Contribution to Book
Chapter 10: The Need to be a Leader of Research: Take the Risk and Move Beyond Your Opponents
Researchers at Risk: Precarity, Jeopardy and Uncertainty in Academia
(2021)
Abstract
This chapter is designed to explore how researchers, when conducting sensitive inquiries, could face many risks (e.g., professional, reputational, mental) while associated with an institution of higher education, a research think tank or any other agency. Researchers need to take on more of a leadership role when conducting studies that might be too risky for others, while other complacent researchers explore the same and irrelevant issues repeatedly. Researchers need to enroll in college leadership courses in addition to exploring many methodological philosophies. Instead of working in a silo of research, if researchers have had the opportunity to understand many philosophies and models of leadership, they would have the ability to know that leaders take risks, while non-leaders stay with the status quo of life.
In the case of status quo researchers, they remain within a safe course of action and never address some of the most important, yet sensitive, issues, which are problems facing organizations, communities and even possible medical breakthroughs. If researchers combine leadership strategies with research, they will find the importance of taking risks. In business, when leaders take risks, they find ways to be innovative and to find solutions to being creative and advancing in their vision, while being ahead of their competition. If researchers mirrored this philosophy, they would advance their competitive edge in possible grant proposals, uncover solutions to problems facing our societies, politics and world events, and not hesitate regarding any considerations for research (e.g., narcissistic behaviour, mobbing and bullying, gender issues).
Disciplines
Publication Date
Winter January 5, 2021
Editor
Deborah L. Mulligan and Patrick Alan Danaher
Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
ISBN
978-3-030-53856-9
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53857-6_10
Publisher Statement
This book explores the phenomenon of researchers at risk: that is, the experiences of scholars whose research topics require them to engage with diverse kind of dangers, uncertainties or vulnerabilities. This risk may derive from working with variously marginalised individuals or groups, or from being members of such groups themselves. At other times, the risk relates to particular economic or environmental conditions, or political forces influencing the specific research fields in which they operate. This book argues for the need to reconceptualise – and thereby to reimagine – the phenomenon of researchers’ risks, particularly when those risks are perceived to affect, and even to threaten the researchers. Drawing on a diverse and global range case studies including Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, Balūchistān, Cyprus, and Germany, the chapters call for the need to identify effective strategies for engaging proactively with these risks to address precarity, jeopardy and uncertainty.
Citation Information
Ross D.B., Peyton G.L., Nethi V., Sasso M.T. (2021) The Need to Be a Leader of Research in the United States: Take the Risk and Move Beyond Your Opponents. In: Mulligan D.L., Danaher P.A. (eds) Researchers at Risk. Palgrave Studies in Education Research Methods. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53857-6_10