Universities in the Knowledge Economy: A Comparative Analysis of Nested Institutions

Abstract

Knowledge generation can catalyze local, regional, and national economic development. In the globalizing economy, governments are increasingly treating universities as strategic resources, and changing their policies towards them accordingly. In this article, universities are portrayed as organizations nested within broader institutional structures. A comparative analysis of nested institutions is presented. Changes in the ideas and actions of stakeholders concerning the role of universities are compared across five countries – the United States, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Canada, and Australia. The focus is placed on universities operating in an economically dynamic sub-region in each country. Attention is given to how different levels of government promote or inhibit innovative actions by universities and the organizations they partner with to commercialize research. Efforts to create regional knowledge economies effectively linked to the global marketplace are shown to have generated a range of tensions and dilemmas. Themes highlighted in this study are expected to emerge in discussions everywhere concerning the evolving role of universities in society.

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this article was presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association in Chicago in August 2007. Thanks are due to Donald Kettl and Karen Mossberger for their thoughtful comments on the conference paper and to anonymous reviewers for this journal who offered suggestions for improvements. Acknowledgement is also due to the Vice Chancellor's Development Fund at the University of Auckland for generous support of the broader research project.

Notes

1. Patent statistics are often difficult to interpret. For this reason, the OECD has established a measure of patenting, “triadic patent families”, defined as a set of patents taken at the European Patent Office, the Japanese Patent Office and the United States Patent and Trademark Office that share one or more patents. This measurement technique produces international comparability because only patents applied for in the same set of countries are included in the “family”. Further, patents in the family typically have relatively high value, because the patentees only take on the additional costs and delays of extending protection to other countries if they deem it worthwhile. In short, this indicator point to where the most commercially relevant inventions are being produced.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michael Mintrom

Michael Mintrom is an associate professor in the Department of Political Studies at the University of Auckland. His research focuses on the politics of policy change.