Information technology: Anatomy of a successful european collaboration

Europe is betting on a two-pronged stategy to revers the dwindling fortunes of its information technology (IT) industry in the world market. This is the completion of of the single European market by 1993, together with the promotion of R&;D collaboration between European IT companies and research institutions. This paper examines why Europe is collaborationg in IT and looks in detail at the way this is happening in practice. It asks: How is it that institutions from different countries come together and generate new technologies which are genuinely European? A successful European collaborative computer project provides the focus foa the discussion. The main exphasis is on showing why the collaboration took place, what major conflicats affected the development of the project, how they were solved and how the solution of the conflicts was reflected in the actual shape of the technology produced.     

Who talks to whom at a european meeting for technology transfers?

Who is interested in organizing it organizing transfers and partnerships within their borders or beyond, and who with? This article analyzes a meeting on 'bio-medical engineering' provides a few pointers in the European context, shows how the desire for contacts is structured by the nationalities, pinpoints a number of typical national 'patterns of behaviour' and highlights the dynamism of currenth deoeloping 'comparp networks'.     

The impact of public investment in medical imaging technology: an interagency collaboration in evaluation

The Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) allied to analyze the impact of their investments in medical imaging research. The CFI funds capital and operating programs for research infrastructure, and CIHR's mandate concentrates its funding on research activity. It happens that CIHR-funded research consumes CFI-funded infrastructure as an input in the innovation process. Apart from a few partnered programs, by design there is no coordination between CFI and CIHR funding decisions. Together, these agencies invested $916 million over a 14-year-period. In this paper, we evaluate the economic and health benefits from advancements in one funded area, namely computed tomography perfusion (CTP). CTP is an imaging technique that uses computed tomography to measure blood flow in organs and tissues. It is mostly used to assess acute ischemic stroke. The net social benefits attributable to these investments are substantially positive: the benefit-to-cost ratio is estimated to be between 6.66-to-1 and 9.99-to-1. We review how public investments from multiple funders comingle in the innovation process to deliver social value and improved health outcomes.     

Technology and globalization: the european payments system as a case of non-globalization

This paper shows that in the design of European EFTPOS payment networks the dominant influences on network design were national; these included national banking industry structures, regulatory regimes, retail industry structures and cultural attitudes to debt. There was no sign of the technology itself driving globalization—on the country, the network technology is 'configurable' and appears subject to shaping by many distrinct national-social contexts. Where there was some movement to 'globalization', understand as a process of standarization of the service provided through the technology acros national frontiers, it derived from the explicit social objectives of the European Commission and was not an inevitable result of the 'technology' itself. The argument is widened to show that much of the evidence for the overall 'trend' to globalization may be reinterpreted as the result of a process of 'industrialization' in certain parts of the world. In conclusion, the very existence of the assumed 'trend' to globalization may be questioned, while technology does not 'drive' globalization, but may be 'shaped' by social agencies like the European Commission that have an interest in fostering its own versions of the globalization process.     

Management of collaborative research: collaboration and exploitation under the UK's information engineering advanced technology programme

An evaluation of a large government-supported programme of research in information technology has enabled a detailed analysis to be made of motives, participant characteristics, management styles and exploitation routes in a large number of collaborative research projects. One particularly successful collaborative structure is discussed in detail. The analysis also highlights a series of issues which must be addressed by programme adminstrators, including the need to strike a balance between rigidity and flexibility in the definition and management of collaborative research programmes.     

Implications of nurse-physician relations: report of a successful intervention

Given the evidence linking medical errors to ineffective communication, strategies for improving communication among health care professionals must be implemented. The purpose of this article was to examine the effect of a collaborative intervention on improving communication patterns between nurses and physicians on two study units. The intervention consisted of two nurses and two physicians (per unit) meeting together (8 hours total) to collaboratively develop a solution to communication issues on their respective units. Physicians scored significantly higher on reports of openness of communication within groups, openness between groups, accuracy between groups, and collaboration between groups. Collaboration reported among nurses and physicians improved for both professions, with significance reached for physicians (p = 0.031). Strategies must be identified to break down the barriers set by the current culture, and that expedite the development of a team-centered culture supporting collaborative relations among health care professionals.     

