Agency interaction in the implementation of innovation policies: A critical assessment of national programmes for supporting collaboration between small firm and University of South Korea.

This thesis addressed gaps between policy expectation and policy actions through investigating local agency interaction in the policy delivery system. This thesis particularly focused on regional innovation policies, specifically industry-academia collaboration (lAC) policies in South Korea, a politically centralised country in which an attempt to enhance the role and interaction of local agencies fi:om a perspective of a bottom-up approach was emerging. By utilising an analytical framework underpinned by agency-structure relations, implementation models anc the notion of demand-side coherence, this thesis attempted to gain a better understanding of the behavioural differences between diverse agencies in the policy implementation process and the influence of policy delivery systems on their actions.