Science and Technology Governance and Ethics

This paper uses both descriptive and comparative approaches to discuss science, technology and innovation policies in Sudan. Differing from the studies in Sudanese literature, a novel element of our analysis is that we examine innovation, science and technology policies after integrating recent secondary and primary data. We examine the main factors hindering and those contributing towards the promotion of research and development (R&D), innovation, science and technology (S&T) in Sudan. We find that insufficient financial and human resources, weak cooperation between universities and the productive sector, lack of management and organization ability, lack of R&D culture, lack of favourable conditions and necessary facilities hampered the potential role of R&D to contribute towards the development of local technologies, promotion of innovation and science, technology and innovation (STI) policies and economic development in Sudan.

Engaging with Science Policy as a Grad Student

Both in Europe and in the emerging economies of China and India, the core of science, technology and innovation policy is broadly similar: stimulating science and technology as important factors in developing innovative solutions to societal needs. In Europe we have witnessed a significant increase in ethical debates on science, technology and innovation, in the sense of both greater intensity and a wider plurality of voices. Central in these debates is the fear for negative consequences of science, technology and innovation. The European debate on genetic modification in agriculture is a well-documented example of the ‘ethicization’ of the public discourse on science, technology and innovation. Nowadays, developments in science, technology and innovation are global phenomena in which scientists and technology experts from different countries cooperate in international consortia. Innovative solutions are often transferred globally and adapted locally. Against this background, we compare the institutionalisation of ethics debates in Europe with China and India: to what extent is there a global ethics in science and technology, and how are ethical debates institutionalized in science, technology and innovation policies? We found that each region has a unique structure of ethics debates involving the institutionalization of three related tasks: ethical governance, ethical deliberation and ethical reflection.

This paper selects the A-share non-financial listed companies in China from 2007 to 2018 as the research object to study the impact of science and technology policy on enterprise innovation and its influence mechanism, and further explore the effectiveness boundary of science and technology policy. The results show that there is a significant positive correlation between science and technology policy and executive compensation; there is a significant positive correlation between technology policy and enterprise innovation; there is a significant positive correlation between science and technology policy and enterprise innovation; executive compensation plays a partial intermediary effect between technology policy and enterprise innovation. Further research on the effectiveness boundary of science and technology policy shows that: first, management power can strengthen the positive correlation between science and technology policy and executive compensation; second, regional factors have a greater impact on the relationship between science and technology policy and enterprise innovation. The ethnic regions and western regions with poor economic development level weaken the positive incentive effect of science and technology policies on enterprise innovation.

PurposeScience and technology policy plays an important role in promoting the development of economic and social development in China. At present, the research on science and technology policy is mainly focused on the basic theories and some quantitative research. The analyses for contents of massive science and technology policies are relatively less. This paper makes use of semantic technologies to extract and analyze the relatively important information from massive science and technology policies. The purpose of this paper is to facilitate users to quickly and effectively obtain valuable information from the massive science and technology policies. The key methods and study results are presented in the paper. The study results can provide references for further study and application in China.Design/methodology/approachThe paper presented the analysis model and method for science and technology policy in China. The terms and sentences are the important information in the science and technology policy. The study adopted the technology of natural language processing to analyze the linguistics characteristics of terms and combined with statistical analyses to extract the terms from Chinese science and technology policy. Then, the authors designed an algorithm, calculated and analyzed the important sentences in Chinese science and technology policies. The experiments were run on the Java test platform.FindingsThis paper put forward the analysis model and method for science and technology policy in China. The study obtained the following conclusions: term extraction of science and technology policy: the paper analyzed characteristic of terms in Chinese science and technology policy and designed a method of extracting a term that was suitable for the science and technology policy. The calculation of important sentences for science and technology policy: the paper designed an algorithm and calculated the importance of the sentences to obtain valuable information from the massive science and technology policies.Research limitations/implicationsIn our methods, there are some defects to be improved or solved in the future. For example, the precision of algorithm needs to be improved. The significance of this paper is to propose and use the analysis model to process Chinese science and technology policy; we can provide an auxiliary tool to help policy beneficiaries. Enterprises and individuals can be more effective to extraction and mining information from massive science and technology policy and find the target policy.Practical implicationsTo verify the effectiveness of the method, the paper selected the real policies about the new energy vehicles as experimental data; at the same time, the paper added uncorrelated policies. It used the proposed analysis model of science and technology policy to calculate and find out the relatively important sentences. The results of study showed that the proposed method can obtain better performance. It verified the validity of this method. The model and method have been applied to actual retrieval system.Social implicationsThe proposed model and method in the paper have been applied to actual retrieval system for users.Originality/valueThe paper proposed the new analysis model and method to analyze science and technology policies in China. The presented model and method are a new attempt. According to the experimental results, this exploration and study are valuable. In addition, the idea and method will give a good start for improving information services of massive science and technology policies in China.

