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The Impact of Changing Funding and Authority Relationships on Scientific Innovations

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Abstract

The past three decades have witnessed a sharp reduction in the rate of growth of public research funding, and sometimes an actual decline in its level. In many countries, this decline has been accompanied by substantial changes in the ways that such funding has been allocated and monitored. In addition, the institutions governing how research is directed and conducted underwent significant reforms. In this paper we examine how these changes have affected scientists’ research goals and practices by comparing the development of three scientific innovations (one each in physics, biology, and educational research) in four European countries, namely Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Sweden. We find that the increased number of actors exercising authority over research goals does not necessarily lead to a greater diversity of interests funding research. A narrowing of goals and frameworks is especially probable when the increasing importance of external project funding is combined with reductions in state financing of universities and public research institutes. Finally, the growing standardisation of project cycle times and resource packages across funding agencies and scientific communities make it more difficult for researchers to pursue projects that deviate from these norms, especially, if they challenge mainstream beliefs and assessment criteria.

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Notes

  1. Since World War II, a phase of exponential growth until the end of the 1970s (Solla Price 1986 [1963]; Weingart 2003) has been followed by stagnation from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s (Cozzens et al. 1990; Ziman 1994), renewed growth since the mid-1990s and an uneven development dominated by again-reduced growth and decline in some countries since the financial crisis (Makkonen 2013; Cruz-Castro and Sanz-Menéndez 2016).

  2. Evidence is scattered but consistent. The average success rates for all grants dropped for the US National Institute of Health from 33% in 1997 to 20% in 2015 (NIH 2015), for UK Research Councils from around 50% in 1980 to 28% in 2015 (Research Councils UK 2006: 52; Matthews 2015), for the Australian Research Council from 32.4% in 2002 to 17.8% in 2015 (ARC 2016), and for the German Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft from 84.5% in 1974 to 52.4% in 2009 (Aljets and Lettkemann 2011: 138).

  3. The project “Restructuring Higher Education and Scientific Innovation” (RHESI) was funded under the EuroHESC programme of the European Science Foundation. The research has been supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Grant Schi 553/7-1), by The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO Grant 461-09-710), by the Swedish Research Council (Grant 90671701) and the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF grant 125814). The project was led by Richard Whitley, Uwe Schimank, Jochen Gläser, Dietmar Braun, Lars Engwall and Jürgen Enders.

  4. The notion of ‘protected space’ has been used before to describe a social space in which researchers are shielded from interference (Krohn and Weyer 1994; Rip 1995, 2011; see also Hackett 2005 on ‘protected sphere'; and Luukkonen and Thomas 2016 on ‘negotiated space'). Our use of the concept emphasizes the shielding from interferences by all authoritative agencies including scientific communities (via reputational mechanisms), organisations (through hierarchical governance) and science policy and funding (through expectations tied to resources). The use of two measurable dimensions (time horizon and resources) turns ‘protected space’ from a metaphor into a variable that enables the comparative analysis of opportunities to build specific protected space under varying conditions.

  5. For the analysis of funding in the context of governance changes, we consider only the ‘high-cost’ strand of evo-devo innovations. For an account of the dynamics of evo-devo in its full breadth, see Laudel et al. (2014a).

  6. As part of the RHESI project, the empirical research was conducted by Enno Aljets, Martin Benninghoff, Adriana Gorga, Tina Hedmo, Elias Hakansson, Eric Lettkemann, Raphael Ramuz, and Linda Wedlin. For detailed results of case studies, see (Gläser et al. 2014a; Gläser et al. 2014b; Laudel et al. 2014a; Laudel et al. 2014b; Laudel and Weyer 2014).

  7. Project funding was provided by external funding agencies: the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft in Germany (DFG), Stichting voor Fundamenteel Onderzoek der Materie (FOM) in the Netherlands, Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) in Switzerland, and private foundations in Sweden.

  8. Still, the amount of grant and university funding obtained for BEC in the four countries was only half of what the US group leader producing the first BEC in the USA had at his disposal as a young assistant professor, at a time when BEC was a highly unpredictable endeavour (Ketterle 2002). When Ketterle became assistant professor, he received a start-up package. In addition, his former professor gave him full discretion over a lab that was newly equipped for BEC research and over two experienced PhD students. Ketterle could fund two more PhD students, one of them from an NSF grant that he received although the manufacturing BECs was considered impossible by most.

  9. Evo-devo researchers working with non-model organisms sometimes faced publication difficulties because they could not provide the standard functional tests with these organisms because the methods were not developed yet.

  10. In this study we focus on one type of higher education system, which can loosely be described as ‘Germanic’, and its reformed versions. The inclusion of other types of systems (e.g. as categorised by Whitley and Gläser 2014b) could change the scope of our causal claims because other conditions of research would vary.

  11. The following discussion is limited by the degree to which the relevant conditions actually made a difference. In the three smaller countries, the small number of attempts to develop BEC (two in Switzerland and one in Sweden) or evo-devo (two in Sweden) make it difficult to assess how conditions were provided.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Alliance Manchester Business School, The University of Manchester, Booth Street East, Manchester, M13 9SS, UK

    Richard Whitley

  2. Center for Technology and Society, TU Berlin, HBS 1, Hardenbergstraße 16-18, 10623, Berlin, Germany

    Jochen Gläser

  3. Department of Sociology, TU Berlin, Fraunhoferstraße 33-36, 10587, Berlin, Germany

    Grit Laudel

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  1. Richard Whitley
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Correspondence to Jochen Gläser.

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Whitley, R., Gläser, J. & Laudel, G. The Impact of Changing Funding and Authority Relationships on Scientific Innovations. Minerva 56, 109–134 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-018-9343-7

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