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This case study will illustrate how the Southern African Research and Innovation Management Association (SARIMA) set in motion a professionalisation journey through close collaboration with its members while leveraging strategic partnerships and funding opportunities. The case study will highlight the impetus that inspired the journey, and the outputs aimed at accelerating the professionalisation of research management and administration (RMA) beyond Southern Africa.

Finland aims to increase its research and development (R&D) expenditure to 4% of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2030. The parliamentary working group proposed to advance Finland’s research, development and innovation objectives which are now strongly committed by the Finnish government. This will allow universities to invest in the research and innovation not only more in the future but also in the long-term and sustainable way.

This would also provide opportunities and challenge the national research management and administration (RMA) community to develop the RMA profession, not only to increase the number of RMAs, but also to better meet the more diverse and complex tasks of the future RMA profession. Finn-ARMA creates a good platform for co-operation between RMAs in various positions and for the professionalisation of the current community and its future new members.

Based on a review of professional staff (PS), which includes research managers and administrators, in 54 academic publications, I propose a novel definition for this category of staff: ‘degree holding university employees who are primarily responsible for developing, maintaining and changing the social, digital and physical infrastructures that enable education, research and knowledge exchange’. The proposed definition facilitates the development of new research questions that target the level of the organisational fields of higher education and science, to complement research on the university and individual levels. This view supports the study of the contributions of PS to higher education and science. I anticipate that such a broader focus will help to counter and nuance accounts of ‘administrative bloat’ by focusing on how PS as a group shape and are shaped by the organisational fields of higher education and science, rather than dismissing them as superfluous or parasitic.