A growing body of literature has examined how applying for and winning competitive project grants affects the career trajectory of scientists in terms of productivity, quality, social networks, and knowledge. However, the role of grant schemes in shaping the direction of scientific inquiry remains poorly understood. In this study, we investigate how the research of grant recipients, rejected applicants, and a set of comparable non-applicants working in the same fields relates thematically to a set of funding calls issued by the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research. These calls are all of the ‘request for applications’ (RFA) type – i.e. targeting a specific type of research that the funder has identified and seeks to strengthen. We analyze the similarity between the topics embedded in applicants' research and the ones embedded in RFA calls. Applying a matching procedure followed by a difference-in-differences design, we find that applicants increase their topic similarity with the call more than non-applicants. However, we find no significant differences between the research of funded and rejected applicants – both groups shift their research in the direction of the call at a similar rate. These results cannot be explained by differences in post-call productivity. While we do not claim to have definitively disentangled the treatment from the selection effect on this issue, our findings have important implications for science policy and for our understanding of how the formulation of RFA calls shapes the direction of scientific inquiry.

The increasing dependence on knowledge as a driver of societal development during the twenty-first century has placed the governance of academia in a state of transformation. Increasing pressure for academia to direct the production, proliferation, and utilisation of academic knowledge towards the perceived needs and interests of government, industry and interests groups have manifested themselves in a diverse set of conditions for funding of education and research. For academics in general, and for early career researchers in particular, the result is an increasing dependence on external funding. In response, many universities have taken steps to introduce restrictions on form, content, and publication of research – as well as what types of employments are made available for researchers in the first place.

This study explores the relationship between employment security and reliance on external funding in Finland and Sweden – two countries that have recently adopted tenure-track models. The exploration is based on material from the APIKS survey regarding duration of employment contracts, exposure to expectations, and sources of funding. Based on this analysis, we discuss whether tenure can effectively provide a healthy degree of independence and academic freedom in a funding landscape characterised by a high degree of competition for research funding.

The results of the study provide insights into how the transformation of conditions for academic work interact with fundamental values of academia, and open avenues for further research into how academics deal with the pressures of modern career structures.

Established firms are increasingly forming alliances with green start-ups, i.e. newly-started ventures dedicated to eco-innovation. This study explores the rationales for the initiation and continuation of such alliances. We investigate how established firms leverage these alliances to facilitate eco-innovation adoption alongside their pursuit of legitimacy. Findings from a case study on seven alliances focused on food waste reduction initiatives in Italy and Sweden indicate that legitimacy-seeking rationales are predominant during alliance formation. As alliances evolve, they transition into a phase where firms identify opportunities for eco-innovation, while ambitions of capability-building and new revenue creation shape the development of the alliances. This study contributes to eco-innovation and environmental alliance literature by showcasing how the pursuit of legitimacy facilitates established firms’ adoption and implementation of eco-innovation through alliances with green start-ups.

In this article, we study how meritocratic systems and gender equality concerns are negotiated across different organisational spaces in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). Based on a case study of the organising of a tenure track system in a Swedish university, we suggest that the intersection of meritocratic processes and gender equality work can be analysed as a set of negotiated orders in these spaces. This fragmentation may imply problems for advancing gender equality agendas in relation to established notions of meritocracy but may also imply opportunities for change as existing organisational spaces can be reconstructed or new ones created. Our notions of fragmentation and negotiated orders thereby suggest that the current situation is both stable and legitimate and that re-negotiations need to involve reconstructions of the various spaces and not only interventions into them.

This study explores the role of network administrative organizations (NAOs) in science diplomacy (SD) by means of a qualitative case study approach. The case in point is a Swedish government initiative to coordinate the internationalization efforts of domestic funding agencies. We examine how the NAO IntSam balances between governmental directives and agency autonomy. Utilizing primary data from semi-structured interviews supplemented by internal documents and policy reports, the analysis delves into the challenges and potential of NAOs in harmonizing top-down directives with agency autonomy. The findings highlight IntSam’s role in facilitating collaboration and aligning domestic and international policy landscapes, while also revealing inherent tensions due to divergent governmental and agency priorities. This study contributes to understanding the complexities of coordinating cross-border Science, Technology, and Innovation efforts, offering insights into the nuances, potentials, and limitations of NAOs in the realm of SD.

