handbook-executive-leadership-of-research-development-pdf-v10

in relation to the environment conducive to research that has been outlined above?What steps will the university use to work strategically towards a research plan thatrecognises scholarship, expects research activity as a normal part of academicworkload, and creates a sense of ownership among all staff? What devices willbe in place to deal with staff who may become disaffected as a result of a shift inthe importance it attaches to research productivity? What support, prestige andrecognition can staff who move in the direction of more research activity expect?4. Building a research culture: issues specific to researchdevelopment in newer universitiesMany issues connected with the executive leadership of research apply equally acrossdifferent types of higher education institutions. However, as the work of Molfese andcolleagues shows, there are important themes that are specific to the development ofresearch activity and capacity in newer universities.Universities that have limited research capacity can no longer ignore the forces ofchange that propel them towards enhancing their research capability. The generationof new knowledge has become a global priority at the highest level of politics. Theincreasing importance of academic research to national governments around theworld, together with greater competition for students, funding and commercialpartnerships, have led to pressures for every university to focus on producing andsharing scholarly outputs. ‘Excellence’ in higher education is progressively more likelyto be defined in terms of ‘highly active and productive in research’.As we have seen, however, research productivity is unevenly distributed betweenindividual academics and between universities. Many newer universities wereestablished as teaching-focused institutions, recruiting academics who were notresearch active; although changes in the UK and Australian higher educationsystems have led to a broader distribution of research activity, and some staff innewer universities have built active research profiles, there remain large numbersof academics at these universities who are neither eager to pursue research, norcapable of pursuing it effectively.Ellen Hazelkorn has systematically reviewed these issues in a series of publicationsthat embrace international perspectives on growing research from a ‘fragile base’ 18 .Developing research in newer universities (and in older institutions that have anexisting, but relatively poor record of research) presents redoubtable challenges. ItA background briefing on the evidence19