| dc.description.abstract | A lot has been written on the importance of societal impact of academic research within universities, and the proposed policy actions that should be taken to enhance this. Nonetheless, due to dominant structures and institutions, universities still struggle with adapting their organizational system accordingly. Uncontested university strategies and incentives to enable researchers in achieving societal impact of academic research are missing. Herein, finding a legitimate solution to this academic challenge is difficult because of its wicked character. In an attempt to tame its wickedness, this study explores the consensus on the performance of suggested university policy options that potentially help to transition towards a university regime embracing societal impact of academic research.
In total, 24 face-to-face interviews were executed with stakeholders from Utrecht University and related national organizations. By using a Multicriteria Mapping method, quantitative and qualitative data were gathered on the performance of university policy options representing four different perspectives from different levels: researchers from university niches, faculty staff and university staff at the regime level, and landscape interviewees from outside of the university. In total, based on criteria provided by the stakeholders themselves, university policy options were appraised on how well they could potentially contribute to enhancing societal impact of academic research.
Grouping the provided criteria together, expected organizational and external impact, and practical feasibility were used most often to appraise the university policy options. Also, many stakeholders assigned more weight to expected organizational impact and expected external impact criteria. However, results also show that some interviewees perceived the cultural feasibility of options as important. For the aggregated performance scores of the university policy options, incentivizing policy options providing researchers with time and appreciation for societal impact activities have the highest mean scores. Comparing different perspectives, results show that stakeholders did not always agree on the performance of the university policy options. Also, stakeholders expressed diversity in preference on how to implement the policies best.
Aside from many differences in the perceived performance of university policy options, patterns of conditions and interconnections of university policy options appear. All in all, stakeholders agreed on the necessity of all university policy options, but neither of them was considered ‘sufficient’ individually. Besides recognizing the need for an integrated policy approach, the outcomes also show that collaboration between several levels and a stepwise and reflexive implementation of university policy options is a prerequisite to successfully transition towards ‘science for society’. | |
