Abstract
One of the major challenges in the development of South Korea’s innovation system is the search for the institutional structure that most suitably supports the country’s ambitious plans to become one of the leading innovation-driven economies. In particular, this involves the search for a state structure that provides the most effective stimulus for the development of the indigenous innovative capacity within the national innovation system (NIS). In order to align policies and public services to the requirements of an effective system, the structure from which these policies and services emanate has to be adapted accordingly.
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- 1.
As Freeman (1995) points out, the main idea dates back to Friedrich List, who proposed policies to accelerate the catch-up of Germany’s economy in the nineteenth century.
- 2.
See Milgrom and Roberts (1992) for the main features of the economics of organization.
- 3.
The paradoxes of NPM include the problem that well-specified output targets, which are introduced to provide more leeway for innovation in task fulfilment, can unintentionally promote isomorphism, particularly if these targets are coupled with benchmarking and “best practice” comparisons. Instead of causing agencies to use their discretion to innovate (doing something differently), indicator competition leads to mimetic institutions. Furthermore, agencification was originally thought to “depoliticize” public management. But since political executives continue to be blamed when difficulties arise at the agency level, the hiring and firing of agency managers has become a frequently used method to retain control. As a consequence, the politicization of public management may even have increased. On these and other paradoxes see Hood and Peters (2004).
- 4.
There are different concepts which are, however, identical in content. Initially, the concept “joined-up government” was used more often (Christensen and Lægreid 2007b).
- 5.
Organizational sociology comprises diverse theories such as contingency theory, resource dependence theory, network theory, organizational ecology, and the sociological institutionalist approaches. The economist Oliver Williamson’s transaction-cost economics is usually also considered to have contributed to this field of study. For an overview of the broad spectrum of organizational sociology see Scott (2004).
- 6.
For multi-task agency models, which discuss the trade-offs for the agent as a result of allocating effort to several tasks, see Holmström and Milgrom (1991).
- 7.
According to the latest government figures, South Korea spent 3.37% of its GDP on R&D in 2009, making it the fourth largest R&D investor among OECD member countries (Lee 2010).
- 8.
The councils established initially were the National Research Council for Economics, Humanities and Social Sciences; the Korea Research Council of Fundamental Science and Technology; the Korea Research Council for Industrial Science and Technology; and the Korea Research Council for Public Science and Technology. Their number was cut from four to three in the following years and to two in 2008.
- 9.
ITEP (Korea Institute of Industrial Technology Evaluation and Planning), KOTEF (Korea Industrial Technology Foundation), KMAC (Korea Materials & Components Industry Agency), KTTC (Korea Technology Transfer Center), IITA (Institution for Information Technology Advancement).
- 10.
These committees are working on key industrial, large-scale, state-led, cutting-edge and infrastructure technologies.
- 11.
Interestingly, the report contains advice which is solely based on the reform experiences of the participating countries. Most of the experiences, however, show the difficulties of and the diversity of strategies for implementing such a structure. It is quite difficult to see how concrete policy advice can be derived from these experiences. More importantly, some elements appear to contradict each other; this is due to the fact that the authors of the report try to introduce WOG elements without abandoning NPM measures. As we indicated in Sect. 2, it is quite difficult to combine both approaches. In the present case, it is unclear, for example, how a “high degree of self-organisation” on the part of the agencies should be connected with the specification of “concrete measures to be taken by each ministry or agency” (OECD 2005).
- 12.
This argument is based on the authors’ interviews in Korea.
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Schüller, M., Conlé, M., Shim, D. (2012). Korean Innovation Governance Under Lee Myung-Bak – A Critical Analysis of Governmental Actors’ New Division of Labour. In: Mahlich, J., Pascha, W. (eds) Korean Science and Technology in an International Perspective. Physica, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7908-2753-8_6
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