Institutions Encouraging Competition, Instrumentalism, and Meaningless Research

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mats Alvesson ◽  
Yiannis Gabriel ◽  
Roland Paulsen
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Mass Education ◽  
Scientific Institutions ◽  
System P ◽  
Institutional Competition ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
The Right

The rise of mass education has led to mass research—quantity dominates quality. A ruthless institutional competition for status, plus academics pushing to get published in the ‘right’, career-enhancing journals, has led to the fetishization of journal outputs even when they are of little meaning or value to society. This situation is now endemic within the system of academic research and publication, and is strongly driven and sustained by academics themselves, even when they are unwilling to admit it. Academics, both individually and collectively, exercise considerable control over the content and nature of social science research, its scrutiny, assessment, and dissemination. They also have considerable control over the practices of various scientific institutions, including universities and their departments, funding bodies, conferences, and publications. Social science researchers underestimate and diminish their own responsibility for this state of affairs and sometimes prematurely adopt a victim position, blaming an impersonal system.

Return to Meaning

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mats Alvesson ◽  
Yiannis Gabriel ◽  
Roland Paulsen
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
No Value ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Cluttered Environment ◽  
Student Fees ◽  
Social Uses

This book argues that we are currently witnessing not merely a decline in the quality of social science research, but a proliferation of meaningless research of no value to society and modest value to its authors—apart from securing employment and promotion. The explosion of published outputs, at least in social science, creates a noisy, cluttered environment which makes meaningful research difficult, as different voices compete to capture the limelight even briefly. Older, but more impressive contributions are easily neglected as the premium is to write and publish, not read and learn. The result is a widespread cynicism among academics on the value of academic research, sometimes including their own. Publishing comes to be seen as a game of hits and misses, devoid of intrinsic meaning and value and of no wider social uses whatsoever. This is what the book views as the rise of nonsense in academic research, which represents a serious social problem. It undermines the very point of social science. This problem is far from ‘academic’. It affects many areas of social and political life entailing extensive waste of resources and inflated student fees as well as costs to taxpayers. The book’s second part offers a range of proposals aimed at restoring meaning at the heart of social science research, and drawing social science back, address the major problems and issues that face our societies.

scholarly journals Challenges in Education Research in Taiwan: Research Institutes and Organizations, Research Policies, and Problems

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1&2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jia Li Huang
Keyword(s):  
Education Research ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Research Policy ◽  
Research Performance ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Academic Education ◽  
Research Institutes

Since the 1990s, many education researchers and policy makers worldwide have reviewed education research to attempt to provide strategies to improve the quality of such research in their countries. Taiwan’s government has launched policies and funded support to set the benchmark for Taiwan’s leading universities in international academic competition. The external environment of global competition based on research policy influences the ecosystem of social science research production. To assure the quality of education policy, peer review from within the education community is one approach to supplementing the government’s governance, including the establishment of research institutes, promotion, rewards, and research value. This study tracked the mode of academic research and provides an overview of the status of academic education research in Taiwan. Because education research is part of the humanities and social sciences fields, this study identified the challenges in educational research by examining the trend of social science research and by analyzing research organizations, policy, and the evaluation of research performance. Due to the environment of education research in Taiwan is not friendly to education researcher to accumulate papers in SSCI or international journal, additional concerns entail how education research communities can develop and agree on its quality.

Virtual Resources: International Relations Research Resources on the Web

1998 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 211-221 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald J. Deibert
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Web Site ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Teaching Resources ◽  
Research And Teaching ◽  
General Terms ◽  
The Web ◽  
Research Resources

The explosive growth of the Internet and the World Wide Web in recent years has produced not only the trivial and bizarre, but also information useful for social science research and teaching. Yet most of this information is difficult to locate, particularly for those unfamiliar with the Web, primarily because of its nonlinear architecture—called “hypertext.” The purpose of this research note is to give scholars a sense of what is unique about research resources on the Web and an indication in general terms of what types of information and materials can be accessed through it. First, I describe primary and secondary materials, teaching resources, reference material, and news sources. I then suggest several guidelines for Web site development that I believe will improve the potential for social science research on the Web. Finally, I conclude by outlining some directions for further analysis raised by the widespread use of the Web for academic research and teaching. A companion guide to research resources on the Web will be posted on the International Organization Web site through which the material here (and much more) can then be accessed.

scholarly journals Hazards, Climates and Cultures: Reflections on Recent Scholarship and Proposals for Further Research

