Knowing, Doing and Being: Transferable Competencies for the Research Management Profession

While the Southern African Research and Innovation Management Association (SARIMA) Framework (2016) includes nine key 'technical' competency areas for respective RM organizational levels (administrative, management and leadership), it is the RM transferable skills that have been brought to the forefront in the current complex COVID-19 environment. For RMA, we contend that praxis, therefore, is activity-based development that through both routine actions and reflection shapes a 'change-making' enactment of the RMA profession better to perform its role in a dynamic world. The "domain theory" is thus praxis (Kemmis, 2010, p. 9), where we revisit the extant praxis architecture of Kemmis to "provide an alternative frame of reference to adjust or expand [praxis architecture's] conceptual scope" (Jakkola, 2020, p. 23). The PCF followed a project cycle that included: a needs analysis, consultation with RMA professionals, action research methodologies, quality assurance, reporting, peer review and accountability to governance structures.

A Social Innovation Model as Bridge-Builder Between Academia and Research Management

Institutional research management (RM) is increasingly seen as a strategic force, not only to raise the research output per academic, but also the quality thereof. RM, therefore, has to attend to researcher development (RD). How RD is achieved, as part of RM, is still viewed as an embryonic field with attendant calls for additional research. Often, criticisms of RM's researcher support efforts come from the academy itself. These drawbacks, perhaps, originate from the nature of research, in that advanced scholars gain strategic research identities through deep positioning within disciplinary specificity, embedded in knowledge-based and methodological originality. This then creates a disjuncture between academia, as researchers, and RM, as support services. Academic staff's perception of the value of RM may be filtered through how well RM speaks to epistemological, academic fields, while inculcating the same in RD. RM's chances of gaining support and traction for their work from the researchers they support, may well be gained through "speaking within the remit of disciplinary languages". Yet, how might this be smartly achieved in the intensely active and respective roles of the two parties? We present a novel RD model, which has been shown to boost credible conversations between researchers and research managers. The research novelty is expressed through a model of social innovation, which brought methodology into the heart of RM's support and received traction from researchers, who perceived RM as "speaking their language", while triggering conceptual thresholds. The findings extend an under-studied area of social innovation within an empirical setting in a mega-university and theorise how conceptual thresholds spur on social innovation.