Understanding the role of policy approaches for improving academics’ motivations in doing research: Empirical evidence from Indonesia’s autonomous universities

Between 1999 and 2019, Indonesia's higher education sector underwent a series of multiple regulatory changes and governance transformations, including in academic research aspects. Policy implementation is an important step toward understanding the process of translating policy mandates and objectives into action, including finding the underlying forces behind every action. This article reports on a preliminary investigation in how higher education reform has impacted academics' motivations to do research. It provides an improved framework for interpreting how academics' encounter with multiple and frequently changing regulatory approaches have reformulated their perceptions and engagement with research. Using Hood's (1986) typology of governing resources, this research analysed interviews with 24 academics from Indonesia's autonomous universities and identified that while authority and treasury are imperative driving forces, academics also acknowledge the role of beliefs and traditions underpinning their decisions to do research. This finding reiterates the drawbacks of quasi-market approaches commonly found in public sector reform and highlights the importance of embracing and promoting more alternative policy approaches to prompt 'intrinsic motivations' to engage with research. In the context of policy implementation, the article suggests that the framework can advance our understanding of agency and compliance in implementation.