SOME CURRENT CHANGES IN THE CONDITIONS OF RESEARCH

Abstract

Introduction In the aftermath of the Second World War the growth of became a recognized policy objective. The Frascati Manual that was developed by OECD ministers of and higher education in order to keep tabs on and compare funding flows to in different countries recognized three categories for accounting: basic research, applied research and product development (RD the third OECD doctrine, associated with the 1980s was an orchestration policy with a partial focus on basic research to stimulate and emerging technologies; and in the 1990s the triggering phrase became, towards a for (1) The definitions were normative, and so were the statistical household procedures. The early morphology of the research landscape in many countries displayed concomitant organizational features hinging on a distinction between basic research councils on the one hand and sectoral funding agencies associated with various departments of state on the other. It was taken for granted that such clear-cut distinctions existed, and that norms and rules in the different realms recapitulated stages in a linear model of innovation. This reinforced the belief that discoveries and ideas rightfully emerged in a free space where they gradually matured, before becoming applied and eventually taken up as products and processes (i.e. innovations) in a marketplace. The very definition of innovation was thus contextually contingent. In other words it had a specific epistemology and historical background in which a particular mode of boundary maintenance between and politics was significant. By the late 1980s, and especially with the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the former Soviet Union, these boundaries and distinctions were no longer self-evident, and several attempts have been made to redefine what in retrospect has been called the social for science (Baldursson 1995, Jenkins 1997, Lubchenko 1998, Guston 1994, Gibbons 1999, Kates et al. 2001). The American adviser Vannevar Bush, author of an influential report, Science--The Endless Frontier (1945) is often credited with drafting the blueprint for the traditional for that undergirded OECD's first policy doctrine, but actually he never used the term social contract (Bragesjo 2001). It is a retrospective construction in a quest in the 1980s to shape a reconfiguration, one that in the eyes of many researchers has narrowed the confines of academic freedom and autonomy, while giving freer play to commodification of research and commercial stakeholder interests (market governance) and other players, including movements and activists or NGOs. A number of terms have been introduced to try to capture characteristic features of the new situation in order to contrast these with the old image(s) of science. The most frequently cited notions are: --mandated (Salter) --postacademic (Ziman) --Mode-2 (Gibbons et al.) --Triple Helix (Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff) --academic capitalism (Slaughter and Leslie) --post-normal (Funtowicz and Ravetz) --socially robust science, or in the agora (Nowotny et al. …