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The new science and engineering management: cooperative research centers as government policies, industry strategies, and organizations

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Abstract

Cooperative research centers (CRCs) are key mechanisms for national and subnational governments and private industry for achieving social and economic outcomes with science and technology. Despite growing policy and scholarly interest in the management and productivity of CRCs, their complex and variegated nature has led to limited and inconsistent understanding of CRCs. In this introduction to this Special Issue of The Journal of Technology Transfer, we discuss the impetuses for and embodiment of CRCs as government policies, industry strategies, and organizations and thus address a number of unexplored aspects of CRCs that are important to decision making for both policy and management. Of note, we discuss the lack of definitional clarity regarding CRCs and introduce criteria for distinguishing CRCs from other organizations. We conclude by introducing the article contributions, which are international in scope and address CRCs from multiple theoretical perspectives and levels of analysis, and by discussing areas for future research.

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Notes

  1. See www.crc.gov.au/, accessed December 2009.

  2. See http://www.ikerbasque.net/research_centers/cics.html, accessed January 2010.

  3. See http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-HD-09-027.html.

  4. For example, a long-standing independent non-profit CRC working with government as well as business is the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. Founded in 1947, the center conducts research and development on a contract basis for government and industry clients in the US and abroad and emphasizes as a core mission the creation and transfer of technology in engineering and the physical sciences; see http://www.swri.org/swri.htm.

  5. See http://library.dialog.com/bluesheets/html/bl0115.html, accessed December 2009.

  6. The figures for CRCs are most likely lower than those reported in the Directory. A discussion with a technical representative from the parent company, Thomson Gale, revealed that for an organization to qualify as a research center, it must conduct research and not be an academic department.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the editors of The Journal of Technology Transfer—Al Link, Don Siegel, and Barry Bozeman—for encouraging this special issue. We also thank the contributing authors and anonymous reviewers. We would like to acknowledge support provided by the National Science Foundation Industry/University Cooperative Research Centers Program (EEC-0631414) and its Science and Technology Centers Program (CHE-9876674) in preparing this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. John Glenn School of Public Affairs, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA

    Craig Boardman

  2. Department of Psychology, Psychology in the Public Interest, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA

    Denis Gray

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Correspondence to Craig Boardman.

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Boardman, C., Gray, D. The new science and engineering management: cooperative research centers as government policies, industry strategies, and organizations. J Technol Transf 35, 445–459 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10961-010-9162-y

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