Abstract
This Viewpoint essay examines university research administration and the use of software systems that automate university research grants and contract administration, including the automatic sending of emails for reporting and compliance purposes. These systems are described as “robotic bureaucracy.” The rise of regulations and their contribution to administrative burden on university research have led university administrators to increasingly rely on robotic bureaucracy to handle compliance. This article draws on the administrative burden, behavioral public administration, and electronic communications and management literatures, which are increasingly focused on the psychological and cognitive bases of behavior. These literatures suggest that the assumptions behind robotic bureaucracy ignore the extent to which these systems shift the burden of compliance from administrators to researchers.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 157-162 |
| Number of pages | 6 |
| Journal | Public administration review |
| Volume | 80 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jan 1 2020 |
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Sociology and Political Science
- Public Administration
- Marketing
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In: Public administration review, Vol. 80, No. 1, 01.01.2020, p. 157-162.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Robotic Bureaucracy
T2 - Administrative Burden and Red Tape in University Research
AU - Bozeman, Barry
AU - Youtie, Jan
N1 - Funding Information: The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the National Science Foundation's Science of Science and Innovation Policy program, Award #174825. The findings and observations contained in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. Funding Information: ; Task Force on Federal Regulation of Higher Education ). Time‐consuming activities pertain not only to factors directly related to the work, such as hiring, equipment purchases, and training personnel, but also to work not directly related to the actual research, including financial reporting, progress reports, IRB protocols, and certifications. Among the components of research administration, the highest cost category—representing more than 50 percent of total costs—is faculty time required for regulatory compliance activities. One publication from the National Survey of Academic Scientists project (Bozeman and Gaughan ), a study drawing data from more than 2,000 academic scientists, showed that science and engineering faculty spent twice as much time developing grant proposals and research administration as they spent on teaching, advising, or other student‐related activities. The evidence is compelling that research administrative burden is increasing sharply; several studies have sought to measure university administrative burden, including research administrative burden in particular (e.g., National Science Board study “Reducing Investigators' Administrative Workload for Federally Funded Research.” This study was based on more than 3,000 respondents, almost all university faculty, people who received grants from the National Science Foundation (44 percent) and the National Institutes of Health (30 percent), among federal agencies providing grants and research contracts. The study found the following categories of work leading to the highest level of administrative burden: By far the best known of the studies of university research administrative burden is the National Science Board's Research‐related financial management Grant proposal process Progress and outcome reporting Human subjects review (IRB) Time and effort reporting Animal care and use review and reporting Personnel management Other activities entailing significant administrative burden (but less than the foregoing) included the following: Subcontracting Financial conflict of interest Training Laboratory safety and security The study noted that university research administration processes do little to ameliorate administrative burden and more often increase it. Universities often “overcomply” with research regulations, presumably as a means of reducing the likelihood of a cataclysmic rollback of federal research funding. ) described the United Kingdom's Research Assessment Exercise and subsequent Research Excellence Framework for allocating core research funding among U.K. universities as a “Frankenstein monster” in terms of monetary and human capital outlays (costing an estimated £100 million in 2006 and involving 50,000 researchers). With regard to the Excellence in Research for Australia framework, Gordon and Bartley ( ) reported that 40 percent of senior Australian cancer researchers surveyed said they spent too much time putting together information to prove the impact of their research. The authors found that requests for impact information often came well after the research was performed, and the scholars viewed such requests as interfering with their ongoing scientific work. The authors argued that online systems such as ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID), the use of which would seemingly facilitate the gathering of impact information, actually exacerbate administrative burdens because the tasks of gathering, entering, and updating research portfolio information in these online systems falls on the individual researcher. Although our focus is on the U.S. system, which we know best, we recognize that U.S. investigators are not alone in dealing with burdens in reporting on research processes and outcomes. Martin ( To summarize, almost all parties agree that the status quo in university research administration is ever‐increasing rules, overcompliance, and increased research and teaching time diverted to research administration, with no policy remedies in sight. Funding Information: In search of greater administrative efficiency and reduced administrative burden, universities, like so many business enterprises, have moved to take advantage of alleged savings from information technology, including the substitution of information systems for workers. We