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Technology in Society 23 (2001) 337348 www.elsevier.

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Scientic concerns in an economic environment: science in OEECOECD


A. King
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5 Chartwell House, 12 Ladbroke Terrace, London W11 3PG, UK

Abstract This paper describes the origins of the Organization for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC) in the post-war reconstruction effort and charts its evolution as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). From its initial concern with the potential contributions of science toward reconstruction, the organization took on the larger task of developing policies for managing national research resources. An early example of OECDs new charge was investigation of the technological gap in research expenditures between the United States and other industrialized countries in the 1960s. The role of OECD in exploring science policy for national technological development is discussed. 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction In the late 1940s when Europe was beginning its long task of reconstruction from the ruins of World War II, there was widespread optimism that science, which had played such an important role in determining the outcome of hostilities, would exert an equally constructive inuence in peacetime society and economy. Yet, in discussions at the Paris-based Organization for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC), the word science was never heard, and its absence was not remarked. The entry of science and technology into OEEC thinking came rather late in its history, indirectly and, to some extent, by stealth.

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2. Origins of the OEEC The story begins in London. In 1947, an Advisory Council on Scientic Policy had just been inaugurated by the British government, and one of the rst questions put to it by the ministers was substantially, How best can science help in the postwar reconstruction? Eventually the Council decided that in that time of acute capital shortage, priority should be given immediately to improving the productivity of industry and agriculture through application of the scientic method. Nevertheless, in the long term, innovations in technology arising from discoveries in the scientic laboratory were likely to be a major impulse for the growth of the economy. As the lead time from research to production is normally rather long, this suggested that a policy to provide increased resources and conditions propitious for scientic creativity should be promulgated at once. The implementation of this policy soon led to a substantial effort to increase productivity, involving all the partners in industry and accompanied by important research on human resources and attempts to apply the concepts of operational research that had proved so successful during the war. Members of the Council were aware of the work of OEEC and, while appreciative of its useful deployment of Marshall Plan funds for the re-equipment of European industry, were somewhat worried by the absence of scientic or technological considerations in the process. For the renewed industries to equip themselves through the purchase of machinery of pre-war design might lead to equipment obsolescence. The British ministers, in consultation with the London representative of the Marshall Plan, found American support for the creation of a Science Committee at OEEC. This was initially agreed by the Council of the OEEC, an initial meeting was convened, and I was sent off to Paris as British representative. However, it appeared that the French had second thoughts and disliked the prospect of tolerating the presence of a group of scientists in this dignied ofcial body. But as so often happens in such cases, a compromise was reached. There would be no Science Committee, but only a Working Party on Scientic and Technical Information. The national delegates arrived in Paris, horried to nd that their Science Committee had been stillborn. Dispiritedly, they assembled in a rst-class restaurant to bewail their loss, but as the evening progressed, good food and wine mellowed the mood. Late in the evening, over a glass of cognac, the Swedish member said, While we all regret that our task appears to have been narrowed to scientic information, does that really matter? After all, it is research that generates information, and industry that applies it. I propose that whoever is elected as chairman of our working party tomorrow should rule that our mandate runs from the laboratory to the production site. The next morning the Secretary-General of OEEC opened the Working Party meeting, expressing his conviction of the importance of scientic information for the future of economy and society. He then called for nominations for the chairman. I was elected and he withdrew. I suddenly remembered, with some misgiving, our brave deance of the previous evening. Did I dare to propose the broad mandate that the scientists had desired the day before, but which was not in line with the

