New policies for science and technology and the impacts on public research institutes: a case study in Brazil

Abstract

This article aims to discuss how technological production has been affected by new organizational patterns of funding and evaluation, international transformations in terms of the reorganization of research centers, and changes in innovation practices. Researchers and scientists have had their activities redefined through new organizational formats that today are well-established. The purpose here is to verify the impacts that these tendencies have had on the scientific and technological production of Public Research Institutes. We analyzed the case of the Technological Research Institute (Instituto de Pesquisas Tecnológicas - IPT) and found that from the 1990s onwards, research institutions in Brazil internalized organizational forms that enabled them to place themselves in the international agenda as reputational agents, and that the IPT internalized an international agenda, hiring new services and with new budgets. The institutions of scientific research tended to align their interests with hegemonic devices and to withdraw the participation of agents not able to make explicit the new formulas for recognition in the scientific field.

Keywords

• Science and technology policies
• public research institutes
• Brazil
• IPT
• researchers