Municipal demand-side policy tools and the strategic management of technology life cycles

This research is particularly concerned with public policy instruments which may help to accelerate the development and diffusion of sustainable innovations and support local economic development. While sustainable technology sectors are in high demand, firms still face significant barriers in developing and diffusing their technologies in regions throughout the world (Hoff, 2012). This area has been less explored in the extant research yet recent experiences suggest that supply side tools may not always have positive benefits for supporting clean technology evolution, or for taxpayers. Leveraging innovation policy and technology life cycle literature, we develop a model of demand-side policy instruments which could be applied at different stages of the technology s-curve in order to accelerate the adoption of sustainable technologies. Implications for managers, public policy actors and researchers are considered.     

A Dawn of Convergence?: Third sector policy regimes in the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ cluster

Abstract

Since the 2008 financial crisis, the third sector policy and regulatory regimes in the ‘Anglo-Saxon cluster’ have been subject to considerable policy churn. Comparing the reforms in the ‘meta-policies,’ regulations and financing in England, US, Canada and Australia, this analysis identifies both significant policy convergence and divergence. A new ideational landscape has emerged that is dominated by a focus on transparency, impact and social innovation. Convergence is not the whole story, however. In particular, the overarching meta-policies are absent, increasingly weak or divisive, suggesting a future characterized by the sporadic intervention of parochial politics and the likelihood of increased difference.     

Innovation policy analysis and learning: Comparing Ireland and Taiwan

Taiwan and Ireland are regarded as being similar in their geographic positions and economic performances. Both countries moved from being agricultural economies to become major regional players, and are often pointed to as examples of positive national development and innovation. The main purpose of this article is to compare the two island countries’ innovation policies in a national context. The taxonomy of innovation policy proposed by Rothwell and Zegveld [1981, Industrial innovation and public policy. London: Frances Printer Ltd.] was adopted as the analysis framework for this study. The comparison shows that Taiwan's government employs more top-down policy instruments such as providing government research funding and resources to target industries. The Irish government successfully creates an innovation-friendly environment to attract foreign direct investment (FDI) to facilitate research and development at the firm level. Finally, this article provides policy implications and recommendations based on what was learned from the comparison of the two countries.     

The diffusion of exporting in Brazilian industrial clusters

The present research aimed at understanding the process by which firms in a cluster start to export based on systemic interactions, and the process of diffusion of exporting as a business strategy within the cluster. Diffusion was defined, following Rogers’ (1995: 5) seminal work, as ‘the process by which an innovation is communicated through certain channels over time among the members of a social system’. The research method used was industry case studies and the unit of analysis selected was the cluster. Two manufacturing industries were chosen to be investigated, and within each geographic area clusters were identified as the origin of dynamic export growth in the industry. Players in each industrial cluster, as well as other significant actors, were interviewed. Extensive secondary data research was done to study clusters’ historical development. Detailed analysis and a comparison of the experiences permitted the extraction of some general conclusions concerning the similarities and differences between the clusters in terms of the adoption and diffusion of exporting. Results showed that the diffusion of exporting in an industrial cluster is quite similar to the dissemination of technical innovation. Social ties were important to facilitate the diffusion of exporting in one of the clusters studied. Also, the role of domestically-owned flagship firms in leading the internationalization process proved to be important in only one of the clusters, while the role of external actors was fully supported in the two industries studied. Finally, a number of support institutions, private and public, interfered in different stages of the internationalization process. In both industries, the federal government had only a late and limited impact on export initiation and development.     

Policy modes,firms and the natural environment

This paper examines how different environmental policy types differentially impact firms and why firms vary in their responses to such policies. Based on the mechanisms embedded in policy instruments to create incentives for firms to comply, the characteristics of benefits/costs that policies impose on firms and the institutional context in which policy instruments were created and are sustained, the paper identifies five policy categories. These are category I (command and control), category II (market based), category III (mandatory information disclosures), category IV (business–government partnerships) and category V (private voluntary codes). Different policy types often bestow asymmetrical benefits/costs on firms. Some benefits/costs may constitute ‘private/club goods’ while others may constitute ‘public goods’. Drawing insights from public policy literature, the paper argues that firms can be expected to favor policies whose benefits have the characteristics of private/club goods but the costs of public goods. Thus, understanding the nature of benefits/costs (private/club versus public) and the magnitude of their excludability is critical in explaining the variations in firms' responses. To understand how managers perceive the nature of benefits/costs (monetary as well as non‐monetary), the paper draws on theories and perspectives in the business and public policy field. In doing so, the paper examines the ‘demand’ and the ‘supply’ sides as well as the market and non‐market environments of a given policy. Thus, the paper makes a case for a multi‐theoretic approach to understand variations in managerial assessments of benefits/costs, and consequently variations in their responses to various policy types. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Co-Production and Value Co-Creation in Outcome-Based Contracting in Public Services

