From ‘Publish or Perish’ to Societal Impact: Organizational Repurposing Towards Responsible Innovation through Creating a Medical Platform

Why would an academic project incentivized towards scientific publications be repurposed to become a medical platform for responsible innovation? Patient Innovation, a non-profit medical platform that focuses on the sharing and dissemination of innovations to find solutions for rare and chronic diseases, was initially set up as an academic research project. However, team members reframed their core purpose from conducting research on user innovation to providing global access to these innovations and creating societal impact. Using a framing lens to understand organizational repurposing, we illuminate how serendipitous inspiration, moral emotions and the power of socially conscious users and catalysts drove this emergent reframing of core purpose and develop a model of organizational repurposing. We show how a frame drift towards a change in purpose occurs spontaneously in interactions, as actors frame and reframe situations and feel inspired and morally motivated to transcend their immediate self-interests and serve collective goals.     

‘Street Music’, Urban Ethnography and Ghettoized Communities

Hip‐hop is a definitively urban movement, born in the crisis of the Fordist city and rooted in the 1970s street culture of poor and working‐class African Americans and Latinos in New York City. Engaging with the contributions of Beer and Lamotte, this essay addresses two questions. Firstly, can we understand hip‐hop as a politics of resistance, a social movement rooted in a claim on urban space and a practice of urban citizenship? And secondly, is hip hop, and particularly rap music, a form of urban and regional research? I argue that as a primarily artistic movement and black expressive culture (subject to commercial imperatives), hip‐hop has a layered and complex relationship with the social, political and spatial fabric of urban America. The complexity of this relationship renders problematic attempts to understand hip‐hop as urban ethnography or as a resistance politics. I conclude by discussing the potential of an engagement between hip‐hop and critical urban studies.     

Environmental management: from ‘fit’ to ‘stretch’

Environmental management is a budding discipline that studies the development and shaping of environmental policy in business. This article discusses what progress has been made in theory building in the field of environmental management, and what priorities should be set for future research. The level of ambition of a company with respect to its environmental performance is seen as the result of the following three variables: the coincidence of increased eco-efficiency and market opportunities; the internal structure and culture of the company (including the influence of a number of important actors in it) and the pressure from the immediate and wider social environment to take environmental measures. Research in the field of environmental management can improve our understanding of the conditions under which companies will strive for higher eco-efficiencies. It is argued that such research must concentrate on the interaction of the three variables mentioned above and on how they affect the actions of companies. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

‘Repeat commercializers,’ the ‘habitual entrepreneurs’ of university–industry technology transfer

Among academic faculty, is there a class of ‘repeat commercializers’ who account for a disproportionate share of commercialized technologies arising from university research? In a survey of 172 engineering, mathematics, and science faculty members from a major Canadian university, we found evidence that a class of repeat commercializers does exist. Further, we found that the 12% of the faculty who are repeat commercializers account for 80% of the commercialized innovations. Interviews with repeat commercializers in the same faculties at the same university suggest that repeat commercializers parallel habitual entrepreneurs in that they have the ability to commercialize (i.e. the ability to generate and identify commercializable inventions and the ability to acquire resources for the commercialization of their inventions) and the aspiration to do so (i.e. commercialization-friendly attitudes). Since repeat commercializers account for such a large percentage of commercialization activity, it is important that programs and policies associated with technology transfer address the needs of this subpopulation of the faculty.     

Supply surprise is a ‘nice’ reprise

• ? This year advanced economies have enjoyed a rare positive supply surprise: output is higher than expected and inflation is lower. The initial China‐related boost not only proved to be a great antidote to secularly weak global demand, but it has also engendered unexpected global momentum and a benign inflation response. As a result, 2016–17 resembles a mini‐reprise of the “nice” 1990s, a non‐inflationary, consistently expansionary decade.
• ? The global momentum has been propelled by a strong international trade multiplier. This has contributed to strength in several advanced economies, particularly the Eurozone. We expect global growth in 2018 to be bolstered by US fiscal stimulus as the impulse from China fades.
• ? It will remain “nice” in 2018, albeit in the context of weak secular trend growth. We expect the benign output‐inflation trade‐off to continue. Several of the factors that are underpinning low inflation and unemployment as well as weak wage growth are likely to be present for some time.

