Quality control and validation boundaries in a triple helix of university-industry-government: “Mode 2” and the future of university research

How is quality control organized in the new “Mode-2” production of scientific knowledge? When institutional boundaries are increasingly blurred in a triple helix of university-industry-government relations, criteria for quality control in the production of scientific knowledge can be expected to change at the interfaces. The categorization in terms of two modes of knowledge production was introduced by Gibbons et al. to describe changes in the networks of scientific communications. These changes were specified mainly as institutional parameters in order to deal with the subjects of R&D management and S&T policies, that is, ex ante. We focus on the “validation boundaries” emerging from the differences between Mode 1 and Mode 2; that is, on the criteria for quality control that can analytically and reflexively be brought to the fore ex post. The shift from an institutional frame of reference to the dynamics of communications enables us to clarify several problems in the discussion of the future of university research.