Center of excellence funding: Connecting organizational capacities and epistemic effects

Research Evaluation, 27(2), 2018, 73–81 doi: 10.1093/reseval/rvx043 Advance Access Publication Date: 27 December 2017 Article Center of excellence funding: Connecting organizational capacities and epistemic effects Tomas Hellström*, Leila Jabrane and Erik Brattström School of Economics and Management, Lund University, 221 00 Lund, Sweden *Corresponding author. Email: Abstract This study investigates the relationship between resource concentration/stability and new results/ breakthroughs in the context of a Swedish Center of Excellence (CoE) scheme. A common assumption in using the CoE instrument is that there is a scale return to research on concentration of funds. However, the details of how funding connects to such returns are typically assumed rather than empirically investigated. The present qualitative study sets out to identify the mediating mechanisms connecting organizational capacities made possible through the CoE grant (e.g. recruitment/human capital, data/infrastructure and various collaborative arrangements), and epistemic effects such as extension into new problem areas and higher degrees of risk taking in research generally. We conclude that a CoE program theory can be conceived in terms of resource stability yielding research flexibility, and that the common mechanisms connecting the two may be found in organizational arrangements facilitating slack (autonomy), availability of cooperative partners (critical mass) and concomitant cooperation between specialisms. It is our belief that by explicating such mechanisms CoE program theory can be greatly improved. Key words: Centers of Excellence; funding instrument; capacity; epistemic effects 1. Introduction At least since 2005, various countries have adopted Center of Excellence (CoE) funding as part of their S&T policy mix (Salmi 2009). The CoE scheme is an instrument intended to encourage high-quality collective research constellations via funding arrangements and organizational requirements that are more substantial and longer term than those of traditional project funding. CoE schemes have in common some notion of excellence, and particular expectations that are associated with that label in terms of evaluation and conduct. These typically involve high research quality and productivity, resource attraction and concentration, international visibility and attractiveness (including staff recruitment), and organizational robustness (good governance) (Hellström 2011; Orr, Jaeger and Wespel 2011; Aksnes et al. 2012). Researchers who apply for CoE funding normally have to formulate an organizational plan in addition to a research plan. Running a CoE is different from running a smaller project. Research leaders are taking a more formalized role than usual. They are expected to build an organizational structure and corresponding processes that make the participating researchers function as one unit, or sometimes as a network of units (Atkinson-Grosjean 2006) in the pursuit of some C The Author(s) 2017. Published by Oxford University Press. V common goals. Factors such as organizational structure, formalized leadership, integrative activities, governing boards, internal evaluation and external reporting regimes therefore become important features of CoE evaluations. While the shift to CoE funding is a fairly recent one, there is now plenty of experience about how this type of institutional choice for funding has affected research organizing (Hellström 2011; Langfeldt et al. 2015; Borlaug 2016). Yet to date little is known about how researchers adapt their research content to excellence funding schemes (Gläser and Laudel 2016). We consider CoE funding to be a choice of organizational conditions for research made by the funders on behalf of the academic community. It is therefore an instance of ‘institutional priority setting’ or choice in the sense discussed by Hellström and Jacob (2012). This choice is expected to bring about certain benefits, e.g. critical mass, professional academic leadership, accountability, interdisciplinarity, and of course generate the results and discoveries that are assumed to require such efforts. It is also expected that these outcomes are amenable to steering via evaluation and other mechanisms, or what one may refer to as ‘epistemic governance’. The assumption of this study is that this institutional priority (as expressed in the CoE funding instrument) affect the way researchers 73 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact 74 pursue knowledge production in their field. It might simply have organizational effects (which of course it was supposed to have) but, more importantly, there are reasons to believe that core aspects of knowledge production such as how to construct research problems, which types of projects to pursue, how to divide research labor in terms of these problems, etc. are also among the effects of the CoE instrument. In other words, the effects of instrument choice are both social/organizational and epistemic, as these two dimensions of science can be expected to be closely interrelated. The present study asks the following question: What are the main organizational and epistemic impacts of CoE funding with regard to activities made possible among researchers? Specifically, this question pertains to the larger issue of how organizational and epistemic effects are related to CoE funding, and specifically what mechanisms connect organizational capacities and epistemic effects, such as discovery processes. By organizational capacities in this context, we mean resources and capabilities embodied in, for example, infrastructure, organizational structures and processes, and personnel (competences/skills) (cf. Hellström 2011). Epistemic effects relate to new knowledge creation, i.e. new results, new research trajectories and breakthroughs in science. Since this is a qualitative study, epistemic effects are not assessed using metrics, but through accounts of such effects provided by the participants. To pursue this question, the study takes its point of departure in the 2006 and 2008 Linnaeus CoE environments funded by the Swedish Research Council (VR). The calls stipulated that applications contain information on such things as financial management, organizational structure, leadership, connections to the host university, and a few others organizational aspects. What the present study offers is an account from the researchers themselves, specifically the CoE leaders, about how they view the effects of the Linnaeus scheme on their research, in terms of organizational structuring and pursuit of knowledge. It does so by offering a qualitative description and interpretatio (...truncated)