| Summary: | 本研究旨於探討政策研究社群(STI policy research communities)在政策實務中所扮演的角色、與政策實務間的關係及互動，以及該社群隨著不同政策情境其所累積的知識結構。本文以英國科技政策研究社群SPRU及MIoIR為例，首先以Top-down的方式從整體制度及機構面進行探討，第二部份則進一步描述及探討SPRU及MIoIR這兩個研究社群在英國政策實務中所扮演的角色及定位。第三部份旨於探討在英國的政策研究及決策支援制度情境下，政策研究社群與政策實務間的互動關係，以及影響兩者關係的關鍵因素。第四部份則進一步探討如何橋接政策與研究之間的缺口，以及研究社群如何透過不同的研究成果擴散模式，進而政策產生影響與效益。第五部份，本文綜合英國科技政策社群所處之制度及機構情境、政策研究社群之知識產出、政策與研究之間的缺口、以及兩者間的互動關係，從Bottom-Up的角度提出一全面性的理論架構，填補過去文獻在探討政策與研究兩者間關係時，僅探討部份、或分析特定議題之理論缺口。 === The importance of scientific research which positively motivates economic growth has been widely recognised by governments of most countries in the world. A government needs to formulate policies for sustaining national developments, but a sound policy usually has to be evident by academic findings provided by academic researcher. On the opposite, an academic researcher can conduct research needed by the government only if they can be funded by the government. The mutual reliance on each other for academic researchers and the government as well as the relationship between them have been investigated previously in literature. The complex relationship between the government and researcher is modelled as “principal-agent relationship” (Pratt & Zeckhauser, 1985).
The interdisciplinary STI (Science, Technology and Innovation) policy research, which seeks to solve socioeconomic problem at national level, creates knowledge much closer to what the government needs and can be used directly to inform policy formulation. The relationship between the government and STI policy research community is therefore much stronger and more sensitive than that between the government and other research communities.
In the process of delivering research to policymakers, the agenda and concern underlying different interacting scenarios between actors are varied from academia, funding agency, governmental organisation and policy makers. Therefore, changing the way of communication is becoming important for academic researchers to make the whole process more smoothly or effectively. However, in this interacting process research actors not only need to turn around the language, but also change the perspective they view from different scenarios especially when there is conflicting interest or view exited between academia and politics. The purpose of this study aims to investigate in what way can STI policy research community influence policy as well as interaction between STI policy research community and the government by bottom-up approach, i.e. from STI policy researcher to the government and three different perspectives proposed by Allison (1971), i.e. 1) Bounded Rational Perspective, 2) Organisational Behaviour Perspective, and 3) Governmental Politics Perspective.
This study selects the two prestigious research organisations in the UK- SPRU and MIoIR (formerly PREST) as the case study and a total of sixteen renown interviewees are interviewed, since the UK is the leading country in STI policy research and the most outstanding research organisations in the UK STI policy research community are SPRU and MIoIR which have contributed to STI policymaking since 1970s, interaction between the UK government and this research community are analysed. Further, the UK Technology Foresight programme undertaken jointly by SPRU and MIoIR is used as a representative event to demonstrate the responding strategy of STI policy research community to the UK government.
It is found in this study that a successful contribution from STI policy research community to the government critically relies on appropriate responding strategies which are dependent on whom (on the government side) exactly the researcher is interacting with. A successfully interaction between researcher and the government takes a sound strategy which eventually lead to contribution of research to policy practice. Finally, this study develops several propositions for suggesting how to sustain effective policy contribution from STI policy researcher and sound interaction between STI policy research community and the government.
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