Conflicting perceptions of plans for an academic centre

Abstract

Academic researchers making bids for a large interdisciplinary social science research centre had widely differing interpretations of the intentions of the research council, and as a result they submitted widely differing projects. I show this through an analysis of a request for proposals, submitted grant proposals, related documents, and interviews with proposal writers. These differences in interpretation resulted from the differences in contexts in which research council documents were read, and the way they were read against a background of institutional organization, informal communications, and taken-for-granted assumptions about policy. Response to the documents depended in part on the way they were distributed through the internal hierarchies of universities. Academic researchers and council officials had differing perceptions of the way the formal documents incorporated other texts from other agencies, and the way they divided and delimited the terrain of the project. Interpretation of the formal documents was also influenced by informal communications, confidential documents, inferences, and background assumptions. The result was that key decisions were based on perceptions of research council policy, and neither the winning submission nor most of the others corresponded closely to the specific topics suggested in the request for proposals.