Science, Technology, and Foreign Policy

Biomedical engineering impacts health care and contributes to fundamental knowledge in medicine and biology. Policy, such as through regulation and research funding, has the potential to dramatically affect biomedical engineering research and commercialization. New developments, in turn, may affect society in new ways. The intersection of biomedical engineering and society and related policy issues must be discussed between scientists and engineers, policy-makers and the public. As a student, there are many ways to become engaged in the issues surrounding science and technology policy. At the University of Washington in Seattle, the Forum on Science Ethics and Policy (FOSEP, www.fosep.org) was started by graduate students and post-doctoral fellows interested in improving the dialogue between scientists, policymakers and the public and has received support from upper-level administration. This is just one example of how students can start thinking about science policy and ethics early in their careers.

Fragmentation of science policy in Europe: the cost of non-Europe

<p>A large number of developed and emerging economies have introduced S&T reforms and some of them such as Japan, South Korea and later China have used them for gaining competitive advantage in science, technology and innovation through well crafted S&T policies and appropriate strategies. So far, India has pronounced four major S&T policies beginning with the Science Policy Resolution (SPR) in 1958, Technology Policy in 1983; S&T Policy in 2003 and Science Technology and Innovation Policy in 2013. In a period of six decades India has created a huge S&T infrastructure and made impressive achievements in space, defence and atomic energy, yet the feat is not as impressive in the industrial sector. In innovation competitiveness, R&D and human resource, the indices related to global manufacturing, competition, innovation and knowledge, India has not performed as well in comparison to other BRICS countries. In this paper an attempt has been made to look at, how comprehensive India’s STI policies with regard to policy components; a roadmap; strategies for execution and boldness in terms of identifying and recognising the failures and recommend major structural changes. What is intended is to understand the relationship between the domain of S&T policy and intended outcomes; the mismatch between the policy expectations and outcomes. An attempt is being made to identify possibility for correction by taking lessons from other economies, such as China.</p><p> </p><p><strong>Keywords</strong>: S&T policies, Innovation policies, Innovation ecosystem</p>

