Les contrats de recherche entre l'universite et l'industrie : l'emergence d'une nouvelle forme d'organisation industrielle
Institution:
Paris, ENMPDisciplines:
Directors:
Abstract EN:
This study concern a sample of one hundred and fifty-eight research agreements between public laboratories and industrial firms in biotechnology, first, research contracts are a part of an economy of creation as well as one of distribution of resources. The parties join not simply to exchange informations and materials but also to produce new knowledges and technical solutions. The duration of the contracts is critical insofar as the collaboration supports a learning process and a process of creation of science and technology. These contracts are incomplete ones and governed as and when the contractors get informations. Second, universities and industrialists build compromises between priority rules and access rights, in order to find an optimal path between diffusion and incentives for private investments. The contracts delivers public goods, as publications and ph. D, and privates ones, as industrial secrets and patents. Third, research contracts are not pure market relations. They involve as well as market ties, reciprocity and mutuality, and sometimes hierarchy. Reciprocal behaviour lower the high transaction costs generally associated with research contracts. Fourth, the multiplication of research agreements between university and industry is not only a matter of circumstances. Firms and scientific institutions are supposed to be more and more linked so as to develop both basic research and industrial innovations.
Abstract FR:
Ce travail, qui porte sur un echantillon de cent cinquante huit contrats de recherche conclus entre des laboratoires publics et des entreprises dans le domaine des biotechnologies, permet de montrer que le veritable enjeu de ce type de contrat est de construire une coordination viable entre les institutions scientifiques et l'industrie pour concevoir et creer de nouvelles solutions technologiques. La dimension temporelle de la coordination contractuelle est essentielle puisqu'elle permet d'alimenter un processus d'apprentissage mutuel et un processus de production scientifique. L'incompletude des contrats permet de prendre des decisions au fur et a mesure des gains d'informations engranges par les acteurs. La stabilite de ces accords repose sur des formules de compromis entre biens prives, proteges par le secret ou le brevet, biens collectifs aux participants, et biens publics, sous forme de publications. Plusieurs modes de coordination economique supportent ces contrats : la cooperation productive, la coordination marchande, des mecanismes de coordination nonmarchands comme la confiance et la reciprocite, et parfois la hierarchie. La prise en compte de ces differents modes de coordination economique, superposes dans les contrats reels, permet d'envisager un large spectre de relations contractuelles (des formes marchandes simples, des formes cooperatives, des situations de quasi-integration) ainsi que leur dynamique (la succession de prestations ponctuelles et de programmes de recherche cooperative a long terme). Ces contrats participent a la construction d'une nouvelle organisation industrielle qui associe de plus en plus etroitement laboratoires publics et firmes pour developper la science et les innovations.