How do researchers generate scientific and societal impacts? Toward an analytical and operational framework

Abstract

Models of research systems increasingly emphasize collaborations between networks of heterogeneous actors, to both produce knowledge and formulate interdisciplinary responses to societal challenges and market needs. In this context, researchers' goals and practices are required to satisfy professional requirements for new scientific findings and societal demand for relevant knowledge. Researchers may need also to find ways to reconcile tensions between these two missions. This paper proposes an analytical and operational framework that incorporates individual, organizational and process-context factors to explain distinct configurations of scientific and societal impacts from research. The framework emphasises the role of productive interactions with different non-academic actors as a mechanism for reconciling the scientific and societal missions of research.

Not in the Job Description: The Commercial Activities of Academic Scientists and Engineers

“…Second, although much of the prior literature has focused on the representative scientist characterized by self-interested motives, our results reveal important heterogeneity across scientists, as well as the relevance of social motives that have received little attention in prior work. Recognizing these aspects may provide a richer foundation for future work on scientists' decisions such as which career path to take, which employer to work for, or what research problems to tackle (see Besley and Ghatak, 2005;D'Este et al, 2018;Francois, 2007;Salter et al, 2017). More generally, a broader view of scientists' motives and the consideration of differences in the scientific enterprise across fields has the potential to enrich the study of science and allow us to provide more robust advice to managers, university administrators, and policy makers.…”

Opening the black box of academic entrepreneurship: a bibliometric analysis

“…A promising line of research could be to explore the impact of accelerating clean energy and green technology innovations to mitigate climate change and enhance competitiveness of advanced countries by designing new policies on university-and institutional levels. Further, to enable the generation and comparability of substantial findings on academic entrepreneurship that can inform policymakers' decisions, future research should develop and use advanced metrics that enable capitalization on academic entrepreneurship as a tool to strengthen regional/national economic and societal development (Bozeman and Boardman 2013;D'Este et al 2018;Siegel and Wright 2015).…”

Not in the job description: The commercial activities of academic scientists and engineers

“…Our results suggest that future work should consider a broader range of motives, notably the desire to have an impact on society. We suspect that this motive may play an important role not just in scientists' decisions to engage in commercial activities but also in other decisions such as which career path to take, which employer to work for, or what research problems to tackle (see Besley & Ghatak, 2005;D'Este et al, 2018;Francois, 2007;Salter et al, 2017). More generally, a broader view of scientists' motives and the consideration of differences in the functioning of the scientific enterprise across fields may enrich the study of science and may allow us to provide more robust advice to managers, policy makers, university administrators and other stakeholders.…”