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The received wisdom underlying many guides to ethical research is that information is private, and research is consequently seen as a trespass on the private sphere. Privacy demands control; control requires consent; consent protects privacy. This is not wrong in every case, but it is over-generalised. The distorted perspective leads to some striking misinterpretations of the rights of research participants, and the duties of researchers. Privacy is not the same thing as data protection; consent is not adequate as a defence of privacy; seeking consent is not always required or appropriate. Beyond that, the misinterpretation can lead to conduct which is unethical, limiting the scope of research activity, obstructing the flow of information in a free society, and failing to recognise what researchers’ real duties are.

Despite the vast amount of literature covering the concept of leadership, it remains contentious, under‐conceptualised and often uncritical. The purpose of this paper is to question the validity of the concept and dispute its application.

The paper reviews what the idea of leadership means, how it relates to competing accounts of management in the public services, and what value it adds.

There is no evident reason why the supposed roles, tasks, or qualities of “leadership” either need to be or should be concentrated in the person of a leader; the tasks involved in “leading” an organisation are not in fact the tasks of motivation, influence or direction of others which are at the core of the literature; and there is no reason to suppose that leadership is a primary influence on the behaviour of most organisations.

In the context of the public services, there is no set of skills, behaviours or roles that could be applied across the public services; the emphasis in leadership theory on personal relationships may be inconsistent with the objectives and character of the service; and the arrogation to a public service manager of a leadership role may be illegitimate.

The argument here represents a fundamental challenge to the concept of leadership, its relevance and its application to public services.

The purpose of this paper is to reflect critically upon current debates and tensions in the governance of research in the UK and more widely, particularly the imperative that social science research should demonstrate impact beyond the academy.

Drawing implicitly upon the Bevir’s theory of governance, the paper positions discourses about “research excellence and research impact” as elite narratives that are rooted genealogically in forms of managerial audit culture which seek to govern the practices of social science academics. The paper reviews relevant literature, draws upon key contributions that have shaped debate and refers to the author’s own research and experiences of “research impact”.

Initiatives such as the UK’s “Research Excellence Framework” can be understood as a form of governance that further enables already present neo-liberalising tendencies in the academy. The “impact agenda” has both negative (e.g. it can distort research priorities and can lead to overstatement of “real world” effects) and positive potential (e.g. to provide institutional space for work towards social justice, in line with long-standing traditions of critical social science and “public sociology”).

There is a need for more critical research and theoretical reflection on the value, threats, limitations and potential of current forms of research governance and “impact”.

To date, there are very few article-length, critical discussions of these developments and issues in research governance, even fewer that connect these debates to longer-standing radical imperatives in social science.

This article is primarily concerned with professionals, their institutions and their relations with the Commission of the European Communities (CEC), from a British point of view. It will be argued that professionals in Europe are not simply affected by European Union (EU) legislation, they help formulate it and they administer it to an extent bounded by the Commission.