History and Past Activities
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History and Past Activities |
Luis Sanz-Menéndez & Laura Cruz-Castro
SPRITTE (Spanish Policy Research in Innovation & Technology, Training & Education)
CSIC Unit for Comparative Policy and Politics
Madrid
Spain
e-mail: lsanz@iesam.csic.es, laura.cruz@iesam.csic.es
The institutional basis of commodification of knowledge: a comparative analysis of universities and public research centers.
The paper analyses the changing role of public research organizations and universities in the processes of commodification and de-commodification of knowledge. We argue that these two types of organizations have developed different patterns of adaptation to an environment in which transferability has evolved as the basic feature which knowledge must have to become a commodity. In order to make knowledge more transferable, these organizations have combined their traditional knowledge creation processes, that have been structured around either human capital formation or scientific papers’ production, with more innovative forms that involve cooperation, contracts, and links with firms and particular industries. A sample of public universities and research organization is selected in order to make two types of comparison. In an attempt to search for tentative explanations, we first analyze the commonalities and differences between our two types of actors in a static way, and secondly we give an account of how they have changed dynamically. Both universities and public research organizations exist in environments from which they get legitimacy and resources. But, whereas both types of organizations are affected by the same kind of environmental pressures (social demands for knowledge to be productive), their institutional arrangements differ in the degree of autonomy in relation to political power.
Sociology of Science and Technology NETwork - last update: April 2006