The right stuff in science and technology for development the importance of knowing what it is that you are managing

Abstract

I have just finished reading a PhD thesis that set itself the task of evaluating how successful an Asian government's science and technology infrastructure had been over the last 20 to 30 years. What the thesis does is to evaluate 'success' against what planning and annual reports documents said the institutions did. Consequently, the sort of information available was weak as a basis for critical evaluation of what actually did happen, and therefore how the system could best be changed to become more effective. For example, presented was the number of new research programs that were initiated as planning directions changed; but hidden was the number of programs that actually did change direction rather than name, and which produced a tangible result. The number of publications was presented, but many of these were reports to industry (often never delivered); no assessment was made of significance in either practical or disciplinary terms. The number of patents "offered" to industry was presented, but not the number of patents that industry actually used, the value-added wealth they generated, or how many were still in operation 5 years later. In other words the evaluation of science and technology enterprise that the thesis embodied simply passed lightly over the surface of critical assessment, leaving the real questions that future S&T managers might ask almost completely unanswered. The assessed organisation glowed mildly in the light of its own praise, and the contribution to development needs of the nation's people that could have been achieved fell far short of what an effectively and knowledgeably managed enterprise could potentially have accomplished. The organisation itself had not moved any further in its own evaluation than had the student. It is not my intention here to criticise the thesis of a young PhD student however. Rather, my intention is to demonstrate that the traps the student fell into are exactly the same traps that ensnare the management of science and technology throughout the whole Asian region (and presumably beyond). At root is the problem of a conflict between what was needed, and what was used, ie: a conflict between a need for precisely targetted information, and clear conceptual frameworks to link different elements of information into an analysis, and the use of what was easy to obtain and a loosely espoused logic of connections. For the student, the result was conclusions that are simply not supported well enough for the examiner to believe in them. For the manager, the result of a similar use of information is to produce ignorant, inefficient, and wrongly directed managerial practice. S&T -I would suggest that one of the most critical barriers to the effective application of national S&T resources to development is what passes as 'the right stuff' in management information for some national S&T capability for guiding and powering their own development trajectories - I managers. Every national government of the Asian region recognises the importance of whether they seek to use S&T to grasp the frontier and power their way into the forefront of to identify and fill a productive niche to enhance catching up in the international economy (as new industrial production (as is the case with Japan and Korea); whether they seek to use S&T with Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines); or whether they seek to use S&T to redress the nutritional, health and wealth distribution inequities of their own national situation (as is the case with Nepal, Vietnam and Burma). Yet, in all cases the information base that allows S&T policy makers and managers to know precisely what to do is simply inadequate. So, management of S&T is often management of an enterprise that is but dimly glimpsed, not known. The result is wastage of the most precious resource that each of the nations (with each of their separate national objectives) possesses, the science-based ability to transform the world for national social and economic advantage.