Benedetto Lepori

Comparing the evolution of national research policies: what patterns of change?

This article presents a comparative analysis of the evolution of national research policies during the past three decades in six European countries (Austria, Italy, France, Netherlands, Norway and Switzerland), with a special focus on the changes of public project funding schemes. It systematically uses indicators on the volume of funding attributed by each instrument and agency, which have been developed in a project of the European network of excellence PRIME. A common model is identified in these countries, where project funding is the second main channel of public funding of research, but also there are considerable variations among them in the share of instruments and agencies, and in beneficiaries. There are three interesting commonalities: a strong increase of project funding volumes; a differentiation of instruments; and a general shift towards instruments oriented to thematic priorities. They also show that individual countries appear to follow quite distinct paths in the organisation setting of funding agencies, and that national differences in funding portfolios persist through time. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.

Indicators on individual higher education institutions: addressing data problems and comparability issues

Higher education institutions (HEIs) are crucial to the development of the European Research Area. However, unlike in the USA, the availability of quantitative indicators for individual HEI at the European level is severely limited by several methodological issues, data availability problems and national institutional constraints. The paper discusses strategies for collecting and validating data from different national sources; the limitations of the available data for different categories of indicators and, finally, the influence of the heterogeneity of the national HEIs on comparability at the European level. Based on the experience of two recently completed projects, the paper shows that, despite these problems, it is possible to collect relatively coherent data on European HEIs and to develop a set of consequential indicators. Further, it provides advice on how to exploit them for comparative purposes in a sensible way. It concludes by indicating areas where major improvements are urgently needed, and advocates a European S&T Indicators Platform to maintain and develop these data sets long term. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.

Changing Models and Patterns of Higher Education Funding: Some Empirical Evidence

Although the role of universities in the knowledge society is increasingly significant, there remains a severe lack of systematic quantitative evidence at the micro-level, with virtually all policy discussion based on country level statistics or case studies. This book redresses the balance by examining original data from universities in six European countries – Italy, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland and the UK.

European universities as complete organizations? Understanding identity, hierarchy and rationality in public organizations

Abstract This article investigates the form of European universities to determine the extent to which they resemble the characteristics of complete organizations and whether the forms are associated with modernization policy pressure, national institutional frames and organizational characteristics. An original data set of twenty-six universities from eight countries was used. Specialist universities have a stronger identity, whereas the level of hierarchy and rationality is clearly associated with the intensity of modernization policies. At the same time, evidence suggests limitations for universities to become complete, as mechanisms allowing the development of some dimensions seemingly constrain the capability to develop others.

Indicators for Comparative Analysis of Public Project Funding. Concepts, Implementation and Evaluation.

Despite its relevance for research funding, few comparable data are available in official R&D statistics on the amount and composition of project funding. This paper discusses in detail the methodology developed in the European Network of Excellence on Research and Innovation Policies PRIME for systematically producing indicators on public project funding which allow for comparative analysis between different countries and across periods of time. We introduce the design of the methodology, and discuss delimitation problems and how to develop suitable classifications of project funding instruments, as well as data availability and limitations. We present examples of our quantitative results for six European countries and of the questions they raise for comparative policy analysis. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.

Convergence and differentiation processes in Swiss higher education: an empirical analysis

The aim of this article is to contribute to the scholarly debate on differentiation processes in higher education, particularly in binary systems. The article builds on recent developments in institutional theory and organizational ecology regarding the nature of organizational forms, as well as on the mechanisms through which these forms impact on characteristics of individual higher education institutions, and highlight the role of isomorphic pressures and competitive differentiation. The approach emphasizes the relevance of segregation and blending processes between types of institution. An application to the relationship between the two main types in Swiss higher education confirms that these forces largely determine the dynamics of the populations, and that a distinction emerges between core features – which make the distinction between populations – and features for which individual strategies and local conditions are more relevant.

Organizations as Penetrated Hierarchies: Environmental Pressures and Control in Professional Organizations

Organizational control and environmental influences on organizational behavior are central themes in organization studies, yet little effort has been made to bring them together. In this paper we seek to contribute to filling this gap by investigating and conceptualizing environmental influences on organizational control. The paper examines patterns of organizational control and their environmental couplings through three parallel case studies of public universities in three European countries. We provide a systematic characterization of the space of configurations of control in professional knowledge-intensive organizations along the two axes of centralization of power and formalization of social relationships. We show that environmental characteristics do matter for the contestation and selection of control models. Finally, we unpack and conceptualize the synergetic influence of three environmental characteristics (institutional pressures, resource environment, and external social relationships) as providing sources of legitimacy and power for specific control regimes.

Changing patterns of public research funding in France

In this paper, we critically assess the specificity of the French research system and of its funding mode, which is accepted in most of the literature on the subject. We show that this interpretation is largely a result of the use of categories for the analysis of public funding that are not really suited to the French case. We thus develop two new categories: joint laboratories as a distinct organisational structure between public research organisations and universities; and human resources funding as a description of the specific allocation mode of CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) to the joint laboratories, which we consider as more similar to project funding than to core funding. We then show that the French system has changed fundamentally in the last two decades, moving towards a system much nearer to other European countries than normally assumed, albeit following a distinct evolutionary trajectory based on the gradual restructuring of existing instruments. In methodological terms, this underlines the importance of adapting the categories for the analysis of funding systems to the specificities of each national context. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.

Public research funding and research policy: a long-term analysis for the Swiss case

In this paper, an analysis is proposed of the evolution of public research in Switzerland from World War II to the year 2000. Thanks to the combination of different data sources, we produce a set of indicators for the overall volume of funding, the share of projects funds, and the share of the higher-education sector in the public research sector. Results are then linked to the development of the Swiss research and higher-education policy in the same period, leading to the identification of a major turning point at the end of the 1960s, when todays domination of higher education in the public research sector started. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.

Methodologies for the analysis of research funding and expenditure: from input to positioning indicators

This paper discusses the status of indicators concerning research funding and expenditure and proposes some pathways for further developments. First, I discuss in depth the design of the R&D statistics based on the Frascati manual and its limitations concerning analytical categories, data availability and quality. Further I argue that, to answer to specific policy questions concerning the allocation of funds, the development of a new generation of indicators is needed — so-called positioning indicators — focusing on the analysis of financial fluxes between research funders, intermediaries and performers, and I present some recent results of comparative European work in this direction. Finally, I draw some general methodological lessons on the nature of these indicators and on the procedure for their production, discussing key aspects such as reproducibility, quality validation, simplicity, contingency and transparency. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.