Institutional work in the maintenance of regional innovation policy instruments: evidence from Wales

ABSTRACT

This paper contributes towards growing interest in the role of actors and agency in regional innovation policy processes. While entrepreneurial agency has begun to be explored, the paper broadens this focus to include actor roles in the maintenance of regional innovation policies over time. Drawing on the concept of institutional work, and evidence from Wales, it finds maintenance to be a process of strategic care, involving interplay between structural factors promoting durability, and normative and deterrence practices at the regional level. These practices, it suggests, can contribute towards stability and persistence, but with mixed effects over time.

KEYWORDS:

• regional innovation policy
• actors
• institutions
• institutional work
• strategic care

JEL:

• O38
• R50
• R58

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Regional Innovation Policies annual conference in Bergen, Norway, 12 October 2018. The author thanks the participants for their comments, as well as the work of three anonymous referees for their review of the paper. Any errors or omissions remain the author’s responsibility.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Dylan Henderson http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1466-1315

Notes

1. See https://gov.wales/statistics-and-research/regional-gross-value-added-sub-regional-gross-value-added/?lang=en/.

2. See https://gov.wales/statistics-and-research/research-development-expenditure/?lang=en/.

3. ESIF funds are managed by the EU countries (including Wales), in contrast to central EU funds delivered directly by the EC Directorate Generals Regio and Enterprise and Innovation.

4. Business Wales is the Welsh Government’s principal business support programme, and also part funded by the ERDF. The recent mid-term evaluation reported the creation of 8223 jobs (full-time-equivalent jobs – FTEs) in the period 2016–18 (ICF Consulting, 2018). In comparison, jobs created by Smart Cymru in the period 2009–15 amounted to 154 FTEs across Wales (CM International & The Innovation Partnership, 2016). The Smart Cymru evaluation does note, however, that its outputs are expected to take some time to emerge fully.

5. See https://businesswales.gov.wales/innovation/advances-wales/.

6. This included active engagement of Welsh Government officials in consultations on the prioritization of the ESIF (Guilford, 2013) (interview 5).

7. Innovate UK is the government agency with principal responsibility for the funding of business innovation in the UK.

8. The main exception here was Welsh Government officials’ successful leverage of funds from the Innovate UK Knowledge Transfer Partnership Scheme (CM International, 2011) (interview 13).

9. The maximum level of public aid (expressed as a percentage) allowable to project beneficiaries (European Commission, 2014, p. 28).

10. For example, in the Welsh Government’s privileged position of lead agency for innovation policy, its ability to deliver pan-Wales strategic projects, and its track record of delivering such programmes over time.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Cardiff Business School [Independent Researcher Fund].