One Size Does Not Fit All: Canadian Government Laboratories as Diverse and Complex Institutions

Abstract

The federal government’s research laboratories are facing numerous pressures. They must support important regulatory, policy and risk-management objectives, which are critical to ensuring public confidence in the government’s ability to protect the health and safety of Canadians and the environment. Government laboratories are also cast as catalytic agents in national and local systems of innovation and are expected to contribute to industrial development. At the same time, government laboratories are under pressure to adopt new institutional arrangements and service delivery practices, and face challenges with respect to renewing their research capacities to deal with emerging science-based issues. These and other pressures create the context in which government laboratories operate. In this changing context, the roles and institutional designs of government laboratories are evolving and merit further examination. The authors introduce an analytical framework that focusses on government laboratories as complex institutions and reflects their diversity as a changing mix of hierarchies, networks and markets. They explore the links between this institutional approach and the literatures on New Public Management (NPM) and national systems of innovation. The authors then review a variety of government science policy studies from the past 40 years to determine how they have viewed the roles and institutional design of federal laboratories. Finally, the authors offer their conclusions as to the implications of the changing institutional context for Canadian science and technology policy.