Broadening the Concept of Value in Science and Technology Innovation Policy: Reconsidering Cooperative Research and Development Agreements as an Expression of Public Value Governance

Abstract

Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs) are one of several programs supporting federal investment in technological innovation. To date, CRADAs have been studied primarily through the lens of a market-oriented ideology focusing primarily on associated mechanisms and outcomes. That ideology, expressed most clearly in the New Public Management (NPM) movement, has become the predominant governance theory of the period. Other governance theories, including Public Value Governance (PVG), emerged in response and as alternatives to NPM’s perceived contextual and normative limitations. This article reexamines the structure and function of CRADAs through the lens of PVG, in combination with analysis of qualitative data on the perceptions and experiences of organizations that have been parties to CRADAs with the United States Air Force. Our examination suggests that CRADAs have the potential to respond more effectively to the emergent complexity of the current political-economy and to be more normatively inclusive in relation to growing socio-cultural diversity described by PVG, and potentially exceeding the narrower perspective of an economically focused NPM orientation.