Institutional Conditions and Changing Research Practices in Switzerland

Abstract

This article analyses in what way Swiss academic institutions have had a favourable or unfavourable influence on changing research practices by following developments in four scientific areas – Bose-Einstein Condensates, Evolutionary Developmental Biology, Large-Scale Assessments in education research and Computerised Corpus Linguistics. Based on empirical evidence, we argue that overall a number of institutional conditions have had a positive influence on the decisions of scientists to dare a switch to a new scientific field. One finds, however, also differences in the working of these institutional conditions leading to quicker or slower developments of the four selected scientific areas.

Citation

Benninghoff, M., Ramuz, R., Gorga, A. and Braun, D. (2014), "Institutional Conditions and Changing Research Practices in Switzerland", Organizational Transformation and Scientific Change: The Impact of Institutional Restructuring on Universities and Intellectual Innovation (Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Vol. 42), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 175-202. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0733-558X20140000042006