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Publication
Practices of management knowing in university research management
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Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
The purpose of this paper is to provide insight into how research managers and directors
conceive, adopt and adapt organizational structures to regulate and stimulate academic research.
Design/methodology/approach – The study used principles of a grounded theory approach for
collecting and analysing data in interviews with research directors and programme managers working
at universities within the discipline of Business Administration in The Netherlands.
Findings – In total, four clusters of concepts emerged from the data, related to: the definition of
organization structures; the effects and by-products of providing structures; academic research as
management object; and using organizational structures. The collected clusters show that research
universities adopt all kinds of organization structures (formal, informal, narrow, broad, intentional,
emergent) and that the perceptions and practices of research managers are crucial for deciding
whether these structures may become “seeding” or “controlling”.
Originality/value – The “practice turn” in organization studies has highlighted how important
work practices of individual knowledge workers are, but so far has not paid systematic attention to the
role of management, or has even downplayed that role. Structuration, which is a key management
domain, is not inherently “good” or “bad” (seeding vs controlling), nor is avoiding structuration.
Research managers as quintessential knowledge managers appear centre stage in making structures
work or not. What makes structures “seeding” (or not) is their selection, combination, adjustment
and/or intentional ignoration in practices of management knowing. An important mechanism is that of
negotiation in attempts to accommodate possibly divergent interpretations. The concept of
management knowing introduced and elaborated claims that management knowledge and practices
are intertwined and not independent management knowledge categories
Description
Keywords
Universities, Research work Epistemology of possession