Orienting Research and Development to the Needs of Industry: The Application of the ‘Customer-Contractor’ Principle in the Department of Industry

Michael Gibbons and P. J. Gummett

Chapter 9 in Industrial Innovation, 1979, pp 165-184 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract The first part of this paper describes one aspect of the attempt made in Britain during the years 1970–7 to orient government-sponsored civilian research and development more in the direction of national needs through the mechanism of the customer-contractor principle prescribed by Lord Rothschild.2 We shall be concerned mostly with the application of that principle to the Department of Industry (DOI) and its Industrial Research Establishments (IREs.). It is important to realise, however, that — although the Rothschild reforms refer mainly to administrative procedures in the DOI — the particular form that these procedures took has changed significantly both the locus of decision-making and the capacity of the department to direct research to specific ends.

Keywords: Individual Firm; National Physical Laboratory; Research Requirement; Industrial Innovation; Atomic Energy Authority (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1979
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-349-03822-0_9

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DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-03822-0_9

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