The shift of university research towards public action: The debate about Think Tanks in Colombia

Abstract

This article examines the debates held by members of the Colombian academic community regarding the reorganization of university research into Think Tanks, with the purpose of categorizing the tensions that have emerged as a result of this process and to establish which aspects of the current organization should be transformed. In order to analyze these debates, a qualitative methodological approach was designed that takes into account the main concepts proposed by both the sociology of science and network studies. First, a brief description was carried out of the regulatory framework that restructured the National Science and Technology System since the 1990s. Then, the authors characterize the tensions that arose around the organizational changes, documenting them through semi-structured interviews and ethnographic observation exercises. Finally, they discuss the obstacles that should be removed by organizational restructuring in order for research products to have greater social impact. This paper concludes that the participation of academics in heterogeneous research teams is now perceived as a differential factor to broaden the impact of university knowledge in the public sphere.