The National Research Council of Canada: Institutional change for an era of innovation policy

The article examines the institutional transformation of the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) in the last decade, set in the political-economic context of innovation policy. There are two main themes. The first is that the NRC has changed considerably in a way that reflects both the diverse and contested meanings of the,innovation policy paradigm that gradually emerged under the Mulroney Conservative era and then under the Chretien Liberal era. The second theme is that as these newer policy and strategic rubrics were imposed, partially accepted and adapted, the NRC inevitably had both to confront and change, and also defend and support, its own traditions as a complex government science agency that still values research for its own sake and as a public good. The NRC could not help but involve all of its organizational characteristics, namely, as an organization of scientists, as a politically controlled agency, as a national institution, and as a regionally dispersed institution of numerous and varied institutes.