Whereas a growing number of studies evidence that research quality notions and evaluative practices are field- and context-specific, many focus on single evaluative practices or moments. This paper introduces the concept of quality landscape to capture dynamics of interrelated quality notions, evaluative moments and practices in a research field. This concept shifts focus to (1) the field-specific universe of practices, devices and notions of research quality; (2) ways that interrelated valuations provide structure and boundeness to a landscape; (3) ways that perspectives on a shared landscape may change with position within the landscape; and (4) ways in which a quality landscape is intertwined with the field's socio-epistemic conditions. With extensive interview data from top ranked departments in three Scandinavian countries, we use economics as a case for exploring the value of a quality landscape lens. We find that the field's journal hierarchy and its 'Top 5' journals dominate the landscape, while other important evaluative practices beyond the top five are interlinked with the journal hierarchy. However, quantitative evaluative metrics common in other fields are virtually absent. We further find that national and local policy reinforce the journal hierarchy emphasis, and that career stages affect quality perspectives. We argue that the quality landscape is structured as a quality hierarchy with a focus on the core 'general interest', and suggest the notion of ordinalization (the process of rank ordering) as an organizing principle linking the quality landscape to the field's socio-epistemic conditions. Finally, we offer suggestions for further research. © The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press.

Research centers represent a specific organizational format for linking the traditional university organization with external actors, goals, and processes in time-limited, concentrated efforts of research and collaboration. Yet, the center format contains large variations, and centers act as interfaces between university organizations, societal actors, and research funders in multifaceted ways. In this chapter, we focus analytically on the organizational structuration of universities and the influence of external funding on the steering of work modes and orientations of academic research. We ask what centers do, how they affect universities’ operations, and why some centers are more successful than others in their missions. We address these questions through an analysis of six centers within the 10-year Vinn Excellence and Berzelii center schemes run by the Swedish innovation Agency Vinnova, drawing on interviews, evaluation reports, and a broad range of archival data. We highlight great variations in how universities are influenced by center funding, which is most effective when aligned with internal university strategies. Center success depends on the fit and integration of internal and external ambitions, university strategies, and partner orientations. However, such alignment is merely reinforced, rather than altered, by external center support. © The Author(s) 2024.

Class refers to the socio-economic stratification of individuals into more or less distinct social classes. Class is a key concept in political sociology for analysing how the political actions and beliefs of groups and individuals are shaped by labour and property relations.

Transitioning the energy sector to meet sustainability challenges requires introducing innovative solutions for energy production, storage, flexibility, security, and consumption (Fahnestock and Karltorp, 2019). Some of these innovations will be radical compared to incumbent firms’ competence base, solutions, and market attributes (Bergek et al., 2013). Although some energy utilities embrace innovation, most of these incumbents are inert due to significant lock-in effects of infrastructures and facilities.

While a larger body of research focuses on incumbents as developers of innovation (Klepper, 1997; Christensen, 1997/2013), less attention is paid to the factors that influence incumbents’ ability to implement radical innovation. A review of the comparatively few existing studies reveals that a) a combination of firm internal and external factors needs to be accounted for, b) factors are interdependent and form complex causal relations, and c) the same outcome related to adoption may result from different combinations of conditions as revealed by contradictions (Karltop and Perez Vico, forthcoming). Yet, no existing studies examine the complex casual relationships as configurations of factors that combine to contribute to incumbents’ propensity to implement radical innovations. Thus, we study how incumbent firms’ internal and external characteristics contribute to implementing radical innovation in the form of configurations of factors, using regional energy firms as empirical case.

We explore this question using a qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) that enables us to consider the effects of multiple causal factors and their complex causal relationships on a particular outcome, such as the propensity to implement radical innovation (Ragin, 2008). We use a comparative case study of eight Swedish public regional energy firms to explore the influence of factors derived from a recent literature review (Karltop and Perez Vico, forthcoming) that include external landscape, financial, technology, and industry conditions, as well as firm internal structural conditions, absorptive capacity and alignment with innovation. We base the analysis on semi-structured interviews with firm representatives and qualitative and quantitative data from media, annual reports, economic databases, and funding agencies.

Our analysis generates multiple solutions in the form of configurations of different factors contributing to incumbents’ propensity to implement radical innovations. These solutions reveal how factors amplify or offset each other and provide insight into different development paths for incumbents seeking to implement radical innovation. This paves the way for building a coherent theoretical frame for understanding incumbents in the light of radical innovation that accounts for multiple causes related to the firm’s structure, strategy, and external conditions.

Our findings have several management and policy implications. To implement radical innovation necessary for energy transitions, firms and policy makers must simultaneously pay attention to the multiple ways in which internal and external conditions may interact. Although some factors are beyond the firm’s control, managers could focus on the factors that moderate others, as these represent an opportunity for compensation. With this study, we also contribute to the field of transition studies by exploring a configurational approach to understanding the role of incumbents in meeting sustainability challenges.

Public research organizations respond to external pressures from national research evaluation systems, performance-based funding systems and university rankings by translating them into internal goals, rules and regulations and by developing organizational identities, profiles and missions. Organizational responses have primarily been studied at the central organizational level, and research on the steering of research has primarily focused on the impacts of performance-based funding systems. However, research evaluation exercises may also have a formative impact, especially below the central organizational level. This paper uses a case study of a research unit of a biomedical research school in the Netherlands to explore the organizational response to a relatively critical external assessment report. It shows that the participation in the Dutch research evaluation cycle legitimated the formation of a new organizational identity for the research unit, which functions as a frame that suggests to staff members a new interpretation of the type of research that is at the core of what the research unit does. We identify three additional steering mechanisms that support the enactment of the organizational identity: steering by resource allocation, by suggesting and by re-organizing. We, furthermore, explore the epistemic effects – the direction and conduct of research – of the organizational response, through interview data in combination with a bibliometric analysis. © 2023, The Author(s).