Quality and Research Evaluation in Organizations

A central issue in science policy today is the changing role and function of research evaluation. How is quality selected, has local organizational traditions and managerial practices influence on the research evaluation? Who is perceived as peers or evaluators by the researchers and by managers? Recent organizational theory has focused on organizational and social dimensions in private knowledge-based companies, but left out research organizations. How important is the organizational context for the research evaluation processes? The paper will present results from an interview-based study of four private and public research organizations and discuss the importance of the organizational context on the production of new knowledge.