Evidence of hybrid institutional logics in the U.S. public research university

While the ascendancy of market behaviours in public research universities is well documented, the extent to which universities have transformed themselves into industry-like organisations has been called into question. So to what extent are universities displaying transformation in their core values? The concept of institutional logics, with its focus on the relationship between organisational design and underlying beliefs and values, shows potential to address this question. Yet study of institutional logics at the campus level has to date been limited. This paper presents an empirical analysis of three U.S. research universities’ organising principles as expressed in key mission and planning documents over a fifteen-year period. Of the multiple strategies at play in the universities’ responses to potentially competing values, the creation of new, hybrid logics is of particular interest. The concept of hybrid logics suggests a promising framework for understanding how universities can and do manage tensions in their mission

(Not just) Open for business : redefining the value of a university knowledge exchange

Existing literature on university knowledge exchange, whether approving or critical, tends to assume that it is the economic value of knowledge that produces opportunities for exchange. Taking as a starting point the contention that this need not be the case, this study examines afresh the nature of knowledge exchange and its value to society. In doing so, it makes reference to the policies of the UK, Welsh Assembly and Scottish Governments, to the approach of the Universities of Leeds, Cardiff and Edinburgh, and to the experiences of academics engaged in social and scientific knowledge exchange projects. Whilst each Government is shown to prioritise economic ends, academics value making a difference to others, increasing personal or institutional kudos and engaging in interesting and exciting projects more highly. Although it remains possible for academics to carry out knowledge exchange with this broad range of outcomes, the mismatch between academic and governmental priorities is problematic. Failure to redefine the value of knowledge exchange to encompass a broader range of outcomes is liable to have implications for Government, for academia and for society: a lack of alignment between policy drivers and academic motivations makes it less likely that policy will achieve its desired ends; universities that fail to accommodate a broader value set risk losing academics to institutions that do; and in failing to provide sufficient space for the conduct of a broad-based knowledge exchange, policy makers will prevent the benefits of academic knowledge to society from being maximised. Universities are shown to be well placed to effect a change in the way that value is defined. However, certain structural issues militate against such a change, and academics and their universities will therefore need to be bold in asserting alternative values.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Critical international relations and the impact agenda

How should critical International Relations (IR) scholars approach the ‘impact agenda’? While most have been quite resistant to it, I argue in this essay that critical IR should instead embrace the challenge of impact – and that both IR as a field and the impact agenda more broadly would gain greatly from it doing so. I make this case through three steps. I show, firstly, that critical IR has till now been very much at the impact agenda’s margins, and that this situation contrasts strikingly with its well-established importance within IR teaching and research. I argue, secondly, that critical IR scholars both could and should do more impact work – that the current political conjuncture demands it, that many of the standard objections to doing so are misplaced, and indeed that ‘critical’ modes of research are in some regards better suited than ‘problem-solving’ ones to generating meaningful change – and offer a series of recommended principles for undertaking critically-oriented impact and engagement work. But I also argue, thirdly, that critical social science holds important lessons for the impact agenda, and that future impact assessments need to take these lessons on board – especially if critical IR scholarship is to embrace impact more fully. Critical IR, I submit, should embrace impact; but at the same time, research councils and assessments could do with modifying their approach to it, including by embracing a more critical and political understanding of what impact is and how it is achieved