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Councils decision? I decided to risk it in the hope that we could make a real contribution, and proposed that our mandate should be science in its broadest interpretation, running from basic research to economic production. This was agreed by the Working Party signicantly, without discussion and we proceeded to construct a program. Living up to its name, the party worked hard and with enthusiasm. During its year of existence it concentrated mainly on building up a net of European centers for productivity increase and encouraging a scientic approach to the subject, including renement of the methodology of productivity. It sent a few multinational teams to the United States to experience the American approach to industrial efciency and organized a couple of seminars in Paris on inter-rm comparisons of productivity. In addition, a number of European cooperative applied research groups on particular technological developments were initiated. To demonstrate a degree of conformity, a network of technical information services was created between the member countries. I had been rather anxious as to what would be the reaction of the establishments to all this activity. I need not have worried: there was none. The countries viewed the subject as being of such marginal interest that they simply did not notice. As the end of the year approached, we had to come clean and report our work to the OEEC Council. By this time, experience had convinced us of the value that productivity centers could have for each of our countries if they could be adequately nanced and run on a tripartite basis by management, trade unions, and governments. Having worked on this concept with the Americans, and having received a tentative offer of Marshall Plan counterpart funds, we were ready to propose a detailed scheme. The report was duly presented to the OEEC Council. The Council was surprised and shocked at the extent of this uncontrolled activity within a single year. Many of the ambassadors made the criticism that operational projects such as those we had initiated were inappropriate for their inter-governmental body. It was signicant that none of them appeared to have noticed that our activities fell outside the mandate they had initially agreed for us! The storm subsided and they began to discuss our recommendations. I doubt if many of the ambassadors were seriously interested in the substance of the recommendations or understood their signicance, but they were unanimously accepted. Why? Because they held out the promise of extra Marshall Plan funds to each of the member countries. To continue the work, our Working Party was transformed into a full committee of the OEEC for Productivity and Applied Research. This continued to be an innovative group that created a European Productivity Agency (EPA) a year later, to stimulate, coordinate, and undertake joint projects with the national centers. We shall not follow the evolution of this agency here but describe only the research segment of its work. Considerable experience had already accumulated on how applied research or development could be initiated on an international scale on specic themes. There was certainly much duplication between the research efforts of the member countries on subjects within the government domain. In the public utility sector, applied research is so close to objectives common to all countries that dupli-

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cation has little intellectual value. Duplication of effort is indeed simply duplication and could be seen as wasteful, especially in this phase of reconstruction. OEEC took up the case of research on roads materials and methods, durability of surfaces, accident prevention, and economic problems. Representatives from the various road research laboratories were brought together for exchange of experience, planning of programs, and day-to-day signaling of results. This proved to be a useful exercise that continued after the initial stimulus had been given. In a similar way, groups on air pollution and on water pollution were formed as early as 1954, long before such environmental issues had attracted public attention. Our cooperative research teams on specic problems met with only mixed success. Had we been able to provide even modest nancial inducements, the results would have been much more positive. As it was, we were only able to provide meeting places and interpretation, identify expert consultants to help us to formulate likely themes for cooperation, visit the main laboratories in each case, arrange meetings, and do follow-up work between these. By this time, discussion with so many scientists and industrialists had strengthened our conviction that research had to be regarded formally as an investment by both industry and government. Technological innovation based on scientic research was indeed to become a dominating factor in economic growth. But were governments sufciently aware of this and of the issues involved? Were their policies (if any) realistic? Were resources voted for research, based on an understanding of the relationship between science and the economy and not just on a vague feeling that science was a good thing? Very little was known of the situations and attitudes on these questions in the individual countries, so we decided to nd out. Dana Wilgress, the retiring Canadian ambassador to OEEC, was invited to visit the scientically advanced countries of our region, discuss with ministers and scientists in each, and report on their situation to the Council. 3. The transformation from OEEC to OECD In 1957 a new situation appeared suddenly. The world woke up one morning to learn that the Soviet Union had successfully placed in orbit the worlds rst articial satellite-Sputnik. The Cold War was already in progress, so it was not surprising that this dramatic technological triumph made people and governments suddenly aware of the power of Soviet science and technology, including the number and quality of its scientists and engineers. This event rang an alarm bell in the Western countries, and a determined effort was started to increase the numbers and quality of scientic manpower to keep up with the Russians. OEEC responded by setting up an Ofce of Scientic and Technical Personnel under the same management as the EPA. This body later evolved to become an outstanding inuential committee on education. Its development need not be described here. However, in its initial phase it cooperated with school science experts to reform the curricula for teaching mathematics, chemistry, physics, and biology. This exercise was largely successful and persuaded most of our countries to continue the work on a country-by-country basis.

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By 1960, the period of reconstruction in Europe was nearing completion. The directors of EPA decided that their mission had been fullled but their pragmatic work had identied many problems that necessitated a deeper and more systematic approach. They therefore proposed that the agency be abolished. The OEEC Council agreed and a few months later came to a similar conclusion with regard to their own work. The OEEC had been outstandingly successful in revitalizing Europe after a disastrous war, but a different constitution and approach was required in conditions of normalcy. After a period of reection, OEEC was transformed into the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), with the United States and Canada becoming full members together with the European countries that had been members of the previous organization. Australia, New Zealand, and Japan also joined. Within the new structure, a place was made for a Directorate of Scientic Affairs that was concerned with educational as well as scientic activities. Ambassador Wilgress had presented his ndings to the OEEC Council just a couple of months before the dissolution of that body. He had visited most of the member countries and came away with a strong impression that in most countries research activity had grown in a haphazard manner in response to specic needs and pressures and was seldom considered in terms of its economic potential or contributions to human understanding. It was hardly ever seen in policy terms. He concluded, the full implications of the scientic revolution have not yet sunk into the consciousness of large sections of the populations of the Western European countries. In particular, they are reluctant to adapt their educational systems to the need of science and technology. In his formal report to OEECOECD, Wilgress stressed the need for each country to develop a national science policy that recognized the importance of science as a basis for technological innovation and economic growth as well as its important intellectual functions. It took account of the need to balance resources between efforts in fundamental and applied research. In addition he produced a series of condential notes on his personal assessment of the situation in each of the countries he visited. For the OEEC he recommended the creation of a high-level science policy group. The Wilgress report was accepted by the Council, but not without misgivings on the part of some members who questioned the appropriateness of discussing science in an economic organization. Science, they said, is inherently an element of educational policy; it has little to do with the economy and hence is more of a matter for UNESCO.

4. Policies for science; science for policy With the transformation to OECD, implementation of the Wilgress report fell safely into the hands of its Secretary-General, Thorkil Kristiensen, who immediately established an ad hoc group of independent scientists under Pierre Piganiol of France. This group examined the problems and opportunities of harnessing science and technology to the wide sweep of national objectives. It quickly acknowledged that there was a need to develop policies for the management of national research resources.

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Opportunities offered by expanded knowledge in all cases exceeded the nances and skills available to exploit them, hence the need for mechanisms to allocate the resources. This inevitably suggests the need to determine priorities a concept horrifying to the scientists by implying bureaucratization with loss of research creativity. Indeed, how to approach the complex issues of resource allocation was to become the dominant task policies for science of the new science bodies that were set up in the decade that followed. However, quite different considerations arise with regard to the application of research and the contributions that a scientic approach can make to the attainment of goals, for example, in agriculture, industry, or foreign affairs (science for policy). Two recommendations in the groups report, Science and the Policies of Governments, were presented and accepted: (1) each government should set up a central mechanism to study science policy in this broad sense and to advise ministers accordingly; and (2) OECD should convene a meeting of ministers responsible for science policy or organization to widen the debate [1]. Policies in general require a quantitative basis to measure the scale of the problem they govern and to monitor their implementation. This is clearly so with regard to the allocation of resources. We had already made a preliminary attempt to collect information on research expenditures on research and development and numbers of scientists and research engineers. But data were painfully inadequate, being fractional and based on various and unclear denitions. Moreover, industrial rms responsible for a large part of the research and development effort were frequently hostile to providing the information on imagined competitive or image grounds. We therefore put a major effort into the collection of reliable data that would permit comparisons of the research efforts of the OECD countries and the USSR. It took almost a decade to ensure that all the disparities were reconciled and reliable statistics were made available. Eventually we called a meeting at Frascati, near Rome, where the national experts negotiating on the basis of an OECD draft managed to reconcile the various difculties and produced in 1970 the Frascati Manual [2] that has become the standard practitioners guide in these matters. We presented our experimental analysis in 1965 as an initial attempt to provide international comparisons. Our aim was to give governments some indication of the size of their science efforts in relation to those of their neighbors. It sparked speculation about a possible technological gap between the United States and the Western European industrialized countries.

5. Exploring the USEuropean technological gap Two years later, OECD issued a further report on research expenditures. By that time, data had become more abundant, statistics more comparable, and their analysis more sophisticated. It presented the national effort in terms of research and development. This gave a much more realistic basis for comparison. The report warned, however, of the danger of member countries using the gures too simplistically in their policy development. For example, a large proportion of American R&D was

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devoted to defense, space, and atomic developments, which were largely absent in most of the other countries. Allowing for this, the gap in civil research expenditures appeared much less alarming than the gross R&D might have suggested. The rst meeting of science ministers as envisaged by the Piganiol Report took place in October 1963. Considerable difculties were encountered in its organization. First, few of the member countries had designated ministers specically for science. Then there were doubts expressed by some countries of the wisdom of convening such a gathering in the dominant economic environment of OECD. The Dutch Minister of Education came to Paris for the express purpose of persuading Thorkil Kristiensen to abandon the project. In a conversation over lunch that day, he denounced the association with the economy as a prostitution of science, and demanded that it be regarded as an element of educational or cultural policy. When the meeting nally took place, there were only four or ve ministers of or for science; ministers ` of education or of industry represented the rest. Theo Lefevre, the Belgian Prime Minister who also had the science portfolio, was elected chairman. The meeting, based mainly on Science and the Policies of Governments, was essentially an educational occasion, a tour dhorizon of science policy and its issues, an exchange of national experience, and an attempt to deepen understanding of some of the problems ministers would have to face in the future. The most vigorous debate was on the form that national resource distribution should take. Some argued in favor of a central science budget, cut into slices appropriate for each of the sectoral programs, on the advice of a National Science Council under a strong minister. Most preferred separately negotiated sectoral science budgets. Many other issues were discussed in detail. There was strong advocacy from the politicians for the maintenance of fundamental research and of academic freedom reassuring at a time when the encroachment of governmental intervention and the imposition of priorities were much feared. A second ministerial meeting was held in February 1966. In many ways it could be seen as a continuation of the rst, but there was an important difference: nearly every country was represented by a minister of science, many having been named since the rst meeting. In this second meeting, there was a much greater understanding of the relationship between science and the economy. Even fundamental research was recognized as a long-term investment both for the economy and for injecting vitality into the educational system. The need was expressed for a thorough analysis of the process of technological development. The series of science ministers meetings continued; the third presided over the demystication of the so-called technological gap, and the fourth discussed the anatomy and physiology of technological innovation. The ministerial meetings still take place.

6. The bases of national technological development But enough of ministers. We were convinced that in this phase of experiment and uncertainty with regard to science policy, it would be valuable to prot by the experi-

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ence of our countries in their successes and failures. OECD had already established a reputation for its annual examinations of the economic situations of its member nations. We felt that a modication of this practice to meet the needs of science policy would be a constructive device to this end. Accordingly, we launched a series of in-depth explorations of the individual countries. A parallel series of examinations of national educational policies was also initiated. The examinations were voluntary and in each case were undertaken at the request of the country to be examined. Experience soon showed that countries already engaged in internal debate on their scientic system and contemplating change asked for these examinations to obtain independent advice. The process normally took a year or more to complete, and the secretariat did not have the resources to undertake more than three each year. The initial stage entailed sending an expert from the science directorate to the country being examined to prepare a background report after discussion with the various authorities involved. This included a description of the structure of the national scientic organizations, statistics on the countrys research expenditure and manpower, the economic and social situations, and other related data. This background report was mainly descriptive and avoided value judgments as far as possible. It might, however, attempt to formulate some of the main issues facing the policymakers. This paper was then presented to the country, and modications were sought to conrm the accuracy of its data and emphasis. The next stage was the appointment of two or three independent examiners of high caliber, none of whom came from the country under examination. Having read the background report together, they would visit the country and question a broad range of people concerned one way or another with the national situation in science and technology. These included relevant ministers, senior ofcials, the heads of scientic institutions, university leaders, industrialists, and prominent scientists. Their reports identied and analyzed the main problem issues, frequently suggesting points for consideration by the government concerned or even suggestions for the reform of their scientic system. Members of the examining team signed the report as their personal assessment. The country was not allowed to modify it. In no way could it be seen as representing the views of OECD. It might be accompanied by a number of questions that the examiners wished to pose. The nal phase was a so-called confrontation meeting held either in Paris or in a city of the country being examined. The examiners put their questions to a team of representative science policymakers from that country, frequently led by its science minister. Present also were science policy people from the other OECD countries, expected to ask subsidiary questions. A nal report was then issued, consisting of the background and examiners reports, together with a summary of the confrontation discussion. The series of publications resulting from the science policy reviews provided the member countries of OECD with a detailed understanding of the science policy issues, pre-occupations, and experiments of Western Europe as a whole. The exercise also generated a friendly and constructive spirit of cooperation among the practitioners involved. For the countries submitting to examination, its utility varied considerably. The rst few cases, when we were learning to make the system work,

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were somewhat anodyne and supercial, but as our condence and that of the member countries grew, the examinations became more profound, franker, and constructively critical. On several occasions, reforms had already resulted in the interval between the presentation of the examiners report and the confrontation. In others the national report was discussed in parliament, and in one, a parliamentary committee was set up to discuss its relevance, while in yet another it became a useful cause celebre and an issue in a parliamentary election. ` Because of the post-Sputnik alarm about the technological strength of the Soviet Union, it was decided that it would be useful to undertake a review of the science and technology structures and policies of that country operating under conditions very different from those of the West or were they? Clearly our traditional confrontational approach was unthinkable there. We were able to pick up much detail from the literature and, after a quiet little negotiation with a senior Russian scientist who saw in the proposal a benet for his country, we were able to send an expert to Moscow and Kiev to ll in the details and sense the way things actually worked. Our report duly appeared, and we later discovered that it had been translated into Russian and was in general use there. Policies for science was far from being our only preoccupation. We were eager to achieve a better understanding of the relationship between science and the economy, the signicance of science as an investment, and the articulation of science with overall national policies. These issues were clearly in line with the OECD interest in economic growth. A number of recent studies had demonstrated that less than half of the growth could be attributed to increases in the traditional inputs of capital and labor, the larger part being described vaguely as the residual factor, presumably consisting of a complex of elements among which education, training, science, technology, entrepreneurship and management skills have an important part. We organized discussions and meetings in an attempt to validate this concept. These tended to end in arcane methodological squabbles but emitted a strong signal that the residual factor was one of quality. It is the increased quality of labor and use of capital that has enabled the GNP to grow so rapidly. Manpower quality at all levels from unskilled worker to top management is enhanced by education and training. Capital utilization is demonstrably more efcient as a result of technological innovations that create new processes, industries, and markets. Both education and science have to be regarded at last as major investments in addition to their other functions.

7. Technological development and economic growth We return now to the question of the signicance of statistical comparisons of national efforts in science and technology and the alleged technological gap between the United States and Europe. The United States stood conspicuously at the top of the league in R&D capacity and in numbers of scientists and engineers, causing in Europe an acute jealousy of American technological success. Evidence to the same effect was all around Boeing aircraft, IBM computers, nuclear weaponry, and

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the space program. We in OECD had continued to rene and analyze the research performance data. Much of it was used (without acknowledgment) by Servan-Schreiber in his popular book Le De Americain, which sounded an alarm that the Amer icans were well on the way to a complete domination of European technology and ` industry [3]. The gap had become a cause celebre. The Italian Prime Minister Fanfani brought it into the political limelight. Our more ne-structured studies of the gap demonstrated how misleading these gross expenditure gures could be. We broke down research expenditure into three categories related to national objectives: atomic, space, and defense; economic goals and welfare; and foreign aid. This changes the comparative picture sharply. It appeared that nearly two-thirds of the American effort went into the atomic-spacedefense category, a much larger proportion than that in the European countries with which it was being compared. Only 28% was being devoted to economy-motivated research. It thus appeared that resources for R&D toward economic goals in the United States were just about twice those of the European industrialized countries a much less troubling situation than the simplistic analyses had implied. We then worked on the balance of technological payments concept, namely, the sums earned or expended by countries and their industries by the sale or purchase of patents, know-how, and the like. This investigation demonstrated the broad diffusion of technology by market forces. There was little if any correlation between a countrys R&D effort and its economic growth or trade performance. It appeared that the diffusion of technology across frontiers was sufciently rapid to compensate for inadequacies in domestic research effort or indigenous innovation. The example of Japan, with its highly successful technological development based on imported technology, is a dramatic case in point. The technological gap, once demystied, proved then to be not a question of technology at all yet a gap of some sort undoubtedly existed between the achievements of Americas advanced industries and those of Europe. It now began to be seen as a management gap, but even that was now seen as too simple and too general a designation, so we began a comprehensive investigation of the anatomy, physiology, and psychology of technological innovation. The processes of technological development from the identication of the economic signicance of a discovery in basic research, through various applied research stages, on to pilot plant or engineering prototype, then to full-scale production, and nally to the sale of a product in the market are exceedingly complex. The critical importance of the initial scientic idea becomes overshadowed by many human and economic factors, such as entrepreneurship, national scal practice with its deterrents and incentives, market probing, management skill, management/labor relations, and a multitude of intangible matters. Much of the study is beyond the scope of this paper and will not be pursued here. It did, however, include an analysis of why rms thought they were doing research and of the articulation (or lack of it) with corporate policy. To the individual scientist, the concept of management was seen as an alien bureaucratic intrusion into the creative world of research. However, in the research laboratories of industry and the public service, their directors were inevitably faced with complex management problems for which they were completely untrained. In

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the 1950s, the EPA, which had been deeply involved in management education generally, realized that the problems of research institutes necessitated quite different approaches. A couple of seminars were organized on the problems faced in the management of research in public-sector laboratories. These aroused much interest, so later with our concern with technological innovation, we decided to organize a major meeting of research directors from the science-based industries to discuss The Integration of Research Policy into the Overall Policy of the Firm. This meeting took place in Monte Carlo in February 1965 and attracted an authoritative group of both research directors and corporate managers from both sides of the Atlantic. This meeting had a profound inuence on the understanding of industrial research throughout Europe. It invited OECD to act as midwife in the birth of a permanent body to encourage research management practice. The outcome was the creation of the European Industrial Research Management Association (EIRMA), which gradually attracted the membership of most of the research-intensive rms of Europe and continues today as a successful example of cooperation and competition operating together in harmony for the common good. Our successful work on technological innovation had to be abandoned for strictly political reasons. It was then decided to have a fresh look at science policy in view of the transformation of society that was in progress. When we had approached the subject two decades earlier during the reconstruction period, the main objective of science policy had been to assist the application of science to the building of a strong economy, to generate resources for social renewal and well-being. The increase in economic growth of the industrialized world was phenomenal. During this period, while we were aware of the social concomitants of economic growth, the national science policies had given scant attention to the other sectors of civil concern. Many of the societal changes had indeed been made possible by economic growth itself. A goodly proportion of the new prosperity was, of course, diverted through taxation to the provision of social goods such as education and health, but the larger quantity reached the citizens directly as material afuence. The luxuries of yesterday became the necessities of today before being claimed by many as the rights of tomorrow. Thus, the consumer society was born and formed the dominant culture of the age: science and technology were its progenitors. Inevitably, the transitions in society threw up a multitude of new social problems, many of them susceptible to attack through research.

8. The role of science policy The Secretary-General of OECD decided to appoint a group of high-level personalities to look at the new nexus of problems and reassess the place of science policy. With Harvey Brooks as chairman, this group set to work enthusiastically, meeting several times in Europe and the United States. After two years they published their report, Science, Growth and Society [4]. It became a classic. It analyzed the present situation of science policy and quickly concluded that the boundaries of the subject, as then generally understood, would have to be extended considerably in the context

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of changing social structure. Indeed, science policy had to be seen as an integral part of overall public policy and not as an autonomous element. Its interaction with other elements of policy was expected to be more signicant than its own internal mechanisms and policies. There was considerable discussion of the selection and management of technological innovations. Society as a whole appreciates the important part that technology has played in achieving its current prosperity level and assumes that still more innovation will be required to meet its aspirations, but it worries about undesirable sideeffects and fears that evil technologies will arise, such as those of nuclear warfare. Most innovations arise in the private sector. That raises the question as to whether governments and the people can rely on market forces to select future developments that will be benecial to all rather than protable to the few. Governments, with their obsession with the short term, have given little coherent attention to guiding the processes of decision making on the selection of desirable innovations and attempts to foresee their consequences not only for the environment but for the evolution of their societies. The Brooks Report discusses these matters in detail and suggests instruments to deal with them. It stated with some force, Economic growth per se is no longer a sufcient national objective, and further interventions in the operation of the market economy will be necessary. The articulation of science with the multifarious facets of human activity has to be seen now as quite extraordinarily complex its roots deep in the educational system, its place in the contemporary culture ill-dened, its tentacles penetrating into every department and agency of the state, and its products impinging, often dramatically, on the life of the people. The need for efforts to shape constructive policies for science and its uses will long persist.

References
[1] OECD. Advisory Group on Science Policy. Science and the policies of governments: the implications of science and technology for national and international affairs. Paris: OECD, 1963. [2] Proposed standard practice for surveys of research and experimental development. Paris: OECD, 1970, known as the Frascati Manual. [3] Servan-Schreiber JJ. La De americain. Paris: Denoel, 1967. [4] OECD. Science growth and society; a new perspective. Report of the Secretary-Generals ad hoc group on new concepts of science policy. Paris, 1971.
Alexander King was born in Scotland in 1909. Educated at the University of London and the University of Munich, he was from 1931 to 1941 a senior lecturer in Physical Chemistry at Imperial College of Science and Technology, London. During World War II, King served as deputy senior adviser to the British Minister of Production and as head of the British Scientic Mission and Science Councilor at the British embassy in Washington, DC. He was co-director of the European Productivity Agency of the OEEC, Paris, from 1957 to 1960 and Director-General for Scientic Affairs and Education, OECD, from 1960 to 1974. King is a cofounder with Aurelio Peccei of the Club of Rome. Named president of that organization in 1984, he is now president emeritus.

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