This paper contributes to theorizing and analysing different processes of co-production and value co-creation within outcome-based contracting (OBC). It investigates how different OBC mechanisms are implemented in practice, and with what implications for public service users’ experiences and outcomes. Using realist synthesis techniques, the paper analyses existing evaluations that focus on users’ experiences of OBC in welfare-to-work services and a homelessness project. It highlights how OBC can affect equality, effectiveness and innovation within public services. The paper also exemplifies the importance of analysing how the political and policy context of public services affects both service pathways and their outcomes.     

CITIES AND THEIR GURUS: The Role of Superstar Consultants in Post-political Urban Governance

While consultants have crept into various aspects of municipal governance, a selected few have transcended the others reaching the status of urban gurus. Although consultants are often perceived as depoliticizing urban affairs, research shows that the urban guru often instigates politicization. Research on urban gurus does thus highlight distinctions between gurus and ‘lay’ consultants, but it has paid insufficient attention to describing how, through their interaction with cities, politicization occurs. Moreover, the literature often portrays this interaction as an authority relationship in which the guru is superior, while in fact cities play an important role in bestowing ‘guru’ status. Using fieldwork, I examine the long-term interaction between Richard Florida and the City of Toronto, explaining how Florida's elevation to guru status by being brought to Toronto ended with him self-describing as ‘persona non-grata’. To explain the anomaly of this interaction and the way in which gurus instigate politicization, I differentiate between consultants’ ‘substance’ and ‘process’ roles in policy formulation processes. I show that, regarding substance, the guru offers a policy paradigm rather than policy instruments and, regarding process, their strength is in performing ideas rather than pulling strings behind the scenes—in both respects making the policy process more public and contested.     

Coordination of Welfare Through a Large Integrated Organization: The Australian department of human services

Abstract

An integrated organization is one option for handling the provision of services in a welfare state. Australia’s welfare administration is centred on a mega department, the largest within the public service, with wide delivery responsibilities. Integration means that many welfare relationships are largely internalized, but this does not preclude the horizontal and vertical coordination problems of a large and complex organization, particularly where elements of the policy system extend outside. The research examines how to explain the use of an integrative form of coordination for service delivery, and how policy and implementation is coordinated.     

Environmental policy and innovations

The paper defines and uses the concepts environmental policy cycle and innovation cycle and explores the links between the two in search for an environmental policy that creates incentives for innovation in environmental technology. We conclude that key factors are shortening the period the bureaucracy takes for preparing new environmental requirements, transparency and consistency of bureaucratic and political decision‐making and fast and strict implementation with environmental policy instruments that give pollution sources freedom in their choice of suitable technology. Economic instruments provide strong incentives for innovation because they speed up implementation. Large R&D subsidies may be needed to make technology development profitable under the conventional policy of direct regulation by emission standards and regulation by way of covenants. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Public cluster policy and firm performance: evaluating spillover effects across industries

ABSTRACT

While the direct positive effects of public cluster policy on subsidized industries are beyond controversy, the impact of such policy interventions on non-subsidized industries within the same region, that is, the indirect effect of public cluster policy, remains vague and unexplored. This study examines the impact of a prominent public cluster policy in Germany, the so-called Leading-Edge Cluster Competition. Based on a unique dataset, we analyse the spillover effects of this cluster policy initiative on those firms and industries, which have not been the primary target of the cluster policy. Our results suggest that public cluster policy seems to have an indirect negative effect on firms that have not primarily been related to the targeted industries; therefore, the concept of ‘agglomeration shadows’ might also apply to industries and related firms. Despite the existence of knowledge flows induced by additional governmental funding within a region, non-subsidized industries, that is, non-targeted firms, seem to be unable to compete against targeted industries and, therefore, suffer from a lack of human, financial and social capital. Based on our findings, we propose policy recommendations on how to best identify policy instruments aimed at augmenting innovation-driven growth across a broad spectrum of industries and regions.     

The problem of private under-investment in innovation: A policy mind map

This paper reviews the major finance-related causes of private under-investment in innovation and the consequent alternative choices for public policy. The focus is on (i) incentive-based arguments that address the problem of limited appropriability of new knowledge, and (ii) the lacking access to external sources of finance caused by imperfections in the capital market. Drawing a policy mind map, which aims to enhance the mutual awareness and coordination of policy makers at the crossroads of technology and corporate finance, the paper is organised along the following chain of thought: (i) causes and rationales, (ii) aims and targets, (iii) critical constraints, and (iv) the main finance-related instruments of innovation policy.     

