In a series of articles, we will present the newest in research administration from the Journal of Research Administration. To read the full JRA, please see here.
Authors:
Jun Song Huang, PhD, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore; Wei Loong Hung, PhD, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
In the knowledge economy, research plays a critical role in regional and global innovation systems (Cooke, 2004). How to manage research activities effectively is significant to the success of research enterprise. For example, building research collaborations enhances an institute’s research capacity and performance of knowledge production (Katz & Martin, 1997). Translating research to practice enhances the role of research as a key driver that propels the advancement of the knowledge economy (Olssen & Peters, 2005).
Research management, as an emerging field of study, is becoming increasingly comprehensive. There are useful descriptive studies, like Hazelkorn’s (2005) case study that describes how new institutions develop research. Such studies focus on describing a research phenomenon, classifying its attributes, and defining patterns and relationships (e.g, correlations between certain attributes and outcomes) in research activities. There are also insightful studies that establish and examine causal relationships in research activities. For example, Gao, Zang, Roth and Wang (2017) use a data set covering 156 countries between 1964 and 2010 to empirically examine whether democratization leads to the growth of research innovation.
However, the research management literature has an inadequate focus on understanding social mechanisms (Hedström & Swedberg, 1998) which specify the processes through which causal relationships arise and produce the observed outcomes in research management. For example, Gao, Zang, Roth and Wang’s (2017) study does not answer why, how (i.e., in what causal processes) and in what conditions democracy produces or does not produce research innovations. Hedström (2005) argues that the absence of a plausible mechanism linking X and Y gives us a good reason to be suspicious of the relationship between them being a causal one. But studies that examine social mechanisms in research management are still lacking in the research management literature.
To read the full manuscript, please click here.
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