Introduction

International research, as well as a growing body of work in Australia, has emphasised the increasing significance of cooperative arrangements between universities and industrial firms. Among the most salient features of this knowledge based cooperation has been the increased role of governments in stimulating and supporting such alliances and the organisational trend toward the creation of formalised and structured arrangements for managing cooperative arrangements (Leydesdorff and Etzkzowitz 1996).

Much of the recent literature illustrates how governments world-wide have embarked on ambitious programs to promote alliances between firms, groups of firms, universities and government funded research institutions. Science policy and human resource development have also become major planks in the economic development strategies of almost all countries throughout the Asia-Pacific region. Governments here, more than ever before, are concerned with directing national research efforts toward commercial outcomes and with building appropriate infrastructures for generating, transferring and utilising 'marketable' research outputs.

While in most countries the state has generally reduced its role in directly funding and steering the activities of universities, governments have generally assumed a greater role in providing financial incentives to encourage linkages between industry and universities for research, training and other activities. In Australia increasingly such linkages are steered by 'intermediary agencies'. These agencies are generally neither strictly government, university nor industry. Rather, they are priority setting and resource allocating agencies made up of representatives of each sector supported by both public and industry funds. Consequently many emerging academic and industry collaborative arrangements transcend the traditional organisational boundaries of universities, industry and science.

Levels of Cooperation in Australia

University and industry cooperation in Australia can be observed at three different levels of organisational arrangement. At one level cooperation is occurring between universities and industry on a project basis as collaborative partners. In such cases cooperation may be short-term, on-going, or long-term for specific minor or major activities. Such cooperation is usually formalised and structured.

At another level, cooperation is occurring between individual academics (or groups of academics) and industrial partners. At this level, cooperation is also usually organised on a project by project basis, is short-term or on-going and often arranged through consulting contracts. Although often contract based, this level of cooperation is usually institutionally less formal and less structured and less open to control by the institution.

The third level of cooperation is a more recent form and is characterised by structured institutional arrangements and the emergence of new patterns of research-business interaction. This third level of cooperation is both structured and formalised and reflects an important shift in the productive activities of both universities and industries toward new organisational forms. An interesting feature of these new organisational forms is that they are not driven purely by academic interests, nor are they driven purely by commercial interests. Rather, they are driven by interaction between the two. A significant feature of this third level of cooperation is that, while it blurs the boundaries between universities and industry, it also blurs the boundaries between teaching, research and consulting activities, creating an interdependent organisational environment. This level of cooperation is therefore more than simply university and industry cooperation, it represents a shift toward collaboration within integrated knowledge systems.

There is now strong evidence that transfers between academic research and private enterprise are being led by a broad ranging and two-pronged dynamic-the transfer of embodied technical knowledge and the transfer of uncodified capability (i.e. people's tacit knowledge, both about the technologies and the social means by which they may be captured) (Pavitt 1995, Rosenberg and Nelson 1994). Because of the 'multi-type' complexity of today's knowledge in many leading edge scientific fields, it is now relatively meaningless to distinguish between basic and applied research (National Board of Employment, Education and Training, 1996a). The basic research problem is now set within industrial application interests and parameters. Many of the long-term and formal cooperative arrangements between universities and industry reflect these changes and, increasingly, links are being built around a combination of training, research and technical testing or other such service provisions.

The mechanisms for cooperation, however, remain many and diverse. In fact as this Australian case study shows, the variety of cooperative mechanisms is increasing. What is important to note is that there is considerable interdependency between mechanisms. For example, personal contacts and informal networks remain a critical feature in the success of more structured and formal institutional arrangements. Similarly, cooperative teaching activities are in many cases an integrated component of formalised and long-term research cooperation.

In Australia, there has been a significant restructuring of the higher education system and the federal government has introduced a range of programs and incentives designed specifically to improve links between universities and industry. These programs are directed toward supporting a variety of cooperative mechanisms as well as seeking to improve the general cooperative environment.

Current Australian initiatives to promote industry-university links are based on a continuum of measures which began with the development of industry-technology arrangements to strengthen industrial research and development, continued with the restructuring of industry-public sector research organisation relationships and is now focused on providing a structural and organisational basis for university-industry (and government research institute) collaboration and linkages.

Some government-led incentives focus on involving industry more directly in the planning, development and implementation of teaching courses and some focus more on increasing industry-university research cooperation. Others aim to raise the level of research and development investment and innovation in the business sector with a flow-on effect of increasing consulting arrangements between universities and innovating firms. Although some observers have suggested there is now an overlap between government research and development incentive programs (Industry Commission 1995), other studies have argued that the growing interdependency of modes and mechanisms for cooperation depends on this diversity (National Board of Employment, Education and Training 1993, 1996a; Department of Industry, Science and Technology 1995:9).The present Australian case study provides an opportunity to further investigate these different levels of cooperation and the mechanisms that support them.