Policy capacity and evidence-based policy in the public service

Governments in many jurisdictions have called for an increase in ‘evidence-based’ policy-making. However, the international evidence-based policy movement has so far shown little progress in transforming the way that public policy is formulated and implemented. Much research on evidence-based policy has focused on political interference and contextual frames of reference as barriers to the uptake of research evidence. With the support of data from a survey of over 2,000 Australian public servants, we argue that individual and organizational deficits can leave the public service structurally unprepared for an engagement with diverse forms of evidence, including academic research in particular.     

PERFORMANCE-RELATED PAY FOR TEACHERS: An examination of the underlying objectives and its application in practice

Performance-related pay (PRP) is being introduced for schoolteachers in England and Wales at a time when policy makers are concerned with the ‘mission to modernise’ and the requirement for ‘change’ to take place in the public sector (Cabinet Office 1999: 4). In a number of recent government publications, public sector pay has been heralded as an important mechanism that will ensure public services are ‘efficient’ and of ‘high quality’. Kessler and Purcell (1992) examine the managerial objectives underlying the current application of PRP in organizations and provide a useful framework to explore and evaluate PRP systems. Their framework has been adopted to consider the implications of implementing PRP for teachers.     

Privatizing Museum Services In Uk Local Authorities

This article investigates the extent to which ‘privatization’ has taken place in museum services provided by local authorities in Britain. Three aspects of privatization are examined: change in the legal status of museums to charitable trusts; contracting-in and buying-in private service providers for specific work; and market- and marketing-orientation. All of these have a resonance in new public management in general and are of increasing significance to the international museum community. In the empirical site chosen for this article, privatization has progressed in varying degrees in relation to the three areas concerned, but overall only to a limited extent despite central government's pressure promoting this policy. Reasons suggested for this gap between the political context and the findings are the distinctiveness in the institutional arrangement of policy and the nature of the service. A good understanding of a polrcy arena along these llnes is needed for effective policy application.     

PUBLIC SERVICES MANAGEMENT: ACTIVITIES, INITIATIVES AND LIMITS TO LEARNING

Private sector-style management initiatives to ensure UK public services managers’ learning from private sector management practice are examined, and their rationale questioned. The lack of a coherent, systematic and agreed view of what constitutes ‘management’ and ‘managerial work’ in the private sector is discussed. It is argued that there are reasons for believing that the particular character and organizational contexts of public services will require different managerial behaviours. The manner in which experimental managerial initiatives in some public services have shifted into mandatory innovations is examined. Such innovations can be incompatible with the values of those managing in the public service, who frequently fail to recognize the advantages of late innovation, incrementalism and circumspection. In public services particularly, many managerial activities are the province of ‘non managerial’ staff. Though frequently not considered, the values of these de facto managers may be central to the progress of such innovations. It is further argued that risk-taking as applied in a business context is inappropriate to the degree that public services managers must be concerned with the common weal, equity and accountability. The article concludes with a detailed research agenda to support the need to recognize public services management as a rich and varied area of managerial behaviour in its own right. Its character and variation warrants further investigation as a basis for formulating more appropriate management concepts against which to measure public services managers’ behaviour and performance.     

Playing with the Rules of the Game: Social Innovation for Urban Transformation

Innovation is perhaps the buzzword in local economic development policy. Associated narrowly with neoliberal ideas, conventional notions of innovation—like its capitalocentric counterparts, enterprise and entrepreneurialism—may promise higher productivity, global competitiveness and technological progress but do not fundamentally change the ‘rules of the game’. In contrast, an emerging field reimagines social innovation as disruptive change in social relations and institutional configurations. This article explores the conceptual and political differences within this pre‐paradigmatic field, and argues for a more transformative understanding of social innovation. Building on the work of David Graeber, I mobilize the novel constructs of ‘play’ and ‘games’ to advance our understanding of the contradictory process of institutionalizing social innovation for urban transformation. This is illustrated through a case study of Liverpool, where diverse approaches to innovation are employed in attempts to resolve longstanding socio‐economic problems. Dominant market‐ and state‐led economic development policies—likened to a ‘regeneration game’—are contrasted with more experimental, creative, democratic and potentially more effective forms of social innovation, seeking urban change through playing with the rules of the game. I conclude by considering how the play–game dialectic illuminates and reframes the way transformative social innovation might be cultivated by urban policy, the contradictions this entails, and possible ways forward.     

