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The purpose of this study is to analyze reported good institutional responsible research and innovation (RRI) practices from an organizational and learning perspective to discuss the usefulness of RRI as a broad umbrella concept.

This study connects neo-institutional and translation accounts of diffusion to different modes of learning and discusses reported best practices from 12 reports, including in total 23 organizations in the research system worldwide, in light of this theoretical framework. This study categorizes the good practices identified in the reports and discusses how the nature of the practices influences the potential learning from them. The authors then apply the results from the discussion of this study to current policy developments on RRI.

The two most often mentioned good practices overall are organizational policies and the establishment of organizational units, but the type of good practices recommended differs across the various aspects of the RRI umbrella concept. This diversity within the RRI construct is a practical argument against the effectiveness of RRI as an umbrella concept.

This study is novel in the fact that the authors, building on Wæraas (2020), systematically relate types of good practice to neo-institutional theory and translation perspectives explicitly combined with learning approaches and apply this approach in the field of research organizations. The policy implications from the empirical and theoretical analyses are novel and timely in these early phases of the EU funding framework programme Horizon Europe and can also be relevant for the increasingly important umbrella concept of Open Science.