January 2021
This month reports summarises four texts that in/directly relate to the research impact of universities. The first article provides a discursive history of the concepts of “excellence” and “frontier” within science policy (Flink & Peters, 2018). The second, is a chapter from his book ‘Cultural and Biological Evolution’, where Leydesdorff (2021) explores the (im)possibility of an anti-theoretical approach whilst empathising value-freeness in order to maintain the innovation process. The third is a chronology, which sets out the incorporation of ‘research impact’ as evaluation criterion in the UK and Australia (Williams & Grant, 2018). The last is a literature review that explores learning from innovation failures (LFIF) and how managerial functions can improve/hinder its positive long-term effects (Rhaiem & Amara, 2019).
1. The article explores how concepts travel between different contexts, and how their meaning changes the practice and subsequently the meaning of these concepts in turn. Specifically, they focus on the concept of the “frontier” and “excellence”, which American in origin, have now become non-negatable metaphors shaping higher education and science policy. Consequently, it is questionable how much of an improvement they actually are for the conduct of science, or merely serve as a rhetorical managerial tool.
2. In this chapter he brings together insights from philosophy, philosophy of science, biology, economics and information theory, as how to maintain a functional innovation process. He rejects an anti-theoretical approach to big data as: “[w]hen selection is no longer considered as “natural selection,” selection mechanisms have to be specified on theoretical grounds.” Thereby, even if different social systems are self-organising in their production of meaning, a commitment to value-freeness is necessary in order to sensibly and orderly discuss the differentiation within and between them to establish what progress means. Ultimately reaffirming Descartes body-mind dualism as a rejection of cultural systems as reducible to meta-biological.
3. The paper outlines a chronology of how research impact became part of the evaluation of higher education and research within Australia and the UK starting in around the shift of the millennium. “In each case, political drive has been central to the policy formation and implementation” (p. 103). Thereby, an impact evaluation does not only represent an evaluation of research quality, an justification for public research funding but also an “‘explicit steering’ of researchers, research units, and universities through strong incentives” (p. 98). Whilst there generally, is criticism and warnings of the detrimental effects of both qualitative and quantitative commodification of the impact assessment in curtailing the breath of research, the implementation process proceeded through addressing such concerns (superficially).
4. Based on a literature review of 36 studies that analysed the prerequisite factors needed for LFIF, they identified the following factors: (1) personal mastery, (2) shared vision, (3) social capital, (4) high-quality relationships, (5) psychological safety, 6) learning leadership, (7) trust, and (8) negative emotional reactions, as pivotal in turning ‘failure’ into something productive. Barriers to LFIF represent the individual deficiencies of both employees and managers to appreciate the positive impact generated for subsequent projects and innovation. Nevertheless, as of now their systematic overview of ‘learning from failure’ is not yet a consolidated theoretical framework, nor a unified empirical field of study and thus in need of further research.
1. Flink, T., & Peter, T. (2018). Excellence and frontier research as travelling concepts in science policymaking. Minerva, 56(4), 431-452.
2. Leydesdorff, L. (2021). The Evolutionary Dynamics of Discursive Knowledge, in L. Leydesdorff (2021) Cultural and Biological Evolution, pp 195-208. Springer.
3. Williams, K. and Grant, J. (2018) ‘A Comparative Review of How the Policy and Procedures to Assess Research Impact Evolved in Australia and the UK’, Research Evaluation, 27(2): 93–105.
4. Rhaiem, K., & Amara, N. (2019). Learning from innovation failures: A systematic review of the literature and research agenda. Review of Managerial Science, 1-46.
