Derrick G E, Robson J, Oancea A, Xu X, Stan M R
Centre for Higher Education Transformations (CHET), School of Education, University of Bristol, 35 Berkeley Square, Bristol, BS8 1JA UK.
Centre for Global Higher Education, Department of Education, University of Oxford, 15 Norham Gardens, Oxford, OX2 6PY UK.
High Educ (Dordr). 2025;90(1):89-108. doi: 10.1007/s10734-024-01309-8. Epub 2024 Sep 26.
Using interviews with global research stakeholders, this research explores how stakeholders within research-system-level research governance organisations conceptualised, responded to, and reasoned the realities of disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and how they positioned procedural changes to their governance mechanisms. Given that system shocks present critical challenges to established practices and embedded institutional norms, we use neo-institutional theory as a heuristic device to examine the relationship between the exogenous shock of COVID-19, trajectories of institutional norms and cultures, and the role institutional stakeholders play in managing responses. Across all the research systems studied (with particular focus on the UK, Australia, Norway, New Zealand, Hong Kong SAR, and Italy), participants were concerned about how the shock provided by COVID-19 had both revealed and entrenched deep inequalities inherent in their research systems and globally. There were tensions in how participants centralised the concept of the 'normal' as part of a process of recovery permeating all system-level responses, often with a sense of for pre-pandemic structures, modes of operation, and embedded norms. Aspirations for short-, medium,- and long-term plans for research change echoed a dependency on returning to 'normal' and an inevitable pull of the norms of the pre-pandemic status quo. Despite the desire to 'build back better', the pull of institutional norms and the gravitational force of the status quo appeared too strong for meaningful change in recovering research systems.
通过对全球研究利益相关者的访谈，本研究探讨了研究系统层面研究治理组织中的利益相关者如何理解、应对并阐释由新冠疫情造成的破坏现实，以及他们如何定位治理机制的程序变化。鉴于系统性冲击对既定实践和既定制度规范构成了严峻挑战，我们使用新制度理论作为一种启发式工具，来审视新冠疫情的外部冲击、制度规范和文化的轨迹，以及机构利益相关者在管理应对措施中所扮演的角色。在所有研究的研究系统中（特别关注英国、澳大利亚、挪威、新西兰、中国香港特别行政区和意大利），参与者们都担心新冠疫情带来的冲击如何既揭示又巩固了其研究系统乃至全球范围内固有的深刻不平等。在参与者如何将“正常”概念作为贯穿所有系统层面应对措施的恢复过程的一部分进行集中化处理方面存在紧张关系，他们常常对疫情前的结构、运作模式和既定规范怀有某种怀念之情。对研究变革的短期、中期和长期计划的期望反映出对回归“正常”的依赖以及对疫情前现状规范的不可避免的牵引。尽管有“更好地重建”的愿望，但制度规范的牵引力和现状的引力对于恢复研究系统中的有意义变革来说似乎过于强大。