     

Tainted museums: ‘selling out’ cultural institutions

• This paper examines the role of museums as repositories of cultural meaning and symbolic capital. As educational and cultural institutions, museums serve to legitimise works of art within the frame of an art historical context. However, our comparative case study reveals how the taken‐for‐granted role of the museum as an allegedly unbiased platform for disseminating the arts can be usurped for economic or political ends. Using the cultural settings of the Hong Kong Museum of Art and the Venezuelan art museum circuit, we examine via our case studies how legitimation in the arts may be jeopardised or misused if and when cultural institutions succumb to commercial and political pressures. By adopting a qualitative research design, we observe the macro‐context in which institutional roles are defined and played out, and demonstrate the ideological discourses at play in the role of these cultural institutions as meaning‐makers. Although they may be presented as neutral spaces, museums inadvertently serve to circulate socio‐political views. How the institution manages these views and unavoidable macro‐level forces will in turn influence the cultural credibility of the museum framework as a legitimising force on the cultural horizon. Attention is devoted to how these pressures can affect the production and consumption of art, offering an alternative perspective on the development of museum policies.

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Why avoiding ‘Japanification’ could be a massive task

• ? 'Japanification risk’ is back on the agenda in the context of a slowing world economy. Japan's struggle to drag its economy out of an entrenched deflationary cycle offers a cautionary tale for other economies such as the eurozone, demonstrating the enormity of the policy effort needed.
• ? Low inflation and low growth in Japan are linked to demographic and monetary factors, against which Japan has intensified policy efforts since 2011–12. Japan can claim some success in boosting workforce participation but productivity growth has stalled while monetary policy efforts have delivered limited gains.
• ? The eurozone has avoided some of the early policy errors made by Japan and taken a number of steps to tackle ‘Japanification’ risks. But productivity growth has flagged even more than Japan's in the 1990s, and parts of the eurozone still risk sliding into deflation if the global downturn worsens.
• ? The eurozone's policy options to fight ‘Japanification', particularly at the individual country level, are more limited than was the case in Japan. Further ‘heavy lifting’ by the ECB would be required – implying downside risks for the euro and bond yields staying low, if not compressing further.

     

The ‘Graying’ of ‘Green’ Zones: Spatial Governance and Irregular Settlement in Xochimilco,Mexico City

This article details the evolving social and spatial dynamics of a planning approach that is now being used to regulate irregular or informal settlements in the conservation zone of Xochimilco in the Federal District of Mexico City. As part of the elaboration of ‘normative’ planning policies and practices, this approach counts, maps and then classifies irregular settlements into different categories with distinct land‐use regularization possibilities. These spatial calculations establish a continuum of ‘gray’ spaces, placing many settlements in a kind of planning limbo on so‐called ‘green’ conservation land. The research suggests that these spatial calculations are now an important part of enacting land‐use planning and presenting a useful ‘technical’ veneer through which the state negotiates competing claims to space. Based on a case study of an irregular settlement, the article examines how the state is implicated in the production and regulation of irregularity as part of a larger strategy of spatial governance. The research explores how planning ‘knowledges’ and ‘techniques’ help to create fragmented but ‘governable’ spaces that force communities to compete for land‐use regularization. The analysis raises questions about the conception of informality as something that, among other things, simply takes place outside of the formal planning system.     

Forging a ‘new’ organizational infrastructure for Los Angeles’ progressive community

What margins of maneuverability do urban‐based progressive movements have for affecting policy outcomes in entrepreneurial and neoliberal political systems? This article provides a partial answer to this question by examining how relations developed and stabilized between actors in the different sectors (community based organizations, labor, university) of Los Angeles’ progressive community. Such relations are a necessary but not sufficient condition for affecting policy outcomes. I argue that these relations have resulted from a 20‐year process of interactions between the more innovative agents of each of the sectors. Through their repeated experimentation in building frameworks to coordinate their partnerships, I argue that a variety of complex mechanisms have taken shape that nourish relations and coordinate complex forms of collective action. Functioning as ‘relational platforms’, these coordinating mechanisms have combined to form an emergent ‘organizational infrastructure’ that facilitates both ongoing relational processes and the mobilization of collective resources in politically effective ways. Thus, by examining the organizational infrastructure that makes such a broad based ‘movement’ possible and sustainable, the article offers the reader one insight into how urban progressives have been able to build the power necessary to affect policies in one of the world's most entrepreneurial and neoliberal cities.     

