Pub Date : 2024-09-12DOI: 10.1007/s11024-024-09544-0
Katharina C. Cramer, Nicolas V. Rüffin
Political interest in Research Infrastructures on a European scale has been a new phenomenon, marked in the early 2000s with the launch of the Lisbon Strategy and the European Research Area. European Research Infrastructure policy then developed through, first, the strategic incorporation of incumbents through new modes of coordination; second, the European Commission’s emphasis of joint responsibility at the supranational level, claiming its own accountability and mobilizing the subsidiarity principle to its advantage; third, the incentivization of conformity to the European Commission’s policy agenda through generous financial schemes and fourth, the implementation of tailor-made legislation. While this topic speaks to current debates in EU studies, it also amends analyses of Big Science as an empirical puzzle within European politics and integration and launches a scholarly effort to come to terms with the new phenomenon of Research Infrastructures.
{"title":"The EUropeanisation of Research Infrastructure Policy","authors":"Katharina C. Cramer, Nicolas V. Rüffin","doi":"10.1007/s11024-024-09544-0","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-024-09544-0","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Political interest in Research Infrastructures on a European scale has been a new phenomenon, marked in the early 2000s with the launch of the Lisbon Strategy and the European Research Area. European Research Infrastructure policy then developed through, first, the strategic incorporation of incumbents through new modes of coordination; second, the European Commission’s emphasis of joint responsibility at the supranational level, claiming its own accountability and mobilizing the subsidiarity principle to its advantage; third, the incentivization of conformity to the European Commission’s policy agenda through generous financial schemes and fourth, the implementation of tailor-made legislation. While this topic speaks to current debates in EU studies, it also amends analyses of Big Science as an empirical puzzle within European politics and integration and launches a scholarly effort to come to terms with the new phenomenon of Research Infrastructures.</p>","PeriodicalId":47427,"journal":{"name":"Minerva","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-09-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142219971","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-09-09DOI: 10.1007/s11024-024-09541-3
Jonatan Nästesjö
This paper investigates how early career academics interpret and respond to institutional demands structured by projectification. Developing a ‘frame analytic’ approach, it explores projectification as a process constituted at the level of meaning-making. Building on 35 in-depth interviews with fixed-term scholars in political science and history, the findings show that respondents jointly referred to competition and delivery in order to make sense of their current situation. Forming what I call the project frame, these interpretive orientations were legitimized by various organizational routines within the studied departments, feeding into a dominant regime of valuation and accumulation. However, while the content of the project frame is well-defined, attempts to align with it vary, indicating the importance of disciplines and academic age when navigating project-based careers. Furthermore, this way of framing academic work and careers provokes tensions and conflicts that junior scholars try to manage. To curb their competitive relationship and enable cooperation, respondents emphasized the outcome of project funding as ‘being lucky.’ They also drew on imagined futures to envision alternative scripts of success and worth. Both empirically and conceptually, the article contributes to an understanding of academic career-making as a kind of pragmatic problem-solving, centered on navigating multiple career pressures and individual aspirations.
{"title":"Between Delivery and Luck: Projectification of Academic Careers and Conflicting Notions of Worth at the Postdoc Level","authors":"Jonatan Nästesjö","doi":"10.1007/s11024-024-09541-3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-024-09541-3","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper investigates how early career academics interpret and respond to institutional demands structured by projectification. Developing a ‘frame analytic’ approach, it explores projectification as a process constituted at the level of meaning-making. Building on 35 in-depth interviews with fixed-term scholars in political science and history, the findings show that respondents jointly referred to <i>competition</i> and <i>delivery</i> in order to make sense of their current situation. Forming what I call <i>the project frame</i>, these interpretive orientations were legitimized by various organizational routines within the studied departments, feeding into a dominant regime of valuation and accumulation. However, while the content of the project frame is well-defined, attempts to align with it vary, indicating the importance of disciplines and academic age when navigating project-based careers. Furthermore, this way of framing academic work and careers provokes tensions and conflicts that junior scholars try to manage. To curb their competitive relationship and enable cooperation, respondents emphasized the outcome of project funding as ‘being lucky.’ They also drew on imagined futures to envision alternative scripts of success and worth. Both empirically and conceptually, the article contributes to an understanding of academic career-making as a kind of pragmatic problem-solving, centered on navigating multiple career pressures and individual aspirations.</p>","PeriodicalId":47427,"journal":{"name":"Minerva","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142219970","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-08-03DOI: 10.1007/s11024-024-09537-z