INNOVATION POLICY: RATIONALES,LESSONS AND CHALLENGES

Innovation policy has emerged as a new field of economic policy during the last few decades. This paper explores the rationales for national innovation policies, as laid out in the existing literature on the subject, and considers what the lessons and challenges for theory and practice in this area are. Innovation policy attempts to influence innovation activity, often with the purpose of increasing economic growth. But it can also have more specific aims such as preventing unwarranted climate change, improving national health, and so on. The increasing attention given to innovation policy at the national level from the 1990s onwards went hand in hand with the development of a new, systemic understanding of innovation, which in a better way than before accounted for the ‘stylised facts’ of innovation activity as identified by empirical work. The system approach, as the paper shows, came to have a significant influence on the subsequent policy discourse. Drawing on recent advances in innovation-systems theory, a synthetic framework for the analysis of innovation policy is developed and used to highlight issues of particular relevance for the conduct of innovation policy and future scholarly work in this area.     

Strategic decisions regarding the vertical integration of human resource organizations: evidence for an integrated HR model for the financial services and non-financial services industry in Germany,Austria and Switzerland

We examine the drivers of vertical integration for an integrated and unified HR-process model for 42 large companies from the financial services (13 companies) and the non-financial services sector (29 companies). The basis of this paper is formed by the results of a survey analysing the structures, processes and sourcing activities of human resource organizations. We sent the survey to 500 companies in Austria, Germany and Switzerland. The survey is based on an integrated process model that uses an employee life-cycle approach and differentiates between eight HR activities.

The purpose of this paper is threefold: first, to gain insights into the current status of HR outsourcing and understand the differences between the financial services and the non-financial services industry. Second, to develop a theory-based framework (transaction-cost, resource-based, principal agent) enabling us to derive and test eight hypotheses using Ordinary Least Squares (OLS)-regression analysis in order to examine the determinants of the vertical integration of HR processes. Third, to analyse the impact of the vertical integration of HR departments on company performance and characteristics. We find significant differences in the level of vertical integration between the HR subprocesses analysed. Even the processes with increased outsourcing activities (i.e. a lower degree of vertical integration) still show a relatively high proportion of in-house production.

Regression analysis reveals a significant negative interrelationship between the relative size of the HR department compared to company size and vertical integration. This finding holds for the HR subprocesses ‘Personnel Administration’, ‘Payroll and Benefits’, and ‘Off Boarding’. Second, we find a significant negative correlation between financial performance in terms of Return-on-Equity and vertical integration of ‘HR-IT’. We also find support for the theoretical framework for the subprocess ‘HR-Top Management’. Six hypotheses (out of eight) are supported by the analyses; two of these are highly significant.

Three major findings are noteworthy when analysing company performance and the vertical integration of HR departments. First, we find that large companies (in terms of total staff and total assets) display significantly high levels of vertical integration for subprocesses which include a large amount of manual work and crucial managerial, controlling and reporting tasks (‘HR-Top Management’ and ‘HR-Controlling and Reporting’). Second, large companies (in terms of total company staff) show lower levels of vertical integration for the HR subprocess ‘HR-IT’. Third, companies that show superior financial performance in terms of Return on Equity (RoE) display lower levels of vertical integration for the HR subprocess ‘HR-IT’.     

基于产业集群的技术创新扩散动力因素分析

本文在探讨产业集群和技术创新扩散基本内涵的基础上,结合产业集群与技术创新扩散的条件和路径关系,对产业集群内部和外部环境与技术创新扩散动力因素的自强关系进行了分析,发现技术创新扩散从创新源开始阶段扩散就已经开始,并影响着技术创新扩散的效果.     

How do firms perceive policy rationales behind the variety of instruments supporting collaborative R&D? Lessons from the European Framework Programs

The main objective of the paper is to analyze to which extent participation in public programs supporting collaborative R&D meets the goals pursued by policy makers when setting up such instruments. Theoretically, these policy instruments are designed to overcome a set of failures (market and systemic failures) impeding the innovation process. We use as an example in the empirical part the European Framework Programs (FP) 5 and 6, which include a large and representative range of instruments. Each of these FP instruments is characterized according to the set of failures it is supposed to solve, its objectives and characteristics, and we discuss how these aspects are perceived and exploited by participating companies. Using data collected in the Innoimpact survey, involving thousands of FP5 and FP6 project participants, we compare the motivations of firms in choosing these instruments with our theoretical predictions. We find that the motivation to participate in a FP project does not differ greatly from one instrument to the other and the characteristics of the projects do not exhibit major differences. The paper concludes with some policy recommendations.