Pens and purse strings: Exploring the opportunities and limits to funding actionable sustainability science

James C. Arnott

Research Policy, 2021, vol. 50, issue 10

Abstract: Producing actionable science to improve social and environmental well-being enables the scientific enterprise to uphold expectations that accompany public funding for science. While innovations in the management of science funding may help overcome institutional hurdles to generating actionable science, the role of program managers in implementing such changes is relatively underexamined. Using sustainability science and related fields as a case, this study examines program documents (n = 33) and interviews of program management staff (n = 61) from public science funding programs in the United States and Europe. The results illuminate program management perspectives on the changing relationship between science and society and their own role in shaping it. In many instances, program managers in both regions are actively experimenting with practices that may strengthen links between knowledge and action. In certain contexts, program manager discretion may also amount to a form of science policy formation. However, program managers may still be limited in their ability to enact changes due to capacity constraints and still prevalent norms expressed by the research community. These results provide a window, and basis for future research, into the contemporary practice of science funding program management and its implications for sustainability and the social contract for science.

Keywords: Science funding; Program management; Knowledge co-production; Sustainability; Actionable knowledge; Social contract (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048733321001591
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:respol:v:50:y:2021:i:10:s0048733321001591

DOI: 10.1016/j.respol.2021.104362

Access Statistics for this article

Research Policy is currently edited by M. Bell, B. Martin, W.E. Steinmueller, A. Arora, M. Callon, M. Kenney, S. Kuhlmann, Keun Lee and F. Murray

More articles in Research Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().