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Prof. Dr. Dorothea Jansen PD Dr. Hans-Willy Hohn
Transformation paths and performance of the German research system in the realm of non-higher education
Summary
The project investigates the impact of new political measures that are aiming at a reform of the organisational structure of the German research system in the realm of non-higher education. It is mainly funded by the Max-Planck-Society (MPG) and cooperates with the Centre for Science and Research Management e.V. Speyer (ZWM) http://www.zwm-speyer.de which has been sourced out recently by the Research Institute for Public Administration (FÖV). An important objective of the project is to give scientific support to the ZWM and its efforts to promote the professionalization of the management of science and research in Germany. Since about two decades science and research increasingly are subject to a functional shift towards economic and problem oriented issues that has been recently described as "Mode 2" of scientific development. As a consequence of this shift, also the boundaries between basic research, oriented basic research and applied research have become blurred. Henry Etzkowitz describes this process as a transition of the linear model of the scientific development to an interactive structure, that appears as a "triple helix" of science, policy and industry. Within the traditional linear model the process of innovation corresponded to a vertically and serially structured supply chain of basic research, oriented basic research and applied research. By contrast, within the new model and more especially within the new technologies innovations are based on recursive interaction processes and networks of heterogeneous actors that are provided with heterogeneous knowledge resources. This has created new requirements on the organisational structure of the German innovation system. Compared to other national innovation regimes the organisational structure of the German system is strongly oriented towards the traditional linear model of technology transfer. Since World War II and as a result of its federal structure, a polycentric and carefully delineated division of labour has developed. This division of labour has been designed for emulating the traditional model on the institutional level and contains organisations that are specialized in particular domains such as basic research, oriented basic research and applied research. However, this organisational structure only proved effective in the field of nuclear energy, but brought about problems of cooperation in other fields and particularly has come into conflict with the new requirement of inter-organisational networking. Despite its rigidity, the organisational structure of the German innovation system seems to show strong resistance to fundamental change. As the federal structure of German research policy has led to institutional arrangements which mutually restricted the political options of the Bund and the Länder, fundamental reforms appear to be unlikely. These arrangements highly contribute to a path-dependent development of the German innovation system. Nevertheless, incremental adaptations are possible especially in such fields where the political actors at the different levels can act independently from each other. Accordingly, the federal government recently has established the Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft Deutscher Forschungszentren (HGF) and initiated a structural reform of the German big science centres. Up to now these centres have been designed to carrying out oriented basic research and organising the complete process of knowledge transfer between the interfaces of basic research and industrial development within a vertically integrated structure. However, at present the federal government tries to change over the organisational structure of the centres from vertically integrated in-house-production to inter-organisational research programmes and projects. This reform intends to enable horizontal self-coordination of the research organisations and to allow the centres to develop autonomous strategies of cooperation between them and the industry. Part of this networking strategy is the merger between the Gesellschaft für Mathematik und Datenverarbeitung (GMD) and the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft (FhG). This merger aims at disintegrating the GMD and changing over its governance structure from hierarchical coordination to a market oriented regime according to the model of the FhG. However, from a scientific perspective the success of both reform strategies is doubtful. It is highly uncertain whether the organisations will manage to create the critical internal conditions for self-government and inter-organisational cooperation. Moreover, there is a high risk that the merger of GMD and FhG will fail. More than sixty percent of the industrial mergers don't reach their objectives. Accordingly, the project presented here investigates at first the impact of the merger of GMD and FhG and will then examine the development of the HGF under a corresponding perspective. It has a twofold objective. It strives to contribute to the evaluation of the present reform of the German research system and to the development of the theoretical and practical knowledge required for the successful reform management of the research organizations.
Contact: Transformation paths and performance of the
German research systems in the realm of non-higher education Prof. Dr. Dorothea Jansen PD Dr. Hans-Willy Hohn
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