Research Culture Through Archer’s Morphogenetic Lens: Integrating Research Leaders’ and Scholarly Interpretations

Abstract

There is a lack of consensus on the definition of research culture despite its increasing importance in higher education. Existing literature describes research culture using diverse terminology and varying emphases, resulting in fragmented understandings of the concept. This paper aims to develop a holistic understanding of the varying interpretations of research culture in the existing literature and compare them with those held by research leaders in Pakistani public universities.

For this purpose, a qualitative research design was adopted. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with six senior research leaders from two public universities in Lahore, Pakistan. The data were analysed and organised around three fundamental organising questions: Who develops research? Where does research take place? and What shapes research practices?

Three broad perspectives were identified in the literature: researcher development, the research environment, and organisational culture. These perspectives implicitly describe research culture but are not explicitly viewed as dimensions of research culture. Similarly, the participants’ views of research culture also reflected these perspectives, although they understood them with reference to their own contexts. However, neither the literature nor the participants’ views described these interpretations as interconnected aspects of the broader phenomenon of research culture. This study also proposes Archer's morphogenetic approach as a coherent theoretical framework for integrating these interpretations into a holistic view of research culture. The proposed approach offers a theoretical basis for understanding and empirically examining research culture as a multidimensional social phenomenon in higher education.