Guy Neave

Managing research or research management

‘War’, said Georges Clemenceau, once known to his compatriots as ‘Pere la Victoire’ for his rousing part in the French war effort during the latter days of the first European Conflict (1914–1918), ‘is too important to be left to the Generals’. The same conviction now emerges in respect of the research function, namely that research management is too important to be left wholly to researchers. That the question should be posed at all reflects at one and the same time, the unavoidable fact that as the so-called Knowledge Society takes its virtual shape, the Nations research capacity is now held to be a prime determinant of whether the place of individual Nations in the new order will have them comfortably basking in the sun or obscured by the deepest and dankest of shades.

On the Naming of Names

One of the _rst missions the Creator conferred upon Adam was the giving of names {{to the fowls of the air and the beasts of the _eld||[ Here was a crucial task perhaps the most important to be ful_lled in an Antediluvian world before loss both of Paradise and Innocence[ Few even the most optimistic amongst us would see these present times as a new golden age of the University unless of course times become even harder*as well they might for certain countries faced with _nancial chaos[ Some might well look upon the advent of market forces as the prime instrument of change in terms not greatly dissimilar from those which came from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil[ Both were bitterly acquired[ And both were accompanied by great lamentation[ Still it is not too far fetched to suggest that as for Adam so for the contemporary University {{the naming of names|| and most particularly in that area which involves its relationship {{to the external environment|| is now becoming a matter of more than passing concern[ The burden of the greater part of the articles in this issue involves exploring the various ways in which the University {{relates|| to its community and as Federico Mayor makes clear this imperative if ever present in the past has assumed new innovatives today[ Yet our terminology is singularly unhelpful[ Unversities {{relate|| to the {{community||[ They are called upon to develop {{new partnerships|| with an increasingly complex and variegated range of {{stakeholders||[ And university leadership is being summoned to show resolutely its initiatives within the world and for it[