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The Changing Nature of the Defence Industry and the Defence Innovation System: Organisational Actors, Relationships and System Boundaries
James, A.D
[Thesis].University of Manchester;2011.
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Abstract
The publications submitted for this PhD by Published Work represent the product of a decade long programme of research on the nature of the defence innovation system and the organisations, institutions and relationships that underpin defence technological innovation. This has been informed by the systems of innovation approach as well as broader academic perspectives on the nature of innovation and as such the publications are located in the field of innovation studies and in particular the sub-community of scholars that concern themselves with defence technological innovation. In the thesis, I contend that – taken together – the publications make three contributions to knowledge. First, the publications contribute to our understanding of what I term the “defence innovation system”. This illuminates an important corner ignored by most scholars of innovation systems and one that has received too little attention given the role that defence R&D and procurement has played as a stimulus to many significant technological innovations as well as its many implications for international security and society. The defence innovation system has often resisted analysis not least because of the limitations of publicly available information. My publications show recognition of the importance of this topic and shed light on the dynamics of defence technological innovation.Second, the publications contribute to our understanding of the organisations and relationships that underpin the defence innovation system and their response to changes in their operating environment since the end of the Cold War. My focus on organisation-level case studies of defence firms and government defence research establishments is in contrast to most of the academic work in this field that has been preoccupied with national or industry level structure and trends. A recurring theme in my publications, explicitly and implicitly, has been the co-evolutionary character of change in the defence innovation system and the changing relationship between government and defence industrial firms. Third, I examine changes in the boundaries of the system by introducing a transnational dimension to the analysis of defence technological innovation and in doing so my publications have drawn attention to the need to examine transnational linkages between nationally-located systems.
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