Who is considered an ‘older worker'? Extending our conceptualisation of ‘older’ from an organisational decision maker perspective

A refinement of the construct of age, specifically ‘older’, is recognised as a critical measurement concern for experts in both ageing research and policy formation. In this context, we set out to both chronologically define an ‘older worker’ and to identify on what basis the age of ‘older’ is determined. In doing so, we draw on open‐ended survey data (collected in 2011) from a sample of 407 organisational decision makers across all industries in Ireland. Our focus was specifically on the perspective of organisational decision makers because these individuals will be instrumental in facing the challenges associated with workforce ageing. The results show that workers are considered as ‘older’ at a younger age than might be expected and that decision makers conceptualise workers as ‘older’ using various approaches in the organisational context. Our findings contribute to the literature in three ways: firstly, by providing an important empirically derived understanding of the term ‘older worker’; secondly, by empirically examining previously suggested ‘possible’ indicators of age; and thirdly, by demonstrating that these indicators are conceptually and empirically distinct, advancing theory on the concept of age in the workplace.     

Categorizing Neighborhoods: The Invention of ‘Sensitive Areas’ in France and ‘Historic Districts’ in the United States

This essay offers a reflexive return to two research projects to demonstrate the value of Bourdieu's emphasis on the symbolic for the analysis of contemporary urban transformation. Bourdieu's insistence that we track the social genesis and diffusion of spatial categories of thought and action directs us to the empirical study of the struggles between agents and organizations that promote and/or oppose these categories, as well as the political, economic and other interests animating the agents. A retracing of the parallel invention of the ‘at‐risk neighborhood’ (quartier sensible) coined for and targeted by French urban policy since the late 1980s and the emergence of ‘historic’ or ‘diverse’ neighborhoods touted by gentrifying residents, cultural organizations and real estate agents in the United States since the 1960s challenges misleading oppositions between materiality and representations that often underpin and cramp urban research.     

Technology policy between ‘diversity’ and ‘one best practice’ — A comparison of Korean and German promotion schemes for new production technologies

Policy makers in all industrialized countries are increasingly orienting their science and technology policy towards foreign patterns. There seems to be ‘one best practice’ which is used by all nations to make their economies fit for global competition.This paper doubts this paradigm. By comparing the South Korean and German promotion schemes for new production technologies, it is shown that an appropriate technology policy has to take the individual national system of innovation into consideration. Merely initating the examples of countries with different frame conditions is inappropriate.Diversity in science and technology policy has been the precondition for the success of contributions of these policies to economic and technological development in both South Korea and Germany.     

The ‘new’ donor: creation or evolution?

The unusual mass of financial capital produced in the late 20th century, complemented by the creative thinking of innovative philanthropists, engendered new ideas for philanthropy. An entrepreneurial focus, greater emphasis on partnerships among business, government and nonprofit sectors, and new wealth as well as new social innovation dramatically affected the philanthropic scene — and therefore nonprofit organisations and fundraising. A publication extolling venture philanthropy stated, ‘Philanthropy may be on the cusp of the greatest revolution in the nonprofit sector since Congress granted tax‐exempt status in 1954’.[Morino Institute (2001) ‘2001 Venture Philanthropy: The Changing Landscape’, prepared for the Morino Institute and Venture Philanthropy Partners, Inc., by Community Wealth Ventures, Inc.] This paper defines the terminology that identifies the new donor, describes new roles and practices in philanthropy, and looks at how the new donor fits into a comprehensive fundraising programme. New approaches to philanthropy versus traditional philanthropy are considered, including whether or not these approaches are actually new or represent an evolution in giving. Futureprojectionsarediscussedaswellascaveats regarding the maintenance of balance between what is tried and true and what is a trend. Copyright © 2002 Henry Stewart Publications     

‘Thatcherism’ without Thatcher?

Have Mrs Thatcher's more radicol policies prepared the ground for a substantial restructuring of the British economy? Or is she merely responding to fundamental economic changes that are stimulating a response in the political market? Nigel Ashford, Senior Lecturer in Politics of the North Staffordshire Polytechnic, contrasts the Government's timid policy response with the electorate's increasing desire for economic liberalism, and examines the gulf between Conservative economic policy and the more truly radical ideas Mrs Thatcher is sometimes thought to promulgate.     

The renewed ‘American Challenge’: a review of employment practice in US multinationals

Despite the extensive literature concerned with IR practice in American multinational companies (MNCs), there are serious gaps in our understanding of how this group of firms manages their international workforces. In this paper, we set out a framework of ‘four key influences’ on the way MNCs approach the management of labour and go on to use this framework to assess existing literature concerned with US MNCs. While this review reveals a number of general tendencies—for example, American MNCs tend to be highly centralised in the decision making on IR matters—it also reveals a number of gaps and weaknesses. In particular, we argue that previous research has failed to develop a convincing understanding of how the ‘embeddedness’ of US MNCs in their country of origin informs the behaviour of these firms as employers outside the USA. The paper ends by outlining a programme of research into US MNCs.     

