Growing_the_Best_and_Brightest._The_Drivers_of_Research_Excellence

Growing the best and brightest March 2014
Harvey (2002) explored the drivers of
performance of medical and medical-research
groups. Case studies were developed from semistructured
interviews which explored the history,
structure, strategy, culture, outputs and impacts
of the research group. A quantitative survey was
also administered which included topics such as:
generation of grants; fellowships; publications;
contribution to individual career and research
group development; and scientific impact.
Harvey found that finding, motivating and
retaining talent was one of a number of drivers
of research excellence (including strong
leadership, and strong links between theory and
practice). 8
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Similarly, papers by Hiltrop (1999) and Horwitz
(2003), show that recruitment practices also
affect commercial performance in firms.
Proactive recruitment practices are seen to be
particularly important.
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Hiltrop (1999) explores some of the strategies
and techniques that organisations are using to
attract and retain talent. HR managers and
personnel officers in 115 multinational and 204
domestic companies located in Western Europe
were asked to complete a structured
questionnaire containing 67 statements about
the management policies and practices of their
firm. Three groups of company were created to
analyse the results: those with high, medium and
low ability to attract and retain talent – as
considered by a group of seven management and
executive search consultants. They find that
those with a high ability to attract and retain
talent outperform their competitors in terms of
the level of teamwork and openness between coworkers,
the training and development
opportunities they offer to employees, and the
degree of pro-activity in HR planning. 9
Horwitz et al. (2003) explores the most and least
effective HR strategies used by knowledge
intensive firms for attracting, motivating and
retaining workers. The authors administered a
questionnaire to firms in Singapore and received
44 usable responses. Based on self-reported
success, the most effective strategies for
attracting workers included offering a highly
8
Harvey (2002), “The determinants of research group
performance: towards Mode 2”, Journal of
Management Studies.
9
Hiltrop (1999), “The quest for the best: human resource
practices to attract and retain”, European
Management Journal.
10
Horwitz (2003), “Finders, keepers? Attracting,
motivating and retaining knowledge workers”, Human
Resource Management Journal.
competitive salary, proactive selection and
recruitment initiatives, and funded internal staff
development. 10
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Finally, there is a large recruitment relatedliterature,
which shows that the
characteristics and experiences of individual
researchers, influences research productivity.
Papers show that the presence of “stars”, along
with a highly cited Head of Department, can
raise departmental performance.
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Dunar and Lewis (1998) examined the factors
that contribute to the research productivity of
doctoral-granting universities in the US. They
studied both individual-level drivers (such as the
age and experience of researchers) and facultylevel
drivers (such as faculty size). Using data
from the National Research Council, the authors
found that faculties with more “full professors”
and “stars” materially enhanced departmental
research performance. They assume that full
professors are tenured, experienced and mature
senior faculty. To measure the presence of “star”
faculty they used a National Research Council
constructed Gini coefficient for publications. The
Gini coefficient measures the publication
concentration on a single or small number of
faculty. If each member of staff is producing the
same number of papers the coefficient will be
low, at the other extreme, if all the papers in a
department were being produced by one person
the coefficient would be high. 11
Gonzalez-Brambila and Veloso (2007)
considered how researcher age influences
research output and impact. Using a dataset of
Mexican researchers, they found that a
researcher’s publishing peaks at around 53 years
old, but overall found that age does not have a
substantial influence on research output and
impact relative to other factors such as
professorial level and subject area. 12
Similarly to Dunar and Lewis, Witte and Rogge
(2010) studied the individual-level drivers of
research excellence. Based on the output data on
81 Belgian researchers and researcher
interviews, they found that higher research
performance is achieved by those who: are
female, have a PhD, are affiliated with one or
11
Dunar and Lewis (1998), “Determinants of research
productivity in higher education”, Research in Higher
Education.
12
Gonzalez-Brambila and Veloso (2007), “The
determinants of research output and impact: a study of
Mexican researchers”, Research Policy.