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The inhibiting factors that principal investigators experience in leading publicly funded research

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Abstract

Securing public funding to conduct research and leading it by being a principal investigator (PI) is seen as significant career development step. Such a role brings professional prestige but also new responsibilities beyond research leadership to research management. If public funding brings financial and infrastructure support, little is understood about the inhibiting factors that publicly funded PIs face given the research autonomy offered by publicly funded research. Our study finds that there are three key PI inhibiting factors (1) political and environmental, (2) institutional and (3) project based. Traditional knowledge, skills and technical know-how of publicly funded PIs are insufficient to deal with the increasing managerial demands and expectations i.e. growing external bureaucracy of public funding agencies. Public funding is no longer the ‘freest form of support’ as suggested by Chubin and Hackett (Peerless science: peer review and US science policy. Suny Press, New York, 1990) and the inhibiting factors experienced by publicly funded PIs limits their research autonomy. We also argue that PIs have little influence in overcoming these inhibiting factors despite their central role in conducting publicly funded research.

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Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Irish Research Council, the publicly funded PIs that participated in this study and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and feedback.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. J.E. Cairnes School of Business & Economics and the Whitaker Institute, NUI Galway, Galway, Ireland

    James Cunningham

  2. College of Business, Dublin Institute of Technology, Dublin, Ireland

    Paul O’Reilly

  3. Department of Management, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

    Conor O’Kane

  4. Grenoble Ecole de Management, Grenoble, France

    Vincent Mangematin

Authors
  1. James Cunningham
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  2. Paul O’Reilly
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  3. Conor O’Kane
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  4. Vincent Mangematin
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Correspondence to Conor O’Kane.

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Cunningham, J., O’Reilly, P., O’Kane, C. et al. The inhibiting factors that principal investigators experience in leading publicly funded research. J Technol Transf 39, 93–110 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10961-012-9269-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10961-012-9269-4

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