Research impact: an institutional logics perspective of related tensions in higher education.

The UK Higher Education sector’s emphasis on research “impact” (economic, social, environmental and cultural benefits) leads to tensions which academics are often ill-equipped to navigate. Our understanding of such tensions is largely limited by a narrow empirical focus on knowledge commercialisation and oversimplified conceptualisations of the underlying process of change. This study employs an exploratory, holistic multiple case design to explore tensions experienced by 30 business and management scholars and participants in the 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF2014), the first national evaluation of research impact globally. It deploys institutional logics as a conceptual lens as this is underpinned by a theory of action (embedded agency) offering greater explanatory power for how macro- and meso-level factors influence micro level behaviour than alternatives predominantly used in existing explorations of impact. Six major findings regarding individual level impact-related tensions are reported at the ‘individual’ level of analysis. First, three novel tensions were identified. Second, eight conceptual tensions were empirically observed. Third, certain tensions are underpinned by forms of embeddedness not currently associated with the institutional logics perspective. Fourth, most of the identified tensions are not associated with an often alluded to professional- market logics dualism, but with various configurations of five logics. Fifth, certain tensions are associated with a single, professional logic. Sixth, strategic responses to certain tensions are typically generative of impactful research, although occasionally defensive responses can also be generative. Three theoretical contributions are proposed. First, the empirical confirmation of a typology of individual-level impact-related tensions, within which three novel tensions are identified. Second, the development of the logics perspective through revelation of new types of embeddedness as theories of change and third; the conceptualisation of institutional monism as an alternative source of conflicting logics to institutional pluralism. Finally, a contribution to professional research practice is also made in recommending that barriers to research effectiveness should be responded to strategically rather than defensively in order to maximise impact generation.