To Örebro University

This article examines how ideational complexity, i.e. the lasting presence of alternative policy frames in a policy domain, can be managed without leading to overt conflicts. By leveraging insights from the organisational literature, we suggest that, in most cases, alternative frames are kept apart within distinct policy instruments, while hybrid instruments are established only when required by the nature of the problem. We provide illustrative examples of how these strategies are employed in the case of public grant schemes for research funding. Our findings suggest that a) composite instrument mixes are an important resource to deal with ideational complexity, and b) the design of the instruments' delivery package, and specifically its procedural and organisational dimensions, plays a central role in avoiding conflicts between policy frames. Accordingly, our analysis advances the unexplored issue of how the coexistence of alternative policy frames impacts policy implementation.

Science and innovation are crucial parts of societal prosperity. Yet managing scientific activities is challenging because, even before the implementation of any give n policy starts, policy makers have to overcome the fact that there areprofoundly different views on what the role of science in society should be and hence how the state could intervene to shape or increase the research outputs. There are those who believe that the key role of science is to bring unforeseen discoveries through curiosity-driven research endeavors, while others believe that research should addresses societal challenges, like economic growth. Given these multitude of sometimes conflicting demands, and the multitude of policy actors embracing different demands, the research funding system tends to become fragmented. This phenomenon has been defined in scientific literature as institutional hybridization. However, as much as hybridization might be a pragmatic solution to addressing rising policy demands, it carries numbers of difficulties in designing the funding system and securing efficient implementation. Deeper understanding of institutional hybridity in research policy could help us avoid some of the existing problems and contribute to better informed design of research funding policy.

This dissertation taps into the core of tensions that shape the way we fund science in Europe. It aims to provide a better understanding of how different expectations and requirements on research outputs are handled through the organization and implementation of public research funding. The first contribution of this dissertation is the elaboration of institutional logics shaping research funding policy: academic excellence, research utility, and funding efficiency logic. Another contribution of the thesis is better understanding of how the three logics are expressed in practice via different types of research funding efforts, as well as how they are then combined into a multi-level hybridity of research funding systems in Europe. The third contribution is the examination of the process of handling of tensions created by clash of institutional logics, providing an in-depth empirical insight into case of Swedish research policy.

This paper follows recent calls to focus on how policy hybridity is formed using a research policy case, an area that has undergone profound changes in the last four decades. More specifically, it focuses on the case of Swedish research funding and its major institutional reorganization in 2000. Following the argument that conflicting institutional logics often prompt institutional hybridity, the paper conceptualizes and examines the role of three institutional logics present in research policy, namely academic excellence, utility of research, and funding efficiency. Using quantitative policy document analysis, a secondary literature review, and in-depth interviews, the paper reveals that, while a heated conflict existed between the proponents of the first two logics, the third was largely undisputed and, in fact, accommodated the final policy solution. The study’s results show that hybridity choices in Sweden can be linked to a combination of negotiations between vested interests, the state’s pursuit of better management and efficiency, strategic political action, and historical path dependency. Finally, this paper proposes several implications of segregation and other hybridity choices.

The research policy (RP) arena has been transforming in recent years, turning into a policy mix encompassing the diversity of policy instruments embedded in, and following different policy rationales and aims. Its complexity defies attempts for complex comparative analysis and eventually, a better understanding of what kind of (mixes of) funding instruments work better than others and in which situations. In this article, we address this gap by developing a conceptual framework that allows us to build the policy mix idea into the analysis of research funding instruments (RFIs), by relying on four dimensions: policy rationales, implementation modalities, policy actors, and the funding instruments interactions. We base our work on a careful literature review, especially drawing on the work of researchers who have developed similar frameworks in other policy areas, bringing it together with that of RP scholars, capturing the issues that are key to analyzing and understanding RFIs.