February 2023
This month’s reports summarises four articles that in/directly relate to the impact of universities. The first paper are the reflections of the head of Research England (at the time) on impact evaluation (Hill, 2016). The second study explores a shift in academic behaviour through the past 100 years of bureaucratization (Lee & Walsh, 2022). The third paper reflects on why university rankings persist, despite their ongoing criticism (Hamann & Ringel, 2023). The last piece of research reflects on how to create better research impact from entrepreneurship research (Joly & Matt, 2022).
[1]) Steven Hill acknowledges his own, not disinterested position with providing his views on impact assessment. Interestingly, he characterises between Mode 1 (internally disciplinary focused advancement of knowledge) and mode 2 (societal focuses contribution of scientific knowledge production). He acknowledges that accountability and the complexities of societal problems necessitate mode 2 scholarship. The article focuses on the 2014 UK's Research Excellence Framework, reviewing the development of impact assessment and discussing future implications and challenges. He argues that despite the difficulties, assessing societal impact should be a central part of research evaluation. What seems significantly underplayed in the discussion, are instances of competing epistemological/ontological differences in the creation and evaluation of impact, how to deal with impacts/research critical of the status quo and the implication for the very logic of what constitutes as beneficial/true in the first place.
[2]) The paper investigates the increase of the bureaucratisation of science and its consequences for the Weberian notion of science as a vocation. One often-mentioned consequences is the increase in the ‘team science’ model, which by extension then comes with additional formalisation in order to manage the increase in team size. As a negative consequence, they mention that this increase of under labourer and specialisation of performance is not only antithetical to the Weberian model of science. It also complicates the transition of early career researcher into fully-fledged contributor of their respective knowledge community. This happens as specialisation and division of labour alienate the scientists from the very process of research. With the further implication that: “the shifting of tasks to alienated supporting scientists can undermine the ability to generate scientific findings”. Not to speak of that “metrics push scientists to prioritize the research questions that get them a large number of publications and citations, over what is an interesting [ … and … ] scientific progress”.
[3]) The article discusses the widespread criticism faced by university rankings and how rankers respond to these challenges. Two modes of ranking critique are unveiled, one highlighting negative effects (contributing to social inequality and diminishing academic heteronomy, the spread of opportunistic behaviour, and restriction of scholarly autonomy). The other pointing out methodological shortcomings (validity, rigour and quality). Rankers respond by deflecting criticism or drawing attention to the strengths of rankings. Mutual engagements between rankers and critics, based on methodological critique (showcasing openness for criticism as forms of improvements) and confident responses (portrays ranking as both inevitable and crucial, as well as marginal in importance). The authors argue, that critics involuntarily, are co-opted into the political and value agenda behind the rankings, by lending it an air of credibility under the guise of methodological improvement, which ultimately creates the discursive resilience of rankings.
[4]) The paper discusses increasing the societal relevance of entrepreneurship research and how researchers and practitioners work together in formulating research problems for impact. The study analyzed six entrepreneurship research projects from conceptualization to publication and identified four critical change dimensions that shape problem formulation throughout the research process: worthiness, divisibility, centrality, and specificity. It also found two equifinal problem formulation pathways, inward-looking iterative and outward-looking joint problem formulation, influenced by the research project's drivers, timing of practitioner involvement, and researcher-practitioner interactions. They argue that these hallmarks represent viable categories for creating sustainable and beneficial research impact.
[1] Hill, S. (2016). Assessing (for) impact: Future assessment of the societal impact of research. Palgrave Communications, 2(1), 1-7.
[2] Lee, Y. N., & Walsh, J. P. (2022). Rethinking science as a vocation: One hundred years of bureaucratization of academic science. Science, technology, & human values, 47(5), 1057-1085.
[3] Hamann, J., & Ringel, L. (2023). The discursive resilience of university rankings. Higher Education, 1-19.
[4] Joly, P. B., & Matt, M. (2022). Towards a new generation of research impact assessment approaches. The Journal of Technology Transfer, 47(3), 621-631.
