Tensions in the research council-research community relationship

Research councils have often met difficult balancing acts, for instance between basic and applied research, disciplinary and cross-disciplinary work, and trade-off decisions about review and monitoring systems. Contemporary councils such as the Research Council of Norway (RCN) often have multiple missions that introduce new tensions when innovation goals, new forms of monitoring and user control enter the scene. This article views tensions in the research council-research community relationship from a principal-agent perspective using data from an empirical investigation of RCN. The principal-agent dilemmas ‘adverse selection’ and ‘moral hazard’ are tied to the discussion of tensions, including an exploration of how these dilemmas can be ‘balanced’ or ‘stabilised’.