Research strategies, policy alignment, and performance: evidence from Korea’s government-funded research institutes

This study examines whether policy alignment conditions the relationship between research portfolio strategy and research efficiency in public research organisations (PROs). Using panel data on Korea’s government-funded research institutes, we measure diversification and specialisation from institutional performance plans and capture alignment with the Basic Plan for Science and Technology as a moderating policy condition. Results indicate robust support for a positive Diversification × Alignment effect: diversification is more strongly associated with higher efficiency when policy alignment is higher. Specialisation is generally associated with lower efficiency; however, its interaction with policy alignment – while directionally suggestive – is not statistically robust under conservative cluster-based inference. The study contributes by extending strategy–performance research to policy-steered PRO settings and by proposing a document-based approach to quantify portfolio structure and technological distance among research fields.