988 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE A Strategic Analysis ofScience and Technology Policy. By Harvey A. Averch. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985. Pp. xiv+ 216; bibliography, index. $20.00; £17.80. Science, Technology, andPolicy Decisions. By Anne L. Hiskes and Richard P. Hiskes. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1986. Pp.ix+ 198; notes, bib­ liography, index. $35.00 (cloth); $15.95 (paper). Tradeoffs: Imperatives of Choice in a High-Tech World. By Edward Wenk, Jr. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986. Pp. xii + 238; bibliography, index. $19.95. Interest in science and technology (S&T) policy has been growing rapidly in recent years, as technology-intensive problems—from ozone depletion to AIDS—multiply, and as the United States looks to “high tech” as a means of achieving national security and economic com­ petitiveness. These three books are among a rather substantial num­ ber of recent titles in the area. Although their subject is nominally the same, they approach it in very different ways, reflecting the dif­ fering interests, experience bases, and intellectual and ideological pre­ dispositions of their authors. All three may find use as texts in courses on S&T policy, but only the Hiskes and Hiskes book is explicitly po­ sitioned for this market, and only the Wenk book seems likely to succeed in it. Harvey Averch, an economist and former assistant director of the National Science Foundation (NSF) for scientific, technological, and international affairs, reviews the history of postwar S&T policy, draw­ ing out the threads of policy argument into an elaborate series of propositions and subpropositions. Averch’s interests center on sup­ port of R&D and closely allied issues: resource allocation, science and engineering education, innovation policy, S&T information, and tech­ nology in international trade and development assistance. He ex­ amines these issues through insightful, generally well-informed discussions of key events and trends during the postwar period. His propositions are numbered, italicized, and couched in carefully cho­ sen words. Some are illustrated by examples drawn from the science policy literature; others are documented with citations. In general, though, the format is a bit artificial and not particularly user-friendly. Averch sees S&T policy in terms of a continuing conflict between scientists protecting their turf and policymakers who must balance the scientists’ demands against those of other interest groups. Despite (or perhaps because of) his experience at NSF, he seems intent on challenging the conventional wisdom of S&T policy and debunking the pet arguments of the scientific community. Averch believes there is irony in the fact that policymaking in the S&T arena—where the subject itself is systematic, rational inquiry—is at best unsystematic and at worst irrational. He wants to improve policy-making for science and technology by applying the tools of systematic policy analysis. TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 989 Anne L. Hiskes and Richard P. Hiskes—a husband-and-wife team at the University of Connecticut, where she is a philosopher and he is a political scientist—are also concerned with improving policy-making for science and technology. Their aim is similar to Averch’s, to “un­ derstand the reasons for the failure of U.S. policymakers to provide a coherent policy for these two crucial areas” (p. 1). The territory they stake out is broader, however, and they approach their subject through a series of case studies. Opening chapters present a philosophy of science and technology and a history of S&T policy-making. The six chapters that follow discuss policy-making in energy, nuclear power plant siting, radioactive wastes, cable TV, recombinant DNA research, and new biomedical technology. A prescriptive chapter on improving policy-making for science and technology rounds out the volume. Like Averch, Hiskes and Hiskes have an ax to grind. In their case it is public participation in S&T policy-making. The authors believe that the policy system for S&T has failed because it does not incor­ porate the diversity of interests affected by its policies. Their remedy for this is to provide opportunities for greater citizen input through­ out the process. Edward Wenk is also enthusiastic about the role of public partici­ pation in S&T policy. Wenk’s book is concerned with the social man­ agement of technology—perhaps not surprisingly for a man whose title as an emeritus professor at the University of...

Technology’s Theorists: Conceptions of Innovation in Relation to Science and Technology Policy ANDREW JAMISON Definitions and Distinctions For something that is widely considered to be of crucial, even strategic, importance, it is remarkable that there is so little agreement as to what is meant by technological innovation. And it is certainly not my intention in this article to give an answer that can satisfy everyone. My aim, rather, is to provide a kind of historical handle on the contemporary discussions of innovation and innovation policy, to attempt to place contemporary ideas in a longer time perspective. Technology’s theorists, as we shall see, have come to their subject from different social positions and from different intellectual tradi­ tions, and there has been a fundamental tension between narrow and broad conceptions of technological innovation. Many theorists have been under the influence of what might be called a commercial bias according to which innovation has come to mean the creation of new marketable commodities. They subscribe to a narrow definition derived from a terminological distinction between invention and innovation, the first being the making of something new, the second being the successful launching of that new something in the market­ place. As opposed to the narrow, commercial definition, there has emerged in recent years the broader notion of an innovation process as a wide-ranging and multifaceted social activity. Included in its pur­ view is the entire continuum, or chain, of scientific research and technological development from the most basic laboratory investiga­ tions to the marketing of new products, not forgetting all the Dr. Jamison is associate professor and director of the graduate program in science and technology policy at the Research Policy Institute, University of I.und. Currently he is involved in research on the relations between social movements and science and on the cultural dimension of science and technology policy. He thanks Aant Elzinga, Erik Baark, and Anders Granberg for comments on earlier versions of this article; one such version was published in Atul Wad, eel., Science, Technology ancl Development (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1988).©1989 bv the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/89/3003-0002J01.00 505 506 Andrew Jamison organizational or social innovations in between. One of the ambitions of this article will be to recount the tension between these broad and narrow conceptions. Because of limitations of space (and competence), I will not attempt to analyze the various theories in any detail; my aim will be to locate them in their historical contexts. More specifically, I will attempt to place some of the most influential theories of technological innovation in relation to science and technology policy. I want to indicate how new policy directions and emphases condition the academic discourse (s) on technological innovation and how that discourse, in turn, informs the doctrines of science and technology policy. In an article of this length, such interactions can merely be suggested rather than firmly established. Since policy-making and academic theories of innovation are so seldom linked to one another, however, I think it is of some importance to begin to draw connections between them, even in an admittedly preliminary way. It has become customary in discussions of postwar science and technology policy to refer to phases, or stages, in which the central focus and organizational emphasis of policy have shifted direction.' It is my contention that, in each phase, there has also been a character­ istic tone in the academic conceptualization of innovation. The precise relation has, as we shall see, varied in intensity and in kind, but generally there has been a strong interdependence. As I review the phases and the corresponding theorizing over scientific and techno­ logical innovation, I will attempt to indicate how both the policy and academic discourses can be seen as responses to changes in scientific/ technological practice—that is, to the way in which scientific research and technological development are actually carried out. Theory and policy, I will suggest, have “chased” practice. Before surveying this recent history, however, I will examine the field’s prehistory, for our contemporary conceptions of technological innovation have not grown out of nothing; indeed, they can be seen as...

