented by attempts to quantify the economic impact of public research expenditure, emphasising instead the cumulative impacts of a broad portfolio of ‘basic science’. Secondly, the EPSRC has sought to widen the discursive meaning of research impacts – specifically to include societal and policy impacts in addition to economic ones. Thirdly, the EPSRC has introduced a new framing into the ‘impact agenda’, preferring to talk about ‘pathways to impact’ rather than research impacts per se. In responding to government priority setting, we argue that the EPSRC has sought to exploit both the technical fragility of auditing techniques and the discursive ambiguity of notions of impact. Matthew Kearnes and Matthias Wienroth Minerva, 2011, Volume 49, Number 2, 153-174, DOI: 10.1007/s11024-011-9172-4
Via www.springerlink.com

Research vitality as sustained excellence: what keeps the plates spinning?

Wilfred Mijnhardt — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 23:08:25 +0000

Via Scoop.it – Dual impact of research; towards the impactelligent university

Research vitality addresses the perseverance that faculty members in the organization sciences experience in maintaining their research quantity and quality over an extended period of time. The purpose of this paper is to offer a theoretical model of research vitality. The authors propose a model consisting of individual and situational factors which influence the motivation and commitment of a professor to continue to conduct quality research over an extended period of time. Additionally, the authors identify benefits that may accrue when faculty members possess research vitality and discuss human resource management implications for schools engaged in hiring, tenuring, promoting, and socializing faculty members. A set of propositions about research vitality and contextual factors that influence this construct are presented and discussed. Findings – An individual-level construct that represents a time related measure of the quality and quantity of individual contributions to the scholarly discipline of management is developed. Every individual in the organizational sciences field has the capability to contribute in a meaningful way. Research limitations/implications – The model presented has a number of personal implications and departmental implications such as how to predict research vitality in junior faculty members. Practical implications – The framework should be used for understanding one element of success in the organizational sciences. Originality/value – The paper develops a model of research vitality to explain why some faculty continue to be productive, even in the face of a challenging research process. J. Bruce Gilstrap, Jaron Harvey, Milorad M. Novicevic, M. Ronald Buckley, (2011) “Research vitality as sustained excellence: what keeps the plates spinning?”, Career Development International, Vol. 16 Iss: 6, pp.616 – 644 DOI:10.1108/13620431111178353
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Direct2Experts: a pilot national network to demonstrate interoperability among research-networking platforms

Wilfred Mijnhardt — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 22:56:41 +0000

Via Scoop.it – Dual impact of research; towards the impactelligent university

Research-networking tools use data-mining and social networking to enable expertise discovery, matchmaking and collaboration, which are important facets of team science and translational research. Several commercial and academic platforms have been built, and many institutions have deployed these products to help their investigators find local collaborators. Recent studies, though, have shown the growing importance of multiuniversity teams in science. Unfortunately, the lack of a standard data-exchange model and resistance of universities to share information about their faculty have presented barriers to forming an institutionally supported national network. This case report describes an initiative, which, in only 6 months, achieved interoperability among seven major research-networking products at 28 universities by taking an approach that focused on addressing institutional concerns and encouraging their participation. With this necessary groundwork in place, the second phase of this effort can begin, which will expand the network’s functionality and focus on the end users. JAMIA; Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association doi:10.1136/amiajnl-2011-000200 http://jamia.bmjjournals.com/content/early/2011/10/28/amiajnl-2011-000200.full.pdf
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Community of scholars: lifelong learning needs lifetime readers’ tickets

Wilfred Mijnhardt — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 21:08:45 +0000

Via Scoop.it – Dual impact of research; towards the impactelligent university

Recently, Jstor, a digital archive of more than 1,000 major academic journals, has piloted an alumni-access programme that allows 19 institutions, including Yale University and the universities of London and Exeter in the UK, to bring the collection to alumni worldwide at a reasonable cost. For our alumni, access to the collection is free. The response has been tremendous. When programmes such as this are combined with collaborations between university libraries and alumni offices, it becomes possible to build a virtual alumni library that can support an entire lifetime of learning. At the same time, many universities are also vastly expanding public access to their own collections via the web. At Yale, individuals around the world have free online access to images of millions of objects housed in our museums, archives and libraries. But, as we must continue to remind all who will listen, not everything has been put on the web and the physical collections of a university library are still essential, irreplaceable research tools. So while a university library cannot bring its physical collections to alumni spread across the world, it can open its doors, perhaps just a bit wider, to the community that surrounds it. As universities strive to become more a part of, rather than apart from, the community, they should see their libraries as essential to the local intellectual commons.
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Enabling Open Scholarship – A case study in openness: Salford University

Wilfred Mijnhardt — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 20:36:06 +0000

Via Scoop.it – Dual impact of research; towards the impactelligent university

« A case study in institutional openness has just been published, focused on Salford University. Written by the Vice Chancellor and EOS Board member, Professor Martin Hall, the study describes the drive to openness and the benefits it brings to the University and its public. « The University aims to create economic and social value through innovative ways of working together. A key element of this is openness », says Professor Hall. In the paper, he develops the concept of a ‘Generic Open Access University’ and describes how the univeristy repository, USIR, is the core of intermediary agencies and a wide range of networked connections. « The open access repository is at the heart of this model, in the place that the library has occupied from the earliest days of the university », Professor Hall says.
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