Strategies for Medical Research Institutes

This paper considers the strategies used by a group of 17 medical research institutes to ensure continued funding. The study was based on two financial years, 1989/90 and 1990/94. No correlations have been found between the income of the institutes and output as assessed by publications. Whilst such a link may exist for individuals and competitive grants, it is not seen at the organisational level. A positive correlation does exist between the size of the research team and output. The analysis of the 1989/90 financial year identified four distinct strategies by mapping the institutes in two dimensions: government sourced funding and private sourced funding. For government sourced funding the variable was the ratio of competitive grant funding to direct government funding. For private sourced funding the variable was the ratio of corporate sourced funds to public appeal funding. This analysis has been repeated for the 1993/94 financial year. In the four year intervening period, all of the institutes have adopted, or moved towards adopting, similar strategies. This may be explained by mimetic organisation theory. During this time all institutes increased their dependence on income from government sources, particularly competitive grants. Similarly there was a move by all institutes to increase the proportion of funding from corporate sources as opposed to public donations.