Leonardo Piccinetti¹, Mecit Halil Oztop², Jeny Edward³, Gustavo Perez⁴, Trevor Uyi Omoruyi³, Mohamed Ramadan A. Rezk^5,

Research management has become an increasingly important institutional capability in higher education, driven by intensified competition for research funding, expanding interdisciplinary collaboration, growing regulatory requirements, and stronger expectations for societal impact. However, it remains theoretically fragmented and is frequently treated as a collection of administrative services rather than as an integrated governance function. This study develops the HE-RISE Model (Higher Education - Research, Innovation, Society, and Ecosystem), as a framework for organizing future-ready research-management capability. The model synthesizes six complementary bodies of scholarship, namely the helix tradition, modes of knowledge production, open innovation, responsible research and innovation, participatory approaches including living labs and citizen science, and mission-oriented innovation. These perspectives are reorganized into four interdependent functional dimensions, Research, Innovation, Society, and Ecosystem, supported by Digital Enablement as a cross-cutting institutional capability. The preliminary framework was evaluated through a two-round modified Delphi study that examined indicator relevance, clarity, measurability, and overall expert acceptability. Fifteen experts completed Round 1, and 13 participated in Round 2, yielding a retention rate of 86.7%. In Round 1, all 29 indicators met the predefined relevance threshold. The overall scale level content validity indices were 0.929 for relevance, 0.841 for clarity, and 0.770 for measurability. Following the combined analysis of quantitative ratings and qualitative comments, 11 indicators were materially revised and reassessed in Round 2 for relevance and clarity. Across these indicators, mean relevance increased from 0.861 to 0.958, while mean clarity increased from 0.739 to 0.881. All final framework-level statements met the predefined consensus criteria. Nevertheless, the panel identified continuing implementation challenges relating to dimensional overlap, context-sensitive interpretation, and the specification of observable evidence for institutional capability. The refined framework was subsequently applied illustratively to two contrasting food-technology research settings, Middle East Technical University, a research-intensive university, and SITES, a private research-and-innovation intermediary. They do not provide comparative performance assessments or evidence of causal effectiveness. Further research involving cognitive testing, pilot implementation, independent multi-institutional samples, and confirmatory measurement analysis is required to establish reliability, construct validity, contextual adaptability, and relationships with institutional research outcomes.

research management, higher education, institutional capability, research governance, responsible research and innovation, Delphi study, digital enablement, food technology