Editors’ Introduction

Since World War II the funding and governance of higher education and scientific research systems have undergone a number of major changes in most industrialised capitalist societies. In particular, the state and other funding agencies have become more proactive in seeking to steer the direction of academic research, universities are being encouraged to be more accountable and strategic in their behaviour, and the commercialisation of research has taken new forms (Whitley, Gläser, & Engwall, 2010; Ziman, 2000). These changes represent significant shifts in the organisation of the sciences and have altered the nature of universities as strategic actors in many countries, including measures that increase their autonomy from the state and strengthen their internal managerial governance (Krücken, Kosmützky, & Torka, 2007; Paradeise, Reale, Bleiklie, & Ferlie, 2009; Whitley, 2012). In transforming the organisational contexts in which research is carried out, these reforms have had substantial consequences for the dynamics of scientific change.