Research evaluation and organizational learning: A possible co-existence in the universities?

The paper will address the role of the recent implementation of systems of research evaluation in universities. The role of classic quality control system, the peer review, is to produce the most trustworthy knowledge and at the same time function as a learning system in a peer-to-peer learning process based on the norms of science. Scientific work was and to a large degree still is organized as a craft guild with an apprenticeship kind of training function for young scientists, who tacitly have accepted the authoritative hierarchical system normally associated with organizations one or two centuries ago. Recent studies of knowledge creation and learning in organizational learning theory have demonstrated the complexity of the process of knowledge in organizations. But in the university the very accidental and random model for learning is still state of the art, leaving the important learning decisions in relation to knowledge and learning to the individual scientist and not to the organization, the research group or the university. These individualized and unorganized learning systems are at the same time confronted with a much more systematically organized system of research evaluation. The basic question is what will become of the classic internal and tacit modes of learning science by day to day training of young scientists, when new models of research evaluation introduces new forms of governance in universities as a response to policy demands.