Due to many differences in presumptions and theoretical foundations within neoclassical and evolutionary economics, policy-makers are always confronted with the dilemma of selecting one of these two central models for technology and innovation policy. In light of widely institutionalised ineffectiveness in the field of market and systematic coordination – in Iran as well many other countries – the present investigation presumes that reliance on any of the above doctrines alone is ineffective. An intermediate concept of policy rationales to achieve a comparative structure of policy implications is proposed. Policy rationales (in innovation and technological policy) for neoclassical and evolutionary economics were derived based on a thematic analysis. A spectrum of policy implications of both doctrines was designed and completed in the form of a questionnaire for, together with theoretical foundations and policy rationales by specialists of the field of innovative and technological policy in Iran. Given the institutional conditions and structural frameworks which actually exist, and in spite of wide dissimilarities within the theoretical foundations of neoclassical and evolutionary economics, Clustering of respondents and subsequent test trials show that policy implications of the economics doctrines in the field of innovative and technological policy in Iran are complementary and convergent.

Sanz‐Menéndez L. and Cruz‐Castro L. (2005) Explaining the science and technology policies of regional governments, Regional Studies 39 , There is a simultaneous trend for regionalization and decentralization in Europe, a trend that has also affected the science and technology policy domain, with an open debate on the functioning of the multilevel governance system. Regional authorities have become directly involved in the design and implementation of regional science and technology (S&T) policies. However, the interventions of sub‐national governments are much more diverse than the prevailing view about the convergence of regional policies towards innovation policies might imply. This paper describes science, technology and innovation policies adopted by five Spanish regional governments between the mid‐1980s and the beginning of the 21st century from a comparative perspective. The paper first describes the policy approaches (academic versus industrial) adopted by the regional authorities. Second, it analyses the explanatory factors in order to reach certain conclusions about the circumstances under which regional governments can implement policies of one or the other approach. Despite the influence of some structural factors, especially as regards initial political preferences, the analysis highlights the relevance of the mobilized interests when they are concentrated in the region, showing that changes in policy orientation are particularly difficult when those interests play a role in the administration of such policies. Preferences towards a policy reorientation are more likely to succeed with the aid of appropriate administrative arrangements, especially along with significant budget increases.

From the Editor's Desk: Systems Science 2010-2020, and Post-COVID-19.

The paper substantiates the understanding of public science and technology policy as an impact of public administration on the sphere of science and technology in order to implement national and state interests and values. The paper shows the correlation of the concepts of public science and technology policy and public administration in science and technology. Five methods of public science and technology policy analysis are proposed. A significant distortion of the goals and objectives of public science and technology policy in modern Russia in the process of their implementation is shown. Revealed are the negative consequences of using performance indicators in public administration in science and technology as production of performance indicators suppresses production of knowledge, technology development and personnel development. The paper shows the replacement of real activity aimed at solving the problem of overcoming the technological gap in Russia by increasing the document flow due to the growth of instructions and reporting on the production of performance indicators. It is proposed to return qualified personnel to the system of public administration in science and technology, as well as to return to science and technology governance by setting meaningful tasks instead of meaningless indicators.