Follow the Money: The Relations Between Funding Streams for Research and Strategic Targets as a Challenge for University Management. An Empirical Case Study – Comparing Austria and Sweden

Research funding is an increasingly important strategic issue for universities. Universities and their researchers compete for funding in a landscape of growing complexity; and the prestige and orientation of research funds plays a rising role in shaping universities' profile. However, the governance of research funding is a particularly challenging task for university leadership. Leaders face considerable information asymmetries and are also confronted with a complex multiplicity of external expectations. Incorporating and balancing these expectations with the institutional mission is a challenge. National higher education and funding systems play a crucial role in how university leadership attempts to govern research funding. As is known national systems vary strongly. But also within nation state, there is a strong diversity of types of universities, as well as of funding mechanisms. Comparative research is needed to produce knowledge beyond the particularity of singular cases.