National policy councils for science, technology, and innovation: A scheme for structural definition and implementation

Abstract

National policy councils for science, technology, and innovation have become a common institutional arrangement in supporting governments to overcome the problems of coordination derived from the complexity of national innovation systems. These organizations are expected to involve stakeholders with strategic capacity in defining long-term goals for science, technology, and innovation, to coordinate efforts and to monitor execution. However, governments face several options to devise the proper council for their purposes, and the absence of a common framework may induce theoretical and analytical difficulties. This exploratory and descriptive study proposes a scheme for defining the structure of such a council and a comprehensive approach that is based on the novel Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) database; analyzing the results obtained for thirty-one countries. The results obtained from the index confirm heterogeneity, while the clustering suggests three types of councils. The proposed scheme provides a standard tool for the study and implementation of these councils.

Collegial Forms of Implementation of Directionality in National Innovation Strategies

“…The case selection process follows a polar types criteria (Eisenhardt, Graebner, 2007), also known as two-tailed (Yin, 2003) or diverse (Seawright, Gerring, 2008) criteria, by using the differences among the subjects to identify their features. This is based on the empirical results obtained from the iNPC index (Cevallos, Merino-Moreno, 2020), selecting one strong council with a high level of potential according to their structural capacities and one agile council with a low level of potential due to their capacities complying with the extreme versions of this type of organization for STI. The selected councils are the National Council of Innovation for Development (CNID) of the Republic of Chile as a representative of a potential 6 transformative council, and the Advisory Council for Science, Technology and Innovation (CACTI) of the Kingdom of Spain as a representative of a potential agile council.…”

“…Or, is there a continuum in which every country has to find and define their position? The nature of these discussions is also affected by the overall STI configuration of organizations and their relations, following the studies (Lepori, Reale, 2019;Breznitz et al, 2018;Cruz-Castro et al, 2020) on the operational level and (Cevallos, Merino-Moreno, 2020) on the strategical level. Bearing in mind the potential configurations of the political level as well, i.e., which ministry or ministries will be in charge of the STI policy domain(s), STI policy also faces the puzzle of organizations.…”

“…Further, a taxonomical study of Public Research Organizations according to organizational dimensions such as structural characteristics, resource niches, and claims of identity, has been performed (Cruz-Castro et al, 2020). On a strategic level, an empirical map and a classification based on the structural characteristics of NPCs for STI, built on some of the characteristics highlighted in previous classifications, have been proposed (Schwaag-Serger et al, 2015;OECD, 2009;OECD, 2018), while addressing the black-boxed and unproblematic approach commonly developed for NPCs (Cevallos, Merino-Moreno, 2020). On the other hand, qualitative approaches have been discussed for case studies based on the experience of the former Finnish Science and Technology Policy Council (STPC) (Pelkonen, 2006), the Swedish National Innovation Council (NIC) (Edquist, 2018), and partial looks at other councils of Finland and Sweden (Fagerberg, Hutschenreiter, 2020).…”

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“…The case selection process follows a polar types criteria (Eisenhardt, Graebner, 2007), also known as two-tailed or diverse (Seawright, Gerring, 2008) criteria, by using the differences among the subjects to identify their features. This is based on the empirical results obtained from the iNPC index (Cevallos, Merino-Moreno, 2020), selecting one strong council with a high level of potential according to their structural capacities and one agile council with a low level of potential due to their structural capacities complying with the extreme versions of this type of organizations for STI. The selected councils are the National Council of Innovation for Development (CNID) of the Republic of Chile as a representative of a potential 6 transformative council, and the Advisory Council for Science, Technology and Innovation (CACTI) of the Kingdom of Spain as a representative of a potential agile council.…”

“…Further, a taxonomical study of Public Research Organizations according to organizational dimensions such as structural characteristics, resource niches, and claims of identity, has been performed (Cruz-Castro et al, 2020). On a strategic level, an empirical map and a classification based on the structural characteristics of NPCs for STI, built on some of the characteristics highlighted in previous classifications, have been proposed (Schwaag-Serger et al, 2015;OECD, 2009;OECD, 2018), while addressing the black-boxed and unproblematic approach commonly developed for NPCs (Cevallos, Merino-Moreno, 2020). On the other hand, qualitative approaches have been discussed for case studies based on the experience of the former Finnish Science and Technology Policy Council (STPC) (Pelkonen, 2006), the Swedish National Innovation Council (NIC) (Edquist, 2018), and partial looks at the councils of Finland and Sweden councils (Fagerberg, Hutschenreiter, 2020).…”