Policy innovation in isolation?

Abstract

Innovations in public policy are difficult to realize if decision-making arrangements are not scrutinized at the same time. Rigid institutional arrangements often hinder the realization of policy breakthroughs. Consequently, in the day-to-day practice of public administration, more and more experiments with innovative arrangements towards realizing groundbreaking policy decisions are being seen. Two rather different examples of such arrangements in the Dutch context are transition arenas and pilot projects (proeftuinen). In this article we describe these arrangements from an innovation management perspective and evaluate their functioning by focusing on their approaches to two dilemmas: the dilemma between diversity and closedness within the innovation plans and the dilemma between openness and closedness of the plan in relation to its context, the outside world. From their comparison we can learn about the context-specific application of different innovation plans and the results of different ways of handling these innovation dilemmas.     

Has Brexit affected employment in Japanese affiliates in the UK?

On 23 June 2016, a referendum was held in the United Kingdom (UK) to decide whether the country should leave or remain a member of the European Union (EU). The ‘Leave’ vote won by 52 per cent to 48 per cent of voters, leading to the EU–UK Withdrawal Agreement that came into force in 2020 and the Trade and Cooperation Agreement that came into force in 2021. Brexit is not exclusively a European matter; it affects third parties as well. In this article we examine the presence of Japanese affiliates in Europe during 2000–21 by analysing data obtained from the Toyo Keizai's Overseas Japanese Companies database. While the UK has been a major beneficiary of Japanese investments in Europe, its share of Japanese affiliates in Europe has decreased, especially during 2000–10. Brexit has had no negative impact on direct employment created by Japanese affiliates in the UK in the short term, but its impact in the long term could be exacerbated by any further policy divergence between the UK and the EU.     

黎瑞刚:All in or NOT?

黎瑞刚这次的职务变动再次成为大家关注的焦点。近日,上海市人民政府发布了关于上海文化广播影视集团有限公司人事任免通知,免去黎瑞刚总裁职务,任命王建军为上海文化广播影视集团有限公司总裁。消息一出,众人哗然。黎瑞刚对此表示,他的职务调整是"实至名归"。黎瑞刚曾任上海文广新闻传媒集团总裁、上海第一财经传媒有限公司董事长。2002年10月,出任上海文广新闻传媒集团(SMG)总裁后,他一手主导了SMG的体制内改革,被媒体认为是体制内最像企业家的"台长",在熟悉他的     

Does real wage converge in China?

This study adopts flexible Fourier unit root test proposed by Enders and Lee (Oxf Bull Econ Stat 74(4):574, 2012) to explore real wage convergence in China in the process of market-oriented reform. We find that our approximation has higher power to detect U-shaped and smooth breaks than linear method if the true data generating process of relative real wage is in fact a stationary non-liner process. The empirical results show that property of stationarity of relative real wage varies across different regions. Specifically, stationarity prevails in eastern and western regions, implying the regional development strategies launched there enhance labor migration, commodity trade and thus wage convergence. In contrast, almost all provinces in northeastern and central regions show non-stationarity, indicating the strategies there are less effective in promoting wage convergence. These results have practical policy implications for China’s regional development and income equality.     

HRM and IR in multinational corporations in Denmark: uneasy bedfellows?

As multinational corporations operate in multiple countries, headquarters must take into account differences in local settings when seeking the means to coordinate and control subsidiaries. The local system of industrial relations sets the framework for what kind of human resource management a multinational corporation can implement. Yet another question is whether the still stronger multinationals can change the existing systems of industrial relations, directly or indirectly.

The paper analyzes four Danish enterprises over a 10-year period. This longitudinal study shows that none of the multinationals directly try to interfere in local industrial relations. However, by exercising their management prerogative in a way that differs from the Northern European tradition of industrial relations, they do influence the cooperation between employers and employees. In particular, the results show, that a shift from a stakeholder to a shareholder management style and an increased degree of HQ control have an effect on the whole cooperative atmosphere in each of the companies. In the long run, they may affect the collective bargaining system as such.     

Barriers to brand building in UK universities?

• Branding in universities has become an increasingly topical issue with practitioners, with some institutions committing substantial financial resources to branding activities. It has, however, received only limited academic investigation, and as the particular characteristics of the sector present challenges for those seeking to build brands, it seems to be timely and appropriate to investigate potential barriers to branding.
• This exploratory study investigates the opinions of the ‘brand guardians’ of UK universities—Vice Chancellors, Principals and Rectors—on the barriers to successfully building brands and draws conclusions on their views of the key challenges facing successful branding activity in the sector. Implications for practitioners are also explored.

Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

What drives organic food consumption in Lebanon?

To increase the sparse knowledge about what drives organic food consumers in developing markets, Lebanese consumers' reasons and motives for buying organic food are studied in the framework of means‐end chain theory. A sample of N = 180 Lebanese consumers was interviewed in several retail outlets using a hard laddering questionnaire. The data were subjected to frequency analysis, cluster analysis, and structural equation modelling. Hierarchal value maps constructed from the laddering interviews revealed that “quality of life,” “pleasure,” and “peace of mind” are the main values driving organic food consumption in Lebanon. Frequent organic consumers displayed higher concern for their family's health and for the environment, whereas occasional organic consumers cared more about their own pleasure and were more likely to perceive organic food as a traditional and nostalgic product. Structural equation modelling revealed that “care for nature” and “care for children's health” significantly affect consumers' (self‐reported) purchasing behaviour. The found means‐end chains are a useful basis for marketing campaigns for organic food products in the Lebanese market. One focus of marketing campaigns should be raising consumers' awareness on the environmental benefits of organic production and the fact that it does not allow the use of harmful chemical products.     

What's in it for me? Creating and appropriating value in innovation-related coopetition

There has been a substantial increase in collaboration with external stakeholders in R&D and innovation activities in modern economies. In particular, collaborating with competitors (coopetition) has been found to be an effective way of creating both incremental and radical innovations, especially in high-tech industries. However, coopetition also includes some major risks and disadvantages, which makes it undesirable in certain cases. The focus in this study is on the factors that distinguish coopetition from collaboration. We propose that the ability of a firm to reap benefits in innovation-related coopetition is contingent on factors that enable collective value creation, and on those that facilitate the individual isolation of the innovations and any subsequent profits. Further, we suggest that the effectiveness of these factors depends on the novelty of the innovation with respect to current markets and technology. In explicitly analyzing such issues we aim to expand current understanding of how firms can create and appropriate value in collaborative R&D and innovation with competitors as specific partners.     

Does Culture Matter in Inter-Firm Cooperation? Research Consortia in Japan and the USA

Collaborative research consortia allow firms to pursue scale and scope economies in research, finance large costly proposals, share risks, avoid unnecessary duplication, internalize the externalities created by research spillovers, and allow the use of firm-specific complementary skills and resources. In this study we examine the evolution of cooperative research organizations in the USA and Japan. We explore the factors which influence the emergence of alternative forms of cooperation. Specifically, we examine the role of culture and the institutional environment in molding the organization of cooperation between firms in R&D and the consequences of such cooperation. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Vertical externalities in cigarette taxation: Do tax revenues go up in smoke?

In federal systems, where tax bases are joint property, the tax policy of one level of government affects the tax base of the other. This paper examines the interdependence of US federal and state cigarette tax rates. Our results suggest that states may reduce their cigarette tax rate by as much as 48 cents per dollar increase in the federal tax rate. Thus, a federal tax hike may reduce the amount of generated state tax revenues both directly (the overall tax rate rises and the state tax base declines), and indirectly (the state tax rate declines).     

Pushed out or pulled in? Self-employment among ethnic minorities in England and Wales

High rates of self-employment among ethnic minorities in England and Wales are investigated using a framework in which the self-employment decision is influenced by ethnic-specific attributes as well as sectoral earnings differentials. As expected, differences in an individual's predicted earnings in paid and self-employment are strongly correlated with self-employment decisions. Individuals with low English fluency, and recent immigrants, are less likely than other members of ethnic minorities to be self-employed. Perhaps surprisingly, this is also true of individuals living in “enclaves” — areas with a high percentage of their own ethnic group. The relatively deprived nature of such areas of England and Wales may explain this.     

Efficiency in public schools: Does competition matter?

The focus of many recent school reforms has been on changing the incentives faced by school administrators, mainly through increased competition. In this study, we assess whether competition amongst public schools influences the efficiency in which these schools operate, using a two-stage estimation procedure and data from the state of Illinois from 1997–1998. We find some evidence that public school districts become more efficient as neighboring districts become more efficient. However, such spillovers only occur if districts operate within a financially flexible environment.     

Will a matchmaker invite her potential rival in?

This paper analyzes optimal strategies of an incumbent intermediary, who matches agents on the two sides of a market, in the presence of entry threat under alternative scenarios. It shows that, when entry is free, strategic entry accommodation is the optimal choice of the incumbent—not entry deterrence, unless the variation in agents' types is small. Entry accommodation remains optimal for the incumbent for a wide range of parametric configurations even when there is a fixed cost of entry. These results are in sharp contrast to the predictions of existing models of entry.     

Is the service sector different in size heterogeneity?

We examined whether significant differences in size heterogeneity exist between the service and the manufacturing industries by using PL exponents as the proxy for intra-industry size heterogeneity. For the purpose, we analyzed firm size distribution (FSD) and estimated the PL exponents, on the right tails of FSD, of the service and manufacturing industries in Korea for the period 2008–2012 using the Business Activity Survey dataset created by the Korean National Statistical Office As a result, we observed that the estimates of the PL exponents for the service industry are lower than those for the manufacturing industry (\(\upalpha _\mathrm{Service}<\upalpha _\mathrm{Manufacturing}\)) regardless of size variable, year, and dataset. This relationship may be related to the weaker negative relationship between the size and growth of the service industry, which made the slope of the PL distribution in the right tail of the FSD smoother. This finding implies that size heterogeneity may be more distinctive in the service industry than in the manufacturing industry. In addition, the PL exponents of sales were larger than those of assets and smaller than those of employees (\(\upalpha _\mathrm{Asset}<\upalpha _\mathrm{Sales}<\upalpha _\mathrm{Employee}\)) regardless of industry, year, and dataset. We also observed the PL exponents in the survived-firm dataset to decrease, compared to those in the all-firm dataset.