2016 ◽  
Vol 03 (02) ◽  
pp. 1602002
Author(s):  
James M. Jeffers
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Hurricane Katrina ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Complex Dynamic ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
The Social

Writing in 2006 in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, James K. Mitchell challenged social science researchers of hazards and disasters to broaden their research agenda. He advocated a move beyond simply applying existing social science insights to contemporary events to reflection on the larger project of the production of knowledge through academic research, the application of that knowledge to public policy, and the role of the social sciences in these endeavors. In particular, he urged consideration of the context-dependent nature of scientific knowledge on hazards, the relationships between scientific and non-scientific ways of understanding and responding to disasters, and the complex and often contradictory ways in which hazards can be framed, interpreted and understood. Ten years on from this challenge, this paper reviews scholarship that has addressed some of these concerns and proposes questions for further research. It argues that while social science research has advanced in some of the directions proposed by Mitchell, the challenge of complex, dynamic and contradictory interpretations of hazards and the implications of the provisional nature of knowledge remain understudied. It also suggests that while recent innovations in the co-production of hazards knowledge are welcome, there may be significant challenges to utilizing these approaches on a wider basis.

scholarly journals Labeling or science-by-buzzwords: The semantic trap in academic research and how to get out of it

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Klaus Solberg Söilen
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Internal Marketing ◽  
Research System ◽  
Research Gaps ◽  
The Social

The social sciences are drowning in new fancy academic terms or buzzwords, labels with unprecise definitions, rebranding phenomenon that somehow seem familiar. We are all surrounded by smart cities, innovation, and sustainability. What do these terms mean that we could not express earlier? Introducingthem also raises new questions, which at first may seem provocative: Are there dumb cities too, if sowhere? Do we carry out research at our universities that is not innovative? Does the literature onsustainability make our products more sustainable? Above all, these new fields are formulated in almostsuspiciously positive terms attracting the attention of our politicians and echoed everywhere. How cananyone be against smart cities, innovation and sustainability? It must be good, important and thereforeit deserves funding. To become more relevant academic research must redirect its focus from buzzwords to problems, notjust smart “research gaps” in the literature. Instead of listing keywords, researchers, academic journalsand academic databases should list problems (1), and the problems should be stated in full sentences (2)using as few (3) and as simple words as possible (4). We should also insist on clear, mutually exclusivedefinitions. By searching for problems instead of labels it will become much easier to find relevantresearch across different labels and disciplines.We need to be much stricter when admitting new labels. If a new term is not exact and not muchdifferent from a previous term it should be declined. Focus should be on what the Germans since the 19thcentury understand by “verstehen”, as the "interpretive or participatory" examination of socialphenomena, not on coining new terms. Today new terms often come to life because we did not readenough, or we thought more about internal marketing and our own self-promotion instead of focusing onproblems that are important for humanity. We are all guilty of this to a certain degree as it’s difficult toescape the logic trap that is our current social science research system.

scholarly journals A Comparative Philosophical Analysis of the Kantian Principle of Moral Theory and the Utilitarian Theory: Applications and Critiques

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Moral Theory ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Categorical Imperative ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
Science Philosophy ◽  
The Right ◽  
Kantian Principle ◽  
Utilitarian Theory

There have been several notions about the Kantian perspective and the utilitarian theory from all walks of life in the academic space. Kant spoke widely on morality, rights and justice for all persons whereas Bentham and Mill spoke of an action being right if they are useful for the benefit of the majority. Kant admonished people to act as they would want all other people to act towards them. This paper, therefore, takes the step to critically compare the Kantian principle of moral theory to the Utilitarian theory as an important aspect in general philosophy and the social science philosophy in particular. This critical paper adopts a systematic review approach whereby scholarly articles from different authors and sources were drawn which served as secondary sources of literature for the discussion. This paper argues that the Categorical Imperative’ is a moral guideline devised to aid an individual in choosing to make the right decision and perform the right duties whereas the Utilitarian approach is an ethical system that proposes that the greatest useful goodness for the greatest number of people should be our guiding principle when making ethical decisions. This paper makes a case by imploring how the categorical imperative of Kantianism and the Utilitarian theory are applied in Social Science Research (SSR). It is therefore recommended that all life matters and persons should not be used as a means for one’s satisfaction and what is right in society must be enforced and what is beneficial to the larger society must also be encouraged.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document