Modelling the mobility of researchers

Policies aimed at the mobility of researchers are an increasingly important element of science, technology and innovation policies. Perhaps the most visible indicator of this is the fact that ";Training and mobility of researchers"; is the most rapidly growing programme in the European Commission's FRAMEWORK Programme, with a 1994-98 budget of nearly 800 million ecu; this emphasis is also reflected in some national programmes. Interest in researcher mobility should be understood within the context of policies aimed at strengthening the effects of research-based knowledge. Mobility is considered important as a consequence of a growing recognition by policy makers that the use of research-based knowledge requires not only access to documented or codified knowledge, but also to tacit knowledges and skills. These tacit skills - uncodified, historically developed and usually localised - are in part a matter of knowing how to interpret, evaluate and transform codified knowledge to forms and contexts facilitating use. Thus the movement of researchers between institutions - and in particular from publicly-supported research insititutions to companies - is a way of enhancing scientific or technological competence which goes considerably further than simply ensuring that companies have access to formal and codified scientific knowledge. However mobility has a dual aspect. If it enhances the capabilities of recipient institutions, then presumably it has also some inhibiting impact on the 'delivering' institution. This might be particularly the case if research-based knowledge is produced not by individuals but by teams in which interactive learning and collective knowledge-creation is taking place: mobility will disrupt team activities, and thus the effects of mobility will take the form of a more or less complex trade-off between positive benefits accruing to a recipient institution, and negative impacts on the team from which the mobile researcher comes. This paper is in large part an exploration of this trade-off.