Culture of impact in agricultural research-for-development organizations: why and in what forms? - a cross-cases analysis

Research institutes experience increasing demands to analyze the multidimensional societal impacts of their research activities. This leads to more and more reflections around the integration of institutional strategies devoted to research evaluation and impact monitoring. Some research institutes have paved the way to establish a “culture of impact” within their organisation, which implies a desire for a general recognition that research needs to be thought through the eyes of the types of impact it aims to generate. 

An analysis has been conducted in 2021-2023 to better elucidate what motivates agricultural research institutes to develop a culture of impact, and the consequences of this culture on research, management, and partnership practices. For this, three institutional trajectories have been examined, belonging to the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (Cirad), the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa), and the Colombian Agricultural Research Corporation (AGROSAVIA).  

Through a cross-analysis of these cases along the motivations to integrate impact evaluation in strategic agendas, the materialisation of a culture of impact in practice, and what it entails in terms of cognitive and practical changes within their respective staff populations, the study enables to highlight common and diverging drivers and patterns in the way a culture of impact is built and maintained over time. Contextual and institutional circumstances that seem to favour or hinder the emergence of a culture of impact are identified.  

To do this, an inter-institutes group was built, composed of researchers and support staff highly involved in the building of a culture of impact in their respective organisations. A mutual learning process was then undertaken, which translated into regular interactions within these two years, for building and implementing the methodology, and analyzing and interpretating the results. Especially, the group convened in a 3-days workshop in Bogota (Colombia) in April 2023. The process was particularly useful to initiate a long-term learning process on the subject of culture of impact in agricultural research organisations, thus creating a foundation to share experiences, aspirations, and be able to re-interrogate and adjust culture of impact’s path in accordance with context and priorities. 

While scientific valorization is on-going (working paper in finalization – presented at the EU-SPRI  conference, Brighton, June 2023), it provides precious results for understanding what drives agricultural research organisations to develop a culture of impact, and the consequences of this culture on research practices, which is key to support transformative changes and improve how impacts are generated.