Patent indicators for monitoring convergence - examples from NFF and ICT

The blurring of boundaries between hitherto distinct scientific disciplines, technologies or markets is a common and powerful phenomenon. Concentrating on monitoring convergence through patent indicators, we discuss convergence with examples from the area of Nutraceuticals and Functional Foods (NFF)/Cosmeceuticals as well as information technologies, consumer electronics, and telecommunications (ICT). We analyze 7455 scientific and patent references on phytosterols with the aid of SciFinder Scholar and 3836 documents employing STN AnaVist. Furthermore, we test an IPC co-classification based approach on 859,469 ICT-related and 341,846 NFF-related patents. Our results show clear indications for convergence and a proof of principle for our monitoring concept. Academics may better evaluate environmental parameters, like cases of convergence, influencing companies' actions. Implications for practitioners are based on a more reliable assessment prior to the forming of strategic alliances or mergers and acquisitions. This could help avoid costly adventures such as the mergers and acquisitions seen in ICT.     

Industrieversicherung in der Türkei im Vergleich zu Deutschland

In conjunction with the rapidly advancing industrialization of Turkey, the segment of industrial insurance has also steadily gained in importance. People seeking cover for industrial risks situated in Turkey, however, face several rather significant constrictions. Whilst some of those may be circumvented at least partially, the Turkish situation raises the question of the need for legislative reform (possibly inspired by German law) in this area. Such would foster the development of more innovative and adequate insurance products by the Turkish insurance market.     

Poaching and Firm‐Sponsored Training

A series of seminal papers argues that poaching hampers company‐sponsored general training. Empirically, however, the existence and extent of poaching remain open questions. We provide a novel empirical strategy to identify poaching. We find that only few apprenticeship training firms in Germany are ‘poaching victims’ or ‘poaching raiders’. Victims are more likely to be in a temporary downturn and raiders are more likely to be growing. Victims hardly change their training strategy after poaching and poaching seems be a transitory event. This is an important result for countries that intend to introduce apprenticeship‐type training and need to convince firms to participate in training.     

The Structure of the ‘EU’ropean Ensemble of State Apparatuses and Its Geopolitical Ambitions

Against the backdrop of the international political and economic system’s increasing fragmentation, this article attempts to analyse the geopolitical ambitions of the EU. Currently, the EU strives to become an independent global power. For this purpose, the EU tries to establish greater independence from the US and, