Institutional persistence through gradual organizational adaptation: Analysis of national laboratories in the USA and Germany

摘要

This paper discusses the institutional persistence of systems of national laboratories (SNLs) that unlike other public and private research organizations appear to have experienced only minor institutional shifts in recent years. Although national laboratories started as time-limited mission-oriented projects, most of them have remained in operation as continuously renewed multi-purpose organizations. By comparing the SNLs in Germany and the USA, this paper discusses the relationship between the system and the organizational level and concludes that incremental organizational rearrangements have enabled the institutional persistence of SNLs despite considerable changes in their political and funding environments. The paper applies recent advances in institutional theory and thus contributes to a better understanding of institutional change in path-dependent public R&D systems.