Abstract
The article explores the consequences of New Public Management (NPM) reforms for academic research based on case studies in two fields of research (medieval history and red biotechnology) in four European countries (Austria, England, Germany, The Netherlands). Our findings show that – contrary to expectations inspired by neo-institutionalism – shifts in governance towards NPM do matter. According to our discussion of NPM-reforms at work a number of hypotheses on their effects are put forward: NPM is likely to strengthen external steering of research while reducing academic autonomy, is likely to decrease the variety pool of academic research, to encourage increasing productivity as well as short-termism of academic research, is unlikely to strengthen the relevance and user orientation of academic research, and likely to push towards a de-coupling of research and teaching.
We gratefully acknowledge the support from the German Research Foundation for our joint project on shifts in governance and academic research that we undertook in collaboration with our colleagues Dr. Harry de Boer, Sandra Bürger, Dr. Ute Lanzendorf, Dr. Liudvika Leišytė, and Nicolas Winterhager. Our insights into the Dutch and English cases have benefited in particular from the analyses provided in Leišytė (2007).
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Notes
- 1.
We aimed at selecting a high-performing research group and an average group.
- 2.
For a detailed overview of NPM reforms in England, the Netherlands, Austria, and Germany see Kehm and Lanzendorf (2007).
- 3.
Actually, the RAE 2008 was run in a different mode. We describe here the older mode to which all quotations from interviews in the following refer.
- 4.
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Enders, J., Kehm, B.M., Schimank, U. (2015). Turning Universities into Actors on Quasi-markets: How New Public Management Reforms Affect Academic Research. In: Jansen, D., Pruisken, I. (eds) The Changing Governance of Higher Education and Research. Higher Education Dynamics, vol 43. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09677-3_5
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