The Bridge to the ‘Real World’: Applied Science or a ‘Schizophrenic Tour de Force’?*

abstract This article concerns those publications which have received considerable attention in an academic as well as in a practical context. In these rare cases, it seems that it was possible to transfer scientific findings more or less directly into managerial implications. This widely shared view is contrasted with a socials systems perspective. From this point of view there cannot be a direct application of scientific knowledge. This also holds true for the classic examples of applied science. It is argued that even in these cases there is no evidence of linear knowledge transfer but rather ‘Applied Science Fiction’ (ASF). ASF comprises all techniques with which the scientific system reacts to external application pressure without having to relinquish its own self‐referential logic. Different forms of ASF are introduced. These are retrofitting, reputation, symbolic labels and undisciplined eclecticism. The ASF‐concept will be illustrated by Michael Porter's Competitive Strategy. Paradoxically, however, the conventional concept of application and ASF are a barrier for the sustainable relevance of management studies.     

Combating environmental repercussions through ‘TQEM’ and ‘ISO 14000’

Business is totally dependent on society although we sometimes do not experience it that way. All business, even in their most limited form, confront environmental issues, some more than others. Business leaders will be actively addressing social and environmental issues. These companies will be going for certification to ISO 14001 (EMS) and progressive organizations have moved beyond EMS requirement, seizing control of environmental operations through Total Quality Environmental Management (TQEM). Industry leaders are incorporating environmental thinking into every aspect of their operations. As a long‐range plan towards TQEM, an organization can have a road map and a clear model for achieving excellence in the area of Environmental Management. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

The ‘Urban Age’ in Question

Foreboding declarations about contemporary urban trends pervade early twenty‐first century academic, political and journalistic discourse. Among the most widely recited is the claim that we now live in an ‘urban age’ because, for the first time in human history, more than half the world's population today purportedly lives within cities. Across otherwise diverse discursive, ideological and locational contexts, the urban age thesis has become a form of doxic common sense around which questions regarding the contemporary global urban condition are framed. This article argues that, despite its long history and its increasingly widespread influence, the urban age thesis is a flawed basis on which to conceptualize world urbanization patterns: it is empirically untenable (a statistical artifact) and theoretically incoherent (a chaotic conception). This critique is framed against the background of postwar attempts to measure the world's urban population, the main methodological and theoretical conundrums of which remain fundamentally unresolved in early twenty‐first century urban age discourse. The article concludes by outlining a series of methodological perspectives for an alternative understanding of the contemporary global urban condition.     

Is there a ‘California effect’ in US environmental policymaking?

What determines state environmental policymaking in the US? Vogel (Trading Up: Consumer and Environmental Regulation in a Global Economy, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1995; J. Eur. Pub. Pol. 4 (1997) 556–571) argues that California has been a de facto leader since the early 1970s in terms of automobile emissions standards. In this paper, we investigate the generality of California’s leadership role with respect to changes in overall pollution abatement expenditures. We present a simple model of yardstick competition in abatement costs. Using state-level panel data from 1977 to 1994 on abatement costs, our results indicate at best a minor role for California. Other states, in particular California’s immediate neighbors, do not appear to use California as a guideline.     

Migrants Encounter Migrants in the City: the Changing Context of ‘Home’ for Second‐Generation Greek‐American Return Migrants

This article looks at the ‘return’ migration of second‐generation Greek Americans to their parents’ homeland, Greece. It is based on interviews with, and written accounts supplied by, 40 participants in the research, all now living in the Athens region. The article addresses two main sets of questions. First, why do they relocate to Greece, what are they looking for, and how do they cope with difficulties and disappointments? Second, and more specifically, how do they react to the fact that Greece is no longer a homogenous hellenistic society, but has become in recent years a de facto multicultural one due to the presence of hundreds of thousands of immigrant workers and their families? Three hypotheses are proposed for this inter‐migrant encounter: returnees, shocked by the ‘new immigration’, view it negatively as upsetting the ‘pure Greek’ homeland they had hoped to find; returnees are more sympathetic because of their own families’ history as immigrants in multicultural America; and returnees differentiate themselves as ‘good’ migrants from Greece’s immigrants who are constructed as ‘bad’ migrants. Evidence from the migrants’ testimonies is found to support all three hypotheses; however, there is more support for the second one. In addition, a fourth outcome was voiced: that of discrimination against Greek Americans who are made to feel, in certain circumstances, outsiders by the ‘true’ Greeks. Suggestions are made for further comparative research.