Till Örebro universitet

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.