Universities are increasingly expected to fulfill a third mission in addition to those of research and education. Universities must demonstrate engagement with society through the application and exploitation of knowledge. As societal impact of research is uncertain, long term and always dependent on other factors, we argue here that evaluation should focus on the conditions under which societal impact is generated rather than on the impact itself. Here we focus on a specific set of those conditions: the interactions between academic researchers and societal actors. Instead of speculating about potential impacts of research, we argue that current productive interactions of researchers with societal stakeholders improve the probability that future societal impact will occur. This article supports this idea by examining in detail several, mainly retrospective examples. As productive interactions are field specific, we restrict ourselves to 'professional adhocracy fields', especially to information and communication technologies (ICT) research. We address the patterns of productive interactions that result in societal impact within this field and we discuss whether differences are observed in contrast to other fields, such as social sciences and humanities (fragmented adhocracies). We end by discussing the implications that these patterns have for societal impact assessment. Shifting the focus to interactions allows assessment of short-term knowledge transfer and other collaborative efforts with stakeholders that contribute to long-term societal impact.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

This paper presents a framework to understand the impact of scientific knowledge on the policy-making process, focusing on the conceptual impact. We note the continuing dissatisfaction with the quality and effects of science-policy interactions in both theory and practice. We critique the current literature’s emphasis on the efforts of scientists to generate policy impact, because it neglects the role of ‘user’ policymaking organisations. The framework offered in the paper develops an argument about the essential role of institutional conditions of policy ‘users’ for scientific knowledge to achieve impact. The framework is informed by the reflexive institutionalist and the neo-institutionalist theoretical approaches. Its main contribution is in outlining the intra- and inter-organisational conditions of policymaking organisations, along with personal characteristics of individual policy officials that influence the likelihood of scientific knowledge to generate conceptual impact. We also offer an operationalisation of the framework. The wider relevance of the paper is in moving the focus from the activities of scientists and the incentive structure in scientific organisations to the policy user side.