| Technological innovation is occurring increasingly in collaborative organizational relationships involving the public and private sectors. Public-private technology collaboration in the United States is both interesting and important from a policy perspective, as it occurs despite a political culture that denounces direct government intervention in private sector profit-making. This dissertation analyzes how U.S. public-private sector collaboration undertaken with the goal of facilitating commercial technological innovation has changed during the post-World War II time period, examines the reasons for those changes, and discusses the implications for public policy.;The dissertation uses a qualitative approach, including ideological, rhetorical and programmatic analyses, to study and characterize the evolution of U.S. public-private technology collaboration at the macro level. The pharmaceutical, automobile, and semiconductor industries are used as case studies to illustrate the evolution at the sectoral level.;Public-private technology collaboration in the United States has changed significantly since World War II, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Collaboration has increased, especially over the last twenty years. The traditional postwar framework for U.S. public-private collaboration in technological innovation is characterized by collaboration in basic research and applied research and development in governmental mission areas. Over the postwar period, however, collaboration between the public and private sectors has become more complex, motives/goals of collaboration have become more broadly strategic in nature, and the relationships between the sectors have become more direct. Collaboration experiences have differed in each of the three industries, but similar evolutionary patterns are present.;The receptiveness of both industry and government to new forms of collaboration has occurred in response to an increasingly technologically complex and competitive global economy. While new forms of collaboration have emerged due to the insufficiency of the traditional public-private collaboration framework, rhetorical/definitional adaptations have been made such that their justifications remain in alignment with U.S. political ideology. The increase in collaboration, the changes in the nature of collaboration, and, consequently, the increasingly blurring line between public and private sector roles in commercial technological innovation have significant implications not only for the development of effective technology policies but also for the conceptual foundation underlying U.S. public policy more broadly. |