Marianna Zieleńska, Magdalena Wnuk
Drawing on the critical discourse analysis of journals and working papers from 2011-2020 referring to the at-risk of poverty or social exclusion composite indicator (AROPE), we shed light on how benchmarks technicize academic discourse, particularly in its part contributed by economists. First developed to measure progress towards the poverty target set in the EU's Europe 2020 strategy, AROPE has easily permeated academic debate. Its anchoring in statistical procedures and expertise has allowed it to function in this debate as a neutral and purely technical measurement tool, obscuring the interests and normative choices underlying its design and implementation. As a result, the discursive practices associated with the benchmark have led to the reproduction and legitimization of the anti-poverty policy objectives of the Europe 2020 strategy. Simultaneously, AROPE has provided a 'cognitive infrastructure' that enabled an economic view of the world geared towards raising competitiveness. It has made it possible to assess which Member State is doing well and which is doing poorly, and making recommendations on how the laggards should improve. Our analysis shows that benchmarks such as AROPE support the process of shaping Europe as a supranational entity, creating a picture of common European problems with uniform definitions, on the basis of which it is possible to divide Member States into better and worse performers and even promote common solutions through good practices. We conclude by highlighting that the academic discourse around AROPE, generated mainly by economists, reflects the growing interdependence of the academic and political spheres and the pressure for research to have social and political impact.
{"title":"Benchmarking and the Technicization of Academic Discourse: The Case of the EU at-Risk of Poverty or Social Exclusion Composite Indicator","authors":"Marianna Zieleńska, Magdalena Wnuk","doi":"10.1007/s11024-024-09537-z","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-024-09537-z","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Drawing on the critical discourse analysis of journals and working papers from 2011-2020 referring to the at-risk of poverty or social exclusion composite indicator (AROPE), we shed light on how benchmarks technicize academic discourse, particularly in its part contributed by economists. First developed to measure progress towards the poverty target set in the EU's Europe 2020 strategy, AROPE has easily permeated academic debate. Its anchoring in statistical procedures and expertise has allowed it to function in this debate as a neutral and purely technical measurement tool, obscuring the interests and normative choices underlying its design and implementation. As a result, the discursive practices associated with the benchmark have led to the reproduction and legitimization of the anti-poverty policy objectives of the Europe 2020 strategy. Simultaneously, AROPE has provided a 'cognitive infrastructure' that enabled an economic view of the world geared towards raising competitiveness. It has made it possible to assess which Member State is doing well and which is doing poorly, and making recommendations on how the laggards should improve. Our analysis shows that benchmarks such as AROPE support the process of shaping Europe as a supranational entity, creating a picture of common European problems with uniform definitions, on the basis of which it is possible to divide Member States into better and worse performers and even promote common solutions through good practices. We conclude by highlighting that the academic discourse around AROPE, generated mainly by economists, reflects the growing interdependence of the academic and political spheres and the pressure for research to have social and political impact.</p>","PeriodicalId":47427,"journal":{"name":"Minerva","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-08-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141883759","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-07-31DOI: 10.1007/s11024-024-09535-1
Peter Woelert, Bjørn Stensaker
Over recent decades, one can identify two key narratives associated with changes in university organization and governance. The first narrative focuses on the administrative consequences of an off-loading state relinquishing direct control over some of universities’ internal operations while at the same time driving bureaucratization at the institutional level. The second narrative focuses on the emergence of an increasingly competitive and uncertain environment driving universities to transform into strategically managed organizations. In this paper, we argue that while the organizational logics associated with these two narratives imply differently accentuated forms of legitimation, they converge and combine with respect to key dimensions of universities’ internal organizing, ultimately giving rise to a hybrid form of organizational governance we label ‘strategic bureaucracy’. Such strategic bureaucracy, we illustrate, is characterized by a strong focus on strategic leadership and the associated management techniques while also intensifying organizational features traditionally associated with bureaucratic governance such as formalization and hierarchical authority.
