Managing Contradictory Stakeholder Demands of a Publicly Funded Research Center

Following the guidelines of the European Union (EU), Austria supports scientific research and technological development by publicly funding of research centers. Such centers are positioned between scientific and industrial stakeholders and have to simultaneously fulfill contradictory demands. This paper deeply analyzes the Austrian Center of Competence in Mechatronics (ACCM) and exposes why this publicly funded research center is able to effectively manage these conflicting demands. Using the theory of ambidexterity, the study highlights that appropriate structures and strategies are preliminarily needed. In particular we found that the fundamental abilities for managing contradictory demands are located on an individual level and argue that especially the autonomous, well-educated people and their competences of self-organization enable the research center to be ambidextrous.