Academics have complex and competing identities. They are part of a global community of scholars within their field or discipline, with its own particular myths, ideologies, cultures, languages, and rules of conduct. They are also part of a philosophical community with shared ideas about the nature of knowledge and the world, where the subject matter takes more of a backseat. In addition, they are part of a national context – sometimes even several – as citizens and residents, a local and regional context as members of society, and an institutional or departmental context as colleagues. With the emergence of the knowledge society, both the number and variety of contexts that an academic is expected to relate to have increased significantly.

This paper explores two aspects of this circumstance: one is the dominant locales of academic identity, and the other is the role of job security in driving that dominance. Using data from the APIKS survey, the paper examines the relative importance of affiliations with the academic discipline, the department, and the institution respectively for academics in participating countries – gauging the balance between global and local environments for the importance of identity formation in different national contexts. Drawing on insights from organisation theory, where job security has been found to be a strong determinant of organisational commitment, the paper analyses the effect of the duration of employment contracts for the distribution between attachment to the global, institutional, and departmental contexts. Does secure employment foster a stronger sense of belonging to the local environment due to long-term commitment, or does it enable gradual entrenchment in a specialised field that strengthens ties to the global community – and how is this relationship affected by the national context?

The results of the study provide insights into how and where academic communities are formed, as well as practical guidance for leadership functions at higher education institutions regarding how employment policies may be used as tools for building resilient and cohesive local cultures and environments. The study opens avenues of further research into how academics perceive the relationship between the formation of their academic identities and the practical circum-stances of their working conditions.

Firms configure their sustainability-oriented partnerships differently depending on the sustainability issue, partnership types, and mechanisms (product, process, policy, and awareness raising) and target change at various levels (firm, industry, supply chain, and society). We study how sustainability-oriented partnerships in the textile industry are configured by analyzing 444 partnerships using a mixed-method approach. Textile firms partner to tackle environmental issues such as circularity, waste, and sustainable materials, utilizing product and process mechanisms and create firm-level change. In contrast, these firms address social issues such as education and job development, labor and working conditions, poverty, and inequality through cross-sector partnerships that target change beyond firm boundaries. We discuss these findings critically by drawing on and contributing to two literature areas: sustainability-oriented partnerships that study partnership configurations and the sustainability in textiles. Our findings highlight the importance of issue and context specificity when partnering for sustainability.

What has boosted crowdfunding’s growth? In the case of peer-to-peer (P2P) lending, we highlight the role of consumers’ distrust in banks. We offer evidence that distrust in banks likely triggers individuals to supply funding toward crowdfunding and away from bank deposits. We highlight that a distrust mindset promotes questioning default choices and considering alternatives, and fosters comparisons focusing on dissimilarities. Our findings suggest US states whose residents express greater distrust in banks are more likely to fund P2P loans and, conditional on funding, lend higher amounts. This relationship is more pronounced when funding small loans or borrowers with less banking access.

Sustainable entrepreneurship, that is, venturing with the aim of contributing to a shift of practices towards environmental and social sustainability, is an increasingly prominent phenomenon. This article investigates how sustainability ventures orient between dual – commercial and environmental – logics when conducting the legitimation work necessary to secure their first major partnership with an incumbent firm. Specifically, we study multiple cases of partnerships on food waste reduction. This setting is characterised by limited tension between the two logics, which implies that ventures are not forced into hybridity. We find some indications that ventures are able to draw on both types of logic to legitimate their ventures. However, the dominant pattern is that sustainability ventures tend to orient their legitimation work around a salient founding logic. Our analysis suggests that this pattern can be attributed partly to organisational imprinting, but also to legitimation work in this context being inherently logic-specific to a significant degree. This seems to be particularly true for ventures with a salient environmental logic. .

Classifications of higher education institutions into categories that are more or less clearly differentiated through prestige and status are legion in the world of higher education. The notion of parallel categories with comparable statuses, such as those of different types of universities, is however much less well understood. This paper investigates how universities navigate between such alternative categories. We examine boundary work and institutional change involving Swedish higher education institutions with significant activity in engineering sciences in order to analyse how actors relate to ideas regarding the category ‘technical university’ as an ideal potentially distinct from that of the broad, comprehensive university. Analysis of two cases in the second half of the twentieth century shows that for engineering faculty, a focused technical university was an attractive alternative to the institutional model of the broad university. In contrast, analysis of two twenty-first-century cases suggests that aspirations to be recognised as a technical university were largely driven by adaption to external stakeholders’ interests. We discuss these findings in light of the emergence of the global hegemonic category ‘research university’. We also suggest that the organisational identity of a HEI may be tied to ideas about an organisational category through imprinting and path dependency. Moreover, we propose that changes over time in how categories are perceived may serve as an impetus to organisational change.