use the term “robotic bureaucracy” to refer to the computer‐based automated systems generated by organizations, often lacking a human name as a sender, with the objective of streamlining work, reducing the administrative burden on employees or clients and customers, reducing the number of administrative employees required, and, sometimes, saving money by shifting burden away from organizations to clients and customers. Some types of robotic bureaucracy are quite familiar and have been used for several years. Examples include systems for providing information for medical records online, check‐in for commercial airline flights, and automated systems for submitting papers to journals. Many such robotic systems are by this point familiar and easily traversed by the client or customer. In a university research context, robotic bureaucracy is most often deployed in connection with efforts to obtain compliance with federal research regulations. Most such systems are developed locally, not by commercial vendors, and are undertaken with the objectives of saving on personnel costs, enhancing efficiency, and systematizing regulatory compliance. In our view, most robotic bureaucracy approaches have had the effect of shifting administrative effort from research administrators to researchers. We recently conducted a participant‐observer study based on nearly 1,000 email strings from our own federal research grants. Often robotic bureaucracy increases burden for researchers, but at the same time, it has little net effect on the resources, time demands, or effectiveness of research administrators—a true lose‐lose outcome. Here we seek to identify some of the reasons why robotic bureaucracy so often disappoints and suggest some ways in which automated systems could reduce administrative burden and red tape and actually have more positive effects for both researchers and research administrators. Quite possibly, these suggestions have relevance beyond the domain of university research administration. ), red tape (Bozeman ; Bozeman and Feeney ), behavioral public administration (for a review of this literature, see Battaglio et al. 2019), and electronic communications and management (Baroudi and Lucas ; Kyriakou and Loukis ). In one respect, these literatures have a common base—they are increasingly focused on the psychological and cognitive bases of behavior. Although we do not provide a literature review, we should note the bases of knowledge for our analysis and suggestions. Our analysis is informed by our reading of literatures on administrative burden (for a review of this literature, see Chittenden, Kauser, and Poutziouris Another knowledge base framing our analysis is quite different in nature. We draw from our own experiences as university researchers and research managers. We have received grants from a wide variety of federal and state agencies and, in Bozeman's case, have had active federally sponsored research every year for more than three decades. Both of us have directed university research centers. Both of us have served on research advisory panels for federal agencies such as the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and on study panels of the National Academies of Science. We have directly witnessed and sometimes participated in changes in science and technology policies, regulatory requirements, research administration, and compliance. Before developing prescriptions, we provide more background on the problem. Next we consider some recent evidence about university research administration. Funding Information: The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the National Science Foundation's Science of Science and Innovation Policy program, Award #174825. The findings and observations contained in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. Publisher Copyright: © 2019 by The American Society for Public Administration
PY - 2020/1/1
Y1 - 2020/1/1
N2 - This Viewpoint essay examines university research administration and the use of software systems that automate university research grants and contract administration, including the automatic sending of emails for reporting and compliance purposes. These systems are described as “robotic bureaucracy.” The rise of regulations and their contribution to administrative burden on university research have led university administrators to increasingly rely on robotic bureaucracy to handle compliance. This article draws on the administrative burden, behavioral public administration, and electronic communications and management literatures, which are increasingly focused on the psychological and cognitive bases of behavior. These literatures suggest that the assumptions behind robotic bureaucracy ignore the extent to which these systems shift the burden of compliance from administrators to researchers.
AB - This Viewpoint essay examines university research administration and the use of software systems that automate university research grants and contract administration, including the automatic sending of emails for reporting and compliance purposes. These systems are described as “robotic bureaucracy.” The rise of regulations and their contribution to administrative burden on university research have led university administrators to increasingly rely on robotic bureaucracy to handle compliance. This article draws on the administrative burden, behavioral public administration, and electronic communications and management literatures, which are increasingly focused on the psychological and cognitive bases of behavior. These literatures suggest that the assumptions behind robotic bureaucracy ignore the extent to which these systems shift the burden of compliance from administrators to researchers.
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UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85076562010&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1111/puar.13105
DO - 10.1111/puar.13105
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85076562010
SN - 0033-3352
VL - 80
SP - 157
EP - 162
JO - Public administration review
JF - Public administration review
IS - 1
ER -