Keywords: research misconduct, research integrity, factors of misconduct, Kazakhstan
Synopsis: Research misconduct in Kazakhstani academia is often treated as an individual ethical failure, but this study examines it as a structural and moral phenomenon shaped by post-Soviet institutional transformation, academic capitalism, and globally imposed research governance. Drawing on neoinstitutional theory, academic capitalism, epistemic dependency, and moral economy, the study analyzes interviews with faculty and institutional documents to explore how research integrity norms are understood and enacted in practice. The findings show that misconduct emerges within a system characterized by symbolic compliance, market-driven performance pressures, and externally defined ethical standards, highlighting the need to address institutional conditions rather than focusing solely on individual responsibility.
Abstract:
Research misconduct is typically framed in the literature as a problem of individual integrity, insufficient ethical training, or weak enforcement mechanisms. Such approaches, however, risk obscuring the institutional and cultural conditions under which ethical norms are produced, interpreted, and enacted. This paper addresses this limitation by examining research misconduct in Kazakhstani academia as a structural and moral phenomenon shaped by post-Soviet institutional transformation, academic marketization, and externally driven research governance. The study is guided by the research question: How is research misconduct produced and normalized within the institutional, economic, and historical conditions of post-Soviet Kazakhstani academia?
This study draws primarily on neoinstitutional theory (Meyer & Rowan, 1977; DiMaggio & Powell, 1983) and the concept of moral economy (Fassin, 2009) to examine how research misconduct is produced and normalized within institutional contexts. Neoinstitutional theory provides a lens to understand how universities adopt formal structures (such as research integrity policies, ethics committees, and regulatory frameworks) to achieve legitimacy within the global higher education field. However, these structures may become decoupled from everyday practices, resulting in a gap between formal compliance and actual research conduct. Complementing this perspective, the concept of moral economy enables analysis of how ethical boundaries are interpreted, negotiated, and justified by academic actors within specific institutional and historical conditions.
These core frameworks are further informed by insights from the literature on audit culture and performance-driven evaluation systems (Strathern, 2000), which highlight how research practices are increasingly shaped by metrics, accountability mechanisms, and institutional pressures for productivity. Within such environments, research outputs become closely tied to career advancement, funding opportunities, and institutional ranking, encouraging more instrumental orientations toward research conduct. In addition, the concept of epistemic dependency (Alatas, 2003; Connell, 2007) situates these dynamics within broader global hierarchies of knowledge production, where definitions of research quality and integrity are often externally defined and unevenly internalized across local contexts.
This study employs an interpretive descriptive qualitative design (Thorne, 2016) to examine how research misconduct is understood and normalized within institutional contexts. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with faculty members and academic administrators (n = 52; 27 faculty and 25 administrators) across multiple universities in Kazakhstan, complemented by analysis of institutional documents, including research integrity policies and accreditation materials. Data from interviews and documents, as well as perspectives from both participant groups, were systematically integrated during analysis to enable triangulation and comparison across institutional roles and data sources. Data were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006). While initial coding was inductive, theme development and interpretation were theoretically informed, enabling analysis of how institutional, economic, and epistemic conditions shape research practices and ethical boundaries.
The analysis identified three interrelated patterns that together illustrate how research misconduct is embedded within the institutional moral economy of academia. Across interviews, participants consistently described research ethics as a procedural and bureaucratic requirement, primarily associated with accreditation processes and institutional compliance. Ethics committees, integrity policies, and misconduct regulations were widely perceived as formal obligations that institutions are expected to demonstrate, rather than as mechanisms shaping everyday research practices. This reflects a form of institutional decoupling (Meyer & Rowan, 1977), where formal structures serve symbolic purposes while remaining weakly connected to actual practices. From a moral economy perspective (Fassin, 2009), this proceduralization redefines ethical responsibility, positioning compliance with formal requirements as sufficient, even in the absence of deeper moral commitment.
At the same time, participants emphasized the centrality of publication outputs, performance indicators, and evaluation metrics in shaping research behavior. Research productivity was closely tied to career advancement, salary incentives, and institutional ranking, creating strong pressures to prioritize outputs over processes. As one participant noted, “what matters is how many papers you publish, not necessarily how you produce them.” These accounts illustrate how audit-oriented and performance-driven academic environments (Strathern, 2000) reshape the moral landscape of research practice by embedding ethical decision-making within systems of evaluation. Within this context, research conduct becomes increasingly instrumental, and actions that might otherwise be considered problematic can be interpreted as pragmatic responses to structural pressures rather than clear moral violations.
A third pattern relates to how participants perceived the origins and relevance of research integrity norms. Many described ethical standards as externally imposed, emerging from international accreditation bodies, global publication requirements, and Western academic systems. These norms were often viewed as disconnected from local academic traditions and professional socialization, limiting their resonance within the institutional context. As one participant observed, “these rules are imported; they are not something that developed within our own academic culture.” This reflects conditions of epistemic dependency (Alatas, 2003; Connell, 2007), where definitions of acceptable research conduct are shaped by external epistemic centers, weakening their local moral authority and limiting their internalization.
In summary, these patterns demonstrate that research misconduct is not simply the result of individual ethical failure, but is produced within institutional environments characterized by symbolic governance, performance pressures, and unevenly internalized global norms. Within this institutional moral economy, ethical practices are shaped by the interaction of formal rules, incentive structures, and historically situated understandings of science. As a result, research integrity is often interpreted as regulatory compliance rather than a shared professional value, reinforcing conditions under which misconduct can be normalized.
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