Coping with environmental pressures: Public Research Organizations responses to funding crisis

Publicado en M. Decker y M. Ladikas, comps., Bridges between Science, Society and Policy. Technology Assessment: Methods and Impacts, 101-127, Berlin-Heidelberg-New York: Springer-Verlag, 2004.

This paper analyses, from an institutionalist perspective, the emergence, nature and ways in which Parliamentary “scientific and technological advice” activities are carried out in different European countries. We argue that the connection of Technology Assessment (TA) with the political process can only be understood if this type of information resource is regarded not only as an input in the decision-making process but also as a legitimising mechanism. Some local pre-conditions are important for the emergence of these practices, as well as the existence of some political entrepreneurs willing to advance the initiatives within their respective political systems. Two different models of arrangements of Parliamentary TA are identified, the instrumental and the discursive one. The adaptation, consolidation and differential impact of these information production practices are mediated by two factors: the capacity of PTA organisations to gain support both inside and outside the Legislature, and their capacity to access decision-makers in an environment of competition with other organisations that also produce TA. The two models have both types of these capacities in differing degrees. It is argued that differences in impact are to be analysed in the context of the rules of the political game and the types of incentives that TA organisations face.

En este artículo se describe y analiza la evolución que ha seguido la política regional de ciencia, tecnología e innovación de Andalucía desde la primera mitad de los 80, a partir de la consideración de diversas variables tales como los modelos e ideas, los intereses, las preferencias políticas y el contexto socioeconómico e institucional. Andalucía fue una de las primeras Comunidades Autónomas que emprendió una política regional de ciencia, tecnología e innovación. En esta comunidad se ha desarrollado un modelo de política caracterizado por la separación de las esferas de la política científi ca y de la política tecnológica con un predominio de la primera sobre la segunda. Se argumenta que el factor decisivo que explica tanto la adopción en Andalucía de un modelo de política regional de I+D de orientación académica, como su estabilidad a lo largo de los años, ha sido la fuerza que han tenido en esta región los intereses universitarios en el juego político andaluz.

This paper aims to analyse the dynamics of relationships between public and private   sector in the context of S&T policies and to present some experiences of Public/private partnerships (PP/Ps) in relation to innovation policy. It also attempts an understanding of the forces and factors that explain the increase of collaboration between public and private sectors, and its growing relevance in the discourse of S&T policies.

The argument I put forward is that the general emphasis on public-private collaboration in science, technology and innovation policies is not only the outcome of a process of changing rationales for policy intervention to cope with problems of efficiency and implementation of traditional policies (OECD, 2002b), but also the result of general factors such as: some concrete S&T policy legacies, the overall Spanish political context emphasis on consensus, the tradition of corporatist arrangements, and the general concern on Industry-Science Relationship (ISR) issues, such as technology transfer and R&D collaboration.

Interdisciplinarity is analyzed in three different research areas: Pharmacology & Pharmacy, Cardiovascular System and Materials Science, by means of data collected from a survey to Spanish scientists. The study focuses on three different and complementary dimensions. First, diversity in personal training and research specialization of scientists is analyzed both in the field and within the research teams. Secondly, research practices and behavior of the groups are considered, taking into account the use of cross-disciplinary knowledge or techniques and the collaboration with scientists from other disciplines. The third dimension refers to the cognitive inputs and outputs of the research activity and focuses on the diversity of subjects of the journals used for publication and for reference by the research teams. Interdisciplinarity emerges in research areas as a double edge process: either as a process of jumping into a new area with people of different disciplines, in coherence with the traditional disciplinary research teams, or as a process of specialization in field traditionally dominated by a single group of disciplinary backgrounds, in which researchers from different areas join the research teams. Thus specialization-fragmentation-hybridization come all-together.

Social impacts associated with new telecommunication innovations greatly affect both globalisation and territorial identities. Apparently contradictory trends bring with them elements of rapid social change and political uncertainty. This chapter reflects on the conjunction of both dimensions of the local and the global, and carries out a prescription of the progressive consolidation of a new cosmopolitan localism.

A theoretical review of the concept of multiple identities precedes a subsequent discussion on the effects of globalisation, the extension of market values, and the relative loss of power by the nation states. Subsequently, the focus is set on the growing role played by the global mesocommunities. These can be small nation-states within regional supranational blocks, stateless minority nations, sub-state regions and large conurbations, and seem to be better equipped to maximise developments related to global action and local identities.

References made to the European Union context seek to illustrate how the interaction of the processes of bottom-up transnationalisation and top-down devolution of powers have made possible a more effective access of civil society to multi-level decision-making. The new cosmopolitan localism translates into a growing adjustment between the particular and the general in the gradual development of Europeanisation.

The research system is highly dependent upon the resources provided by the political system. Rising costs of research projects and the emergence of financial problems in government have triggered a reduction in direct support to public research organisations (PRO). The aim of this paper is to analyse how a group of Spanish public research organisations affected by the reduction in direct transfers of State funds have reacted to this situation. By reviewing the PROs’ responses, an institutionalist argument is built up based on the degree and type of autonomy which the centres and researchers enjoy. Factors which explain the Diversity in responses of the centres in their funding strategies are: a) the political autonomy of the PROs with respect to their tutelary Ministries, and b) the autonomy of the researchers within the organisation, the nature of the individual incentive programmes and their level of dependence on collective resources.

Keywords:Public Research Organisations, R&D Funding, Commercialisation of research; Organisational Adaptation.