Research institutions

Research is not undertaken by individual scientists or by specialized research groups; strictly speaking, it is undertaken by institutions. The basic organizational ‘entities’ that typically devise and perform research projects are usually too small to stand alone as independent enterprises [§5.10]. It is true that there are now many commercial firms, ranging in size from self-employed individuals to sophisticated outfits employing dozens of scientists, engineers and management experts, offering research and consultancy services or even undertaking speculative near-market R&D in the hope of producing saleable technological innovations. But an enterprise trying to live on grants to do basic science cannot be financially viable unless the overheads and uncertainties can be spread over a large number of different research projects. Although research entities may behave very much like independent small firms in bidding for research projects, they are almost always embedded legally and organizationally in what we might define generally as research institutions – that is, substantial corporate bodies such as universities, hospitals, charitable foundations, research councils, government departments, quasinongovernmental agencies, and industrial firms.

The policy of privatizing some of the research establishments in the public sector [§4.2] does not seem to be an essential feature of ‘steady state’ conditions. It may well seem politically desirable to cut taxes and solve the resource allocation problem at a stroke by putting on to the private sector the responsibility for funding the research in question.