{"title":"Strategic Bureaucracy: The Convergence of Bureaucratic and Strategic Management Logics in the Organizational Restructuring of Universities","authors":"Peter Woelert, Bjørn Stensaker","doi":"10.1007/s11024-024-09535-1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-024-09535-1","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Over recent decades, one can identify two key narratives associated with changes in university organization and governance. The first narrative focuses on the administrative consequences of an off-loading state relinquishing direct control over some of universities’ internal operations while at the same time driving bureaucratization at the institutional level. The second narrative focuses on the emergence of an increasingly competitive and uncertain environment driving universities to transform into strategically managed organizations. In this paper, we argue that while the organizational logics associated with these two narratives imply differently accentuated forms of legitimation, they converge and combine with respect to key dimensions of universities’ internal organizing, ultimately giving rise to a hybrid form of organizational governance we label ‘strategic bureaucracy’. Such strategic bureaucracy, we illustrate, is characterized by a strong focus on strategic leadership and the associated management techniques while also intensifying organizational features traditionally associated with bureaucratic governance such as formalization and hierarchical authority.</p>","PeriodicalId":47427,"journal":{"name":"Minerva","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-07-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141866959","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-07-09DOI: 10.1007/s11024-024-09539-x
Joseph C. Hermanowicz
Universities are generally understood as organizations that extend knowledge based on codified bodies of work developed from systematic research and scholarship. This article examines the emergence of an organizational form that increasingly competes in contemporary higher education: the therapeutic university. A recent phenomenon, the therapeutic university is predicated on emotion in which the goal is to make the experience as a student as comfortable as possible. The article discusses organizational morphology of the therapeutic university by identifying practices within it. The practices establish a contest between a rational-universalistic orientation of the university on the one hand and an emotion-particularistic orientation on the other. The article provides an explanation for why this organizational form arose and what it purports to accomplish. Its operations are ensnared by major paradox: as its identity implies, the therapeutic university postures to do good, but its practices, it is argued, debilitate students and higher learning. The mandate that the broader society gives to higher education is thereby susceptible to lost confidence. The article concludes by discussing a way in which universities may be inoculated from the conditions that support their present-day therapeutic proclivities.
{"title":"The Therapeutic University","authors":"Joseph C. Hermanowicz","doi":"10.1007/s11024-024-09539-x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-024-09539-x","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Universities are generally understood as organizations that extend knowledge based on codified bodies of work developed from systematic research and scholarship. This article examines the emergence of an organizational form that increasingly competes in contemporary higher education: the therapeutic university. A recent phenomenon, the therapeutic university is predicated on emotion in which the goal is to make the experience as a student as comfortable as possible. The article discusses organizational morphology of the therapeutic university by identifying practices within it. The practices establish a contest between a rational-universalistic orientation of the university on the one hand and an emotion-particularistic orientation on the other. The article provides an explanation for why this organizational form arose and what it purports to accomplish. Its operations are ensnared by major paradox: as its identity implies, the therapeutic university postures to do good, but its practices, it is argued, debilitate students and higher learning. The mandate that the broader society gives to higher education is thereby susceptible to lost confidence. The article concludes by discussing a way in which universities may be inoculated from the conditions that support their present-day therapeutic proclivities.</p>","PeriodicalId":47427,"journal":{"name":"Minerva","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-07-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141570447","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-07-08DOI: 10.47460/minerva.v5i14.163
Wilson Francisco Zambrano Jimenez, Divina Monserrate Macías Quiroz, Jorge Andres Fernandez Sanchez, Shaileen Mariela Zambrano Cevallos
This study analyzes the determinant factors of non-attendance to medical appointments through a mixed-methods approach. A survey was conducted with 200 patients, supplemented by semi-structured interviews to delve deeper into the reasons behind absenteeism. The logistic regression analysis results showed that transportation problems and long waiting times for appointments are the main factors influencing non-attendance. Variables such as age, gender, forgetting the appointment, work-related reasons, dissatisfaction with medical care, improvement in health status, and education level were not significant predictors. The study's limitations include the small sample size and the lack of consideration of patients by treatment type. Future research should focus on increasing the sample size and conducting longitudinal studies to evaluate the effectiveness of specific interventions.
