Research governance and the dynamics of science: A comparative analysis of governance effects in organisational context

This paper aims to contribute to, and advance, the understanding and empirical study of the effects of research governance on scientific fields by exploring the governance effects on a scientific field in the context of two different universities. That is achieved by building on a recent framework for the study of governance effects on research fields (Nedeva et al., 2022) and extending it, conceptually and empirically, by conducting a comparative analysis of the reported behaviour of members of the same research field, within the same governance regime and two rather different universities. This paper is the third within a research line on studying governance effects on scientific fields (Nedeva et al. 2022, Morales-Tirado, in progress).Debates regarding the study of research governance effects on global scientific fields in the literature unfold along several lines. Some studies, quantitative as well as qualitative, investigate governance effects on context-specific research organisations, namely universities and research institutes (Lorenz 2012; Luukkonen and Thomas 2016; Vinkenburg 2017; Glaser 2019; Luo, Ordóñez-Matamoros & Kuhlmann, 2019; Thomas et al. 2020; Strinzel et al. 2021; Kozlowksi et al. 2022; Ramos-Vielba, Thomas and Aagaard 2022; Feenstra, & López-Cózar, 2022). Other studies extend their research interest to include studying the effects of governance on the epistemic choices of members of local knowledge communities (Glaser, 2019). Methodologically studies of governance effects usually aim to measure change using opinion-based survey techniques, case study/interview approaches, bibliometrics or lines of investigation seeking to unpack the (soft) causality mechanisms that may or may not affect organisational, personal and group selections.While contributing to the understanding of governance effects on science, these approaches share a significant shortcoming in that they generally fail to extend beyond the local conditions for knowledge creation and hence fail to capture the aggregate governance effects at the level of transnational, global research fields. This was conceptually addressed in a recent paper (Nedeva et al., 2022) by proposing a novel heuristic for linking the characteristics of 'performance-based evaluation arrangements' (PREAs) and the properties of research fields. Next, a comparative analysis of the governance effects of different governance arrangements of the same research field extended this framework empirically. This paper explores the (potential) difference in responses of the local members of the same research field, within the same governance arrangements and two different universities.We used a novel framework to study governance effects on scientific fields, one that recognises three contexts where different effects may occur, e.g., the research space context where performance based evaluation arrangements (PREAs) are embedded, the research field context where knowledge claims are assessed to award reputation (publications, grant capture etc.), and the context of research organisations where individual and collective performance are evaluated for organisational career purposes (Thomas et al., 2020). We kept the PREA and research field contexts constant and allowed variance in terms of the organisational context. Hence, we interviewed members of research groups in two universities. To use a terminology from Paradeise and Thoenig (2015) one of the universities is a ‘top-of-the-pile’ and the other one is a ‘wannabe’.Our questions were designed to capture the interactions between university leaders (administrators) and the members of the local knowledge network, or research group. We conducted a total of twenty interviews (13 for a top-of-the-pile university and 7 for a wannabe university). We explored interactions (and power play) in the context of nine selection points (Nedeva et al., 2022).We analyzed the interviews around selection dimensions concerning organizational authority, namely (1) organizational career, (2) knowledge production, and (3) knowledge dissemination. Results indicate that university governance arrangements matter but do not change the actions of this type of field members. We contrast the responses of both universities around the selection of new group members, promotion and probation, and we find that for the wannabe university members, recognition of the university authorities is more important than for those from a top-of-a-pile organization. Yet, field considerations (e.g., field recognition) override organizational pressures. In regards to selection for access to research infrastructure, methods and skills, behaviour is unaffected by local influences in both instances. Similarly, our results suggest that selections for access to knowledge networks, decisions over publication outlets and submissions for PREA assessments are dominated by F-type notions.This paper is an important empirical test of the framework for the study of research governance on scientific fields. We also believe that it contributes to the understanding and methodology for tracing governance effect on global scientific fields.