Examining the micro-level challenges experienced by publicly funded university principal investigators

Although we know it is researchers at the micro-level of universities that are the critical actors in acquiring external grant funding, it remains unclear to what extent universities provide a funding environment that suitably supports their pursuit and management of this funding. We address this subject through interviews with 41 publicly funded principal investigators (PIs) across four universities in New Zealand. We develop a grounded model that details an important distinction and void between funding success at the individual researcher level and having an effective funding environment at the institutional level. We also uncover a number of micro-institutional level challenges based on the experiences of PIs and show how they are related to three reinforcing components that together, we further argue, comprise the university research funding environment: (1) pre-grant funding support, (2) project implementation support, and (3) post-grant recognition and motivation. Our findings offer a platform to develop dedicated policies and support structures within university strategies that are more explicitly focused on providing an effective institutional level funding environment. We make the case that these policies and supports must be tailored to meet the distinct needs of researchers at different stages of the funding process and with different levels of funding experience.