Abstract

While Japan has considered public research unprofitable and relied upon govern mental organizations in conducting such research, the U.K. and New Zealand have restructured some of their national research institutes as a part of administrative reform. The British governmental research activities have now gone to agencies as an executive sector of the administration independent from the government offices. Some activities have been further sold to, or put under control of the private sector. The New Zealand government acts now as a purchaser, rather than the producer, of public goods, and the national research institutes in New Zealand have been cast into an independent company, Crown Research Institute, whose shareholder is the government. This paper summarizes the management, organization, personnel administration and finance of those new research units. The experiences of the two countries invite us to consider (1) services that government-supported research institutes should provide, (2) relationships of such institutes with the beneficiaries, and (3) preferable organization principles of institutes for public research.