This thesis traces the formation of the Government-funded Research Institutes(GRIs) management system from 1989 to 1999 and elucidates the impact of government control to the system as a whole by focusing on the relationship between government ministr...
This thesis traces the formation of the Government-funded Research Institutes(GRIs) management system from 1989 to 1999 and elucidates the impact of government control to the system as a whole by focusing on the relationship between government ministries and GRIs. The important factors in the formation of GRIs system were the imperatives of improving the R&D efficiency, the changes in political and economic environments, and the strategies of the concerned government branches to the emergence of the GRIs system. This thesis argues that the three factors largely determined the direction of GRIs policies in the 1990s. The three sections in this thesis analyze the most important aspects of the GRIs system respectively: the Institutional Assessment, Project Based System(PBS), Research Council, and the detailed contents and impact of the two component aforementioned.
Section 2 shows that GRIs' Institutional Assessment was created out of the dynamics of various government branches’ conflicts centering on the initiative of National R&D Programs. Their attempt of secure the GRIs that exclusively execute their own research projects resulted in their mutual criticisms of one another’s GRIs producing unsatisfactory results. Joint assessment of GRIs in 1991 under ministries' territory disputes disclosed such confrontation of interest, and Institutional Assessment was created as a way to finding a consensual standard among government branches. These branches used the Institutional Assessment as a means to control GRIs, by assessing implementation results of ordered goal. And the autonomy of GRIs became gradually weakened consequently.
Section 3 deals with the adopting process of PBS as the interaction between political and economic change including the launch of “Civilian Government” and Uruguay Round and the corresponding policies of each ministries. Under the emphasis of policy principle satisfying the new circumstances such as globalization, privatization and reformation of budget system were discussed to enhance public sector efficiency. PBS was not only R&D budget reform plan introduced by the Economic Planning Board to improve GRIs' productivity, but also policy alternative adopted by the Ministry of Science and Technology to appease privatization plan for GRIs and to phase in market competition system. Even PBS was introduced through the coincidence of aims among ministries, the side effect which is GRIs' increasing dependence on government and the national R&D program occurred due to intensification of competition for projects to acquire R&D expenses.
Section 4 states that, although the Research Council was adopted for the purpose of reducing the government intervention initially, it was deformed into a nominal intermediate organization with no real authority by the influence of government branches which tried to protect their own interest. The Research Council system was conceived as a part of public sector reformation followed by financial crisis in 1997, but it caused the opposition of government branches which did not want to renounce its jurisdiction over some GRIs. Though the Research Council was established through mediation and negotiation among ministries, it could not influence to GRIs because of ministries' denial of the authority-transfer. GRIs became independent from ministries formally, but ministries still maintained the initiative practically by recoursing on its retained authority for R&D programs. Eventually, the Research Council system ended up having a too much complicated governance structure.
The focus on the formation of GRIs management system helps considerably to understand the science and technology policy characteristic of Korean government, especially when we analyze it by highlighting three main aspects of it aforementioned. All the policies originally aimed to reform GRIs, but all of them failed to achieve the purpose. This thesis suggests that the continuous intervention of government branches into the design process of GRIs policy resulted in the distortion of the system as a whole, in which GRIs should be busy in satisfying the formality of various requirements and are not given much autonomy for their own research. In short, the existing policy decision structure on GRIs failed to have brought the result it originally intended.