Research and Teaching Awards as Elements of Incentive Systems in Academia

Abstract

Research and teaching awards are non-monetary incentives. This contribution asks which role awards may play in order to acknowledge performance in teaching and research (This contribution is a revised version of the lecture given at the conference “Innovation, achievement performance measurement and incentive systems in academia and business—Governance of knowledge-intensive organizations” at the Technische Universitat Munchen (Munich University of Technology) on January 14th and 15th 2014. For helpful comments to my presentation and for this book chapter I like to thank some participants and the organizers of this conference. For the translation of this article I like to thank Dorit Rowedder and Susan Harris-Hummert). It is based on surveys conducted in the context of the project “GOMED” (The project “GOMED—Governance of university medicine: Intended and non-intended effects of decentralised incentive systems using the example of the performance-based funding within the respective faculty in medicine” was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research). The chapter is divided into three parts: The first part discusses the potential of teaching and research awards in incentive systems in academia. This discussion is based on the available literature and on our own findings. The second part presents investigations on the number as well as the prize money of awards in Germany. This includes teaching and research awards that are relevant for researchers at medical faculties in Germany as well as those that are open to other subjects. The third part summarizes and discusses possibilities of further developments for teaching and research awards, e.g., a higher prize money or a higher number of team awards.