{"title":"Determinant factors of non-attendance to medical Appointments: a mixed-methods approach","authors":"Wilson Francisco Zambrano Jimenez, Divina Monserrate Macías Quiroz, Jorge Andres Fernandez Sanchez, Shaileen Mariela Zambrano Cevallos","doi":"10.47460/minerva.v5i14.163","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.47460/minerva.v5i14.163","url":null,"abstract":"This study analyzes the determinant factors of non-attendance to medical appointments through a mixed-methods approach. A survey was conducted with 200 patients, supplemented by semi-structured interviews to delve deeper into the reasons behind absenteeism. The logistic regression analysis results showed that transportation problems and long waiting times for appointments are the main factors influencing non-attendance. Variables such as age, gender, forgetting the appointment, work-related reasons, dissatisfaction with medical care, improvement in health status, and education level were not significant predictors. The study's limitations include the small sample size and the lack of consideration of patients by treatment type. Future research should focus on increasing the sample size and conducting longitudinal studies to evaluate the effectiveness of specific interventions.","PeriodicalId":47427,"journal":{"name":"Minerva","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2024-07-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141669724","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-06-21DOI: 10.1007/s11024-024-09534-2
Øyunn Syrstad Høydal
Academic papers in the social sciences were once more essayistic in their form. The carefree launching of concepts and ideas of academic value were the order of the day, all without the security of the present standardized paper format inspired by the natural sciences. This text draws on the most cited paper by the acclaimed scholar Carol Weiss, as an outset to discussing academic writing; why we write as we do and what we may lose by doing so. This means exploring the history of academic writing as well as discussing the complex, yet exciting, relationship between writing, identity, language, and the very process of conducting research.
{"title":"Could I Write Like Carol Weiss?","authors":"Øyunn Syrstad Høydal","doi":"10.1007/s11024-024-09534-2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-024-09534-2","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Academic papers in the social sciences were once more essayistic in their form. The carefree launching of concepts and ideas of academic value were the order of the day, all without the security of the present standardized paper format inspired by the natural sciences. This text draws on the most cited paper by the acclaimed scholar Carol Weiss, as an outset to discussing academic writing; why we write as we do and what we may lose by doing so. This means exploring the history of academic writing as well as discussing the complex, yet exciting, relationship between writing, identity, language, and the very process of conducting research.</p>","PeriodicalId":47427,"journal":{"name":"Minerva","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-06-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141503648","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-06-13DOI: 10.1007/s11024-024-09531-5
J. R. Faria, Christopher J. Boudreaux, R. Goel, Devrim Göktepe-Hultén
{"title":"Science and Innovation: A Cyclical Approach","authors":"J. R. Faria, Christopher J. Boudreaux, R. Goel, Devrim Göktepe-Hultén","doi":"10.1007/s11024-024-09531-5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-024-09531-5","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47427,"journal":{"name":"Minerva","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141348958","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-06-07DOI: 10.47460/minerva.v5i14.162
Veronica Rocio Garcia Vera, Geilert De la Pena Consuegra
This study aimed to promote collaborative work as a pedagogical strategy to foster school coexistence in a group of three-year-old children. A mixed methodology was employed, with a pre-experimental longitudinal design of 36 children. An observation sheet was applied before and afterimplementing the pedagogical strategy over five weeks. The results were analyzed through statistical techniques, using the T-Student hypothesis test processed in the statistical software SPSS version 0.25. The main findings reveal statistically significant differences in school coexistence when comparing the means of pre-experimentation (M=52.08) and post-experimentation (M=59.36). It can be asserted that the work positively impacted the children's school coexistence, improving their social and cognitive skills. It is recommended to continue exploring collaborative approaches to promote harmonious environments from the early stages.
{"title":"Collaborative work as a pedagogical strategy to favor the school coexistence of children","authors":"Veronica Rocio Garcia Vera, Geilert De la Pena Consuegra","doi":"10.47460/minerva.v5i14.162","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.47460/minerva.v5i14.162","url":null,"abstract":"This study aimed to promote collaborative work as a pedagogical strategy to foster school coexistence in a group of three-year-old children. A mixed methodology was employed, with a pre-experimental longitudinal design of 36 children. An observation sheet was applied before and afterimplementing the pedagogical strategy over five weeks. The results were analyzed through statistical techniques, using the T-Student hypothesis test processed in the statistical software SPSS version 0.25. The main findings reveal statistically significant differences in school coexistence when comparing the means of pre-experimentation (M=52.08) and post-experimentation (M=59.36). It can be asserted that the work positively impacted the children's school coexistence, improving their social and cognitive skills. It is recommended to continue exploring collaborative approaches to promote harmonious environments from the early stages.","PeriodicalId":47427,"journal":{"name":"Minerva","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-06-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141373245","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}