Eastern economies towards european union: Statistical measures of perspective evaluation

The main goal of presented taxonomy methods is to make the integration criteria of countries which are candidates for the European Union (EU) more objective. One of the basic issues in the process of their program construction is to perform suitable numbers and types of measures and coefficients. In this paper, similarity and distance measures between countries are proposed. Some of them are able to estimate the integration program realization, while others could signal possible current corrections to the program being realized. The methods described in this paper could also be useful for countries' program evaluations based on the experiences of the EU members, especially such countries whose processes of integration with the EU are characterized by similar processes and indices of economic development.     

Integrating the creation, production and diffusion of technology in the design of large-scale and targetted european it programmes

A major recent development in European IT policy is the emergence of largescale, application-driven programmes largetted towards strategic techonological capabilities. This paper looks at one of these programmes (the Open Microprocessor Systems Invitative |OMI|), focusing particularly on the meaning and implement of the strategic concept of 'application-driven'. The analysis makes use of the 'sociotechnical constituency' approach. which contrasts two extreme models of integrating creation, production and diffusion in technological process, namely, a linear-sequential model and a circular-bidirectional model. It argues that the strategy of the OMI is following the second approach.     

Technological collaboration: problems and pitfalls

There is an increasing trend for interconnections between all nations of the world owing to the widespread globalization of industrial production, inputs sourcing and outputs marketing. A further reason is the raised awareness of global consequences, resulting from natural resources depletion and apparently localized environmental degradation activities by industries. Much of this ever-growing and complex interdependence has been possible as a result of a host of unprecedented technologial achievements in the past few deades, which have enabled industrial enterprises in developed countries to accomplish an increased degree of flexibility, through automated manufacturing, to combine economies of sale, through process standardization, with economies of scope, through product differentiation, and to acheive quicker response times to customers7apos; prefernces and market demands. Simultaneously, in most developing countries, there is also an observable undercurrent of deregulation, privatization or corporatization, and open international market competition for industrial development. In this present era of new internationalism, technology management has become one of the main strategic priorities, because it provides the vital factor underpinning the survival and prosperity of industrial enterprises everywhere. Hence, given the recognition that the key competitive advantage in the international market-place nowadays is the ability of an enterprise continuously to introduce technological innovations faster than others, the need for endogenous technology capacity building can hardly be overmphasized. This paper presents a general framework for the development of a set of technology indicators which could be useful for assesing industrial investment projects funded by an international or national development finance institutino. The framework attempts to integrate business and technology strategies particularly in the context of developing countries. Starting with consideration of the unique characteristics of technolgoy at the firm level, and using a systems analysis approach to the market structure, possible strategic mixed are determined by considering four business stratetgies—price, value, niche and green leadership—and four technology strategies—technology leader, follower, exploiter and extender. The necessary considerations for a technological capability enhancement and palusible technology strategy rogression path are also discussed for different development conditions. The analytical measures presented in this paper are focused on such important aspects as the degree of technology component sophistication, the level of technology capability advancement, the status of technology infrasturcture building, and the dynamism of technology climate, all of which could be used for investment project review and appraisal undertaken by iunternational and national development finance institutions.     

Effective workforce management starts with leveraging technology, while staffing optimization requires true collaboration

Effective staffing is at the very core of quality patient care. Staffing that achieves a balance between quality, safety, labor costs, and staff satisfaction is incredibly complex. Technology can make the complexity manageable and provide health care leaders with the tools to optimize their most valuable resource--their employees. Through such a partnership, the business intelligence brought forth will not only meet the unique needs and goals of each organization, but will also result in innovations and advancements in best practices around excellence in staffing.     

Information technology and efficiency in trucking

Abstract .  We develop an econometric model to estimate the impact of Electronic Vehicle Management Systems ( EVMS ) on the load factor ( LF ) of heavy trucks. This technology is supposed to improve capacity utilization. The model is estimated on the Quebec subsample of the 1999  National Roadside Survey . The  LF  is explained as a function of truck, trip, and carrier characteristics. We show that the use of  EVMS  results in an increase of 16 percentage points of  LF  on backhaul trips. However, we also find that there is a rebound effect on fronthaul movements, with a reduction of  LF  by about 7.6 percentage points.     

Monetary policy design in the european union: Problems and possibilities

The main goal of this paper is to estimate if the money supply and interest rate in the various European Union countries are exogenous or endogenous. This analysis turns is essential since, if both variables happened to be endogenous, the search for another variable to be used as a proximate target could be tried. Some authors have suggested that the exchange rate is likely to be that variable.     

Information technology in business process reengineering

Today's environment is characterized by increasing levels of competition. Enterprises wanting to increase their market share or obtain profits must adapt to changes in the environment. Consequently, many changes in business methods are beginning to appear. One of them is business process reengineering (BPR), defined as the fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical, contemporary measures of performance. Among the potential enablers of BPR is information technology (IT). IT makes it possible to obtain improvements in BPR, though not just by itself. This paper will demonstrate the importance of IT in one of the most prominent methodologies. Enterprises can make their tasks easier, redesign their organization, change the way they work, and achieve spectacular improvement using, among other enablers, IT. This paper was presented at the Forty-Seventh International Atlantic Economic Conference in Vienna, Austria, March 16–23, 1999.     

Single european currency: Effects on firm structure and personnel management

This paper examines the likely effects of the introduction of the single European currency, whose arrival means that the development of the economic space of the European Union will be completed. Two aspects of the forthcoming changes are analyzed. First is the process of monetary integration, which will spread over three years, and is here reviewed chronologically. Second is the final effect of this process on firms—how different company structures will adapt and what actions will have to be taken with regard to the management of human resources.     

Fiscal visibility in the european union member countries: New estimates

Improvements in the efficient allocation of resources can be reached by increasing public revenue and expenditure visibility. This paper presents some indicators permitting the making of time and space fiscal visibility measurements and comparisons and advances new systematic estimates on fiscal visibility for systems and subsystems of public revenue now in force in the European Union member countries. Policy implications seem straightforward for these countries as present revenue visibility values are low in general. Allocation improvements could be obtained by implementing changes and reforms aiming to raise values of public revenue visibility and to make domestic fiscal systems and subsystems converge to the highest values.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 43rd International Atlantic Economic Conference, London, March 11–18, 1997. I am indebted to the late Giovanni Caravale. Jose Ferraz-Nunes, Bernard Malamud, and other participants of this conference for helpful comments. The responsibility for any errors and shortcomings is mine.     

Information technology innovation in India: The top 100 IT firms

Patents serve as an indicator of the innovation capability of countries, industries, or firms. Many Indian firms are in a transition to move from labor intensive segments to areas with higher value added which has been reflected in this research. The purpose of this study is to analyze patents issued during the period of 1997–2009 from the European Patent Office database and the United States Patent and Trademark Office database from the top one hundred Indian information technology firms. This study represents a novel empirical look at information technology industry innovations in India. A comprehensive set of statistical patent analyses are presented to provide practitioners with valuable knowledge to assist in business strategic planning.     

Economic inequality in Spain: the european community household panel dataset

This article uses data from the 1998 European Community Household Panel to study economic inequality in Spain. It reports data on the Spanish distributions of income, labor income, and capital income, and on related features of inequality, such as age, employment status, educational attainment, and marital status. It also reports data on the income mobility of Spanish households, and data on income inequality in other European countries and in the US. We find that income, earnings, and, especially, capital income are very unequally distributed in Spain and that economic inequality in Spain is well above the European average.