This paper addresses the use of scientific knowledge in policy work as an organization-level phenomenon and draws on the absorptive capacity concept. Through an empirical study of 14 Norwegian ministries, we seek to understand how organizational characteristics and processes that may play a role for whether and how policy organisations use scientific knowledge in policy making. We make use of the distinction between potential and realized absorptive capacity, and we investigate the following issues: First, we explore whether the knowledge stocks of a government organization influence the propensity to acquire research. Second, we are interested in understanding if knowledge circulation activities influence the propensity to use research-based knowledge in government organizations. Finally, we will look at whether having specific organizational routines in place influences both knowledge acquisition and use in government organizations. Methodologically, we make a qualitative comparative analysis (Ragin, 1987; Rihoux and Ragin, 2012) of 14 ministries, based on both qualitative and quantitative data, including survey data from 1325 ministerial civil servants.

Societal impact has turned into an important criterion for evaluating research funding proposals, yet a universal understanding about how to approach ex-ante impact evaluation is yet to materialise. Moreover, the researchers’ own perspectives on how to express the societal impact of research in the context of applying for funding is largely unexplored. In this paper, we seek to contribute to the understanding and practice of ex-ante impact evaluation by analysing in detail the impact section of research proposals (N=379) submitted to the Research Council of Norway (RCN) and their associated evaluation reports. The study is based on a mixed-methods analysis of proposals submitted to three different research fields (health, education and marine) and two different calls (basic versus applied) in each of them. In this way, we are able to isolate factors associated with disciplinary differences and competing signals within the science system between the concepts of ‘societal’ versus ‘scientific’ impact.