I am a research culture professional and believe in the purpose of the work. That is why this is an uncomfortable argument to make.
Some research culture activity is easy to criticise: values statements, awareness campaigns, strategy launch parties and celebration weeks – activity that create the impression of action while leaving the underlying, structural issues untouched.
The more difficult problem, however, may sit less in this symbolic or performative type of culture work, and more in some of the work that, by current standards and measures, we deem effective. The longer I have spent in this field, the more convinced I have become that much of the research culture activity that helps individuals navigate and survive harmful institutional systems may inadvertently help those systems survive, too. I call this the paradox of “compensatory culture work.”
Over the past few years, research culture has become a mainstream institutional and sector-wide agenda. The 2020 Wellcome report, dedicated public and charitable funding streams such as Research England’s Enhancing Research Culture fund and Wellcome’s Institutional Funding for Research Culture, and over two years spent in anticipation of the controversial REF People, Culture and Environment (now Strategy, People and Research Environment) assessment have incentivised higher education institutions to develop research culture strategies, action plans, listening exercises, communities of practice, maturity frameworks, dedicated professional roles, and a wide range of initiatives.
In many ways, this has been a good thing. It has put a spotlight on previously normalised problems such as precarity, hypercompetition, concentrated power, bullying, harassment and discrimination, and inequitable access to opportunity. But, after years of discussion, documentation and activity, many of these problems remain stubbornly familiar.
A common explanation is that structural change takes time. Others have argued that universities fail to translate the evidence into decision-making, or that culture is ultimately resistant to managerial processes. More systems-focused commentators have pointed out that, despite research culture’s increased visibility, the general incentive structures of the sector have not changed. That last point, I think, is fundamental. Institutions are still largely rewarded for income generation, outputs and prestige, even if they are now also expected to evidence “good” research culture alongside them.
Implementation science teaches us that interventions are more likely to stick and spread when they fit the context in which they are introduced. That is true of most change efforts, but in research culture work it creates a particular problem, because much of what this work is trying to change is that context itself. When research culture interventions fit comfortably within existing institutional systems, we need to ask what kind of fit that really is.
The risk of intervention fit
Over the past few years, I have seen how hard it is for substantive interventions to gain traction: proper reform of promotions processes, rather than adding a few boxes about citizenship and collegiality at the bottom of an application form; serious initiatives to address contract precarity; accountability criteria for senior leadership; robust processes for dealing with those who bring in large grants but bully and exploit others.
In other words, anything that demands real systems reform.
In the local and national research culture networks I am part of, I have not seen the conversation become more ambitious over time. If anything, spaces that initially carried momentum have often become more cautious, drifting towards quick wins and lower-stakes interventions such as training, mentoring, guidance, and toolkits.
These tend to be targeted at individuals and, rather than addressing structural issues, aim to compensate for their effects. As compensatory culture work requires little to no redistribution of power, money, or status, it slips seamlessly into existing systems. That is how it becomes so dominant.
The catch-22 of compensatory culture work
Compensatory culture work sits in a complex space. More often than not, it is materially useful. Where symbolic culture work sits beside the problem, compensatory culture work directly engages with it – and its purpose is mitigation.
It is the support scheme created because careers are precarious and progression routes are opaque. The researcher wellbeing initiative introduced because workloads are unsustainable. The peer support network built because formal systems are unable to protect people from discrimination or exclusion.
All of these can be beneficial at an individual level. They can help people navigate the system and become more successful in it. But, in two related ways, compensatory culture work can also sustain the very conditions it is meant to address.
First, compensatory culture work can reduce the tension for structural change. It shares this effect with symbolic culture work, but the mechanism is different and stronger. Symbolic initiatives reduce pressure by allowing institutions to claim responsiveness without changing very much. Compensatory initiatives do something more complicated. Rather than just signalling concern, things like mentoring, wellbeing support, networks and development schemes actively relieve some of the pressure created by poor systems.
They help people cope, stay, and remain productive under conditions that might otherwise become harder to tolerate. If symbolic research culture work is the distraction, compensatory research culture work is the maintenance. It patches the leaks and keeps the machinery running. Rather than in failure, its risk lies in partial success: doing just enough to help people survive the system without forcing the system itself to change.
The second, more sociological mechanism, is that compensatory culture work can reproduce the system culturally. In helping people endure academic life, it teaches them what the system requires and rewards, and how they can fit in. Initiatives like training, mentoring and support networks may reduce isolation and build confidence, but they can also teach people to become strategically visible, tolerate insecurity, manage powerful relationships carefully, and treat opaque or exploitative expectations as something to decode rather than contest.
These mechanisms reinforce each other. When people are helped to survive the system, it makes that system appear more benevolent and functional than it is. When they are socialised into adapting to it, its norms are carried forward.
And because the support is genuinely needed, simply removing it would be unethical.
Where does this leave us?
I am not arguing that mentoring, wellbeing initiatives, peer networks or professional development schemes should be thrown out the window.
But when we put research culture initiatives in place, we need to be much more explicit, and more interrogative, about what the intervention is actually doing, what it is not doing, and what conditions it leaves intact.
This also changes how we should think about evaluation. The 2024 UKRI report Research Culture Initiatives in the UK already pointed to the limits of research culture evaluation that relies on attendance numbers and satisfaction scores. But the concept of compensatory culture work suggests the problem is bigger than whether such proxies provide enough evidence of change. It is that they may, in fact, provide evidence to the contrary.
For an initiative to be valued positively, people first need to recognise a need for it. A mentoring scheme may be valued because progression remains opaque. A wellbeing initiative may be welcomed because workloads remain unsustainable. A career development programme may be well-attended because academic precarity remains normalised. In these cases, positive evaluation findings may simply indicate that the conditions which made the intervention necessary in the first place still prevail.
Funders, institutions, evaluators, and whoever inherits whatever replaces REF PCE/SPRE in 2036, need to become much more discerning about the difference between activity that compensates for poor conditions and activity that changes them. As such, we need to ask a more demanding question of every intervention: what condition is it compensating for, and what would have to change for it to become less necessary?
Compensatory initiatives should be treated for what they are: safeguards, not solutions. Rather than whether it helps people survive the system, the true test of research culture work, then, becomes whether it reduces how much surviving that system asks of them.
