Academic work engagement, resources and productivity: empirical evidence with policy implications

ABSTRACT

This paper analyzes the impact of job resources on academic productivity measured by publication and credit points in 53 departments in one large Norwegian university. The theoretical framework is the so-called conservation of resources theory. The resources data came from the so-called ARK Intervention Program. The results showed that engagement and administrative and technical support for research and teaching stimulated research publications but had adverse effects on credit points from teaching, thus also contributing to the research-teaching nexus debate. To avoid adverse trade-offs between research and teaching, and to gain further positive effects on research productivity, targeted means and reward structures seem important.

KEYWORDS:

• Academic productivity
• research-teaching nexus
• work engagement
• university policies
• COR-theory

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Ivar Pettersen and Kyrre Svarva for invaluable help with the data. The authors also would like to thank the editor and the reviewers for contributing to improve the paper with helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Marit Christensen http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6246-4383

Notes

1 ARK is a Norwegian acronym for ‘Working Environment and Working Climate Surveys’ developed for assessing psychosocial factors among employees in knowledge-intensive work environments.

2 Source: http://dbh.nsd.uib.no/pub/ Last accessed 5 May 2018.

3 A description of the publication point system and an evaluation report by Aarhus University can be found at http://www.uhr.no/documents Last accessed 5 May 2018.

4 In case of co-authors from abroad, a proportional number of credit points are subtracted when calculating the number of points allocated to the national co-authors.

5 Prop. 1 S (2016–2017), p. 285 (in Norwegian) See: https://www.regjeringen.no/contentassets/20d6abbdd38446468cd7d24c4a87f4a3/nn-no/pdfs/prp201620170001_kddddpdfs.pdf Last accessed 5 May 2018.

6 In the EUA report ‘University autonomy in Europe III. Country profiles’ (April 2017), p. 137–143, Norway is classified as having ‘high’ academic autonomy. See: http://www.eua.be/Libraries/publications-homepage-list/university-autonomy-in-europe-iii-country-profiles.pdf?sfvrsn=8 Last accessed 5 May 2018.

7 In the EUA report ‘University autonomy in Europe III. Country profiles’ (April 2017), p. 137–143, Norway is classified as having ‘high’ academic autonomy. See: http://www.eua.be/Libraries/publications-homepage-list/university-autonomy-in-europe-iii-country-profiles.pdf?sfvrsn=8 Lasted accessed 5 May 2018.