Exploring the Dimensions of Innovation Culture in the Public Higher Education Institutions: Towards Improved Organizational Performance in Research and Development

This paper extends the concept of innovation culture to the academic organizations, particularly public higher education institutions (HEIs). Through a case study approach, a total of 40 individuals composed of research and development (R&D) managers and administrators, innovators, and faculty research personnel from four selected public HEIs participated in the in-depth interviews and FGDs. Institutional statements were also used as secondary data. Through synthesis of previous studies, we learned the different organizational, human, and collaborative dimensions of innovation culture, however in the context of private manufacturing organizations. Results revealed that in academic organizations like public HEIs, the aspects of innovation and the concept of innovation culture were embedded in the institutional statements as well as in the values of the participants. It was also found that innovation culture is a widely understood concept in terms of its attributes or building blocks. Through this study, we understood the importance of innovation culture in promoting performance amidst the challenges of doing R&D in public HEIs. We learned that creativity and flexibility, innovation resources, training and capacity development, and coaching and mentoring were the key elements of innovation culture that can help address the managerial and institutional challenges in doing R&D in academic organizations. Lastly, identifying and assessing the specific dimensions and elements of innovation culture in academic organizations as well as determining their impacts of innovation culture on research productivity in academic organizations were relevant research areas to explore in future studies.

Impact and the Research Environment

How to successfully create impact from academic research is the focus of much debate. Discussions often centres on the role of discipline, researcher skills and behaviour, or institutional systems to capture impact evidence, but little consideration is given to the relationship between research impact and the research environment. Focussing on the Impact Case Studies submitted to Unit of Assessment 34: Art & Design: History, Practice and Theory, this research used Content and Narrative Analysis to review a sample of the most and least successful Impact submissions as ranked by Times Higher Education. The aim was to identify the characteristics of high-scoring Impact Case Studies to inform strategies for supporting the generation of research impact, but what emerged was evidence of a nuanced relationship between research environment and research impact. For Research and Management Practitioners, these findings highlight a need to extend beyond the development of training, advice and databases and respond directly to the core purpose and ethos of research impact. This can be achieved through the cultivation of an open, flexible and dynamic research environment capable of responding to institutional and researcher needs in order to allow impact to flourish.

Transforming Research Management and Administration to keep up with the changing research and innovation landscape

With the launch of a new academic journal it is timely to reflect on the content and scope of the journal. JoRMA is the Journal of Research Management and Administration – but what is Research Management and Administration (RMA) and why might it deserve your attention?

Who defines the impact of research?

Research funders wish to see meaningful impact of the work they fund. Methodologies have been produced over several years that help explain research impact. However, for health and related research impact, we believe we need to be more guided by the patients the research was undertaken for. We believe facilitated consultation and targeted patient reported impact measures would give research evaluators a better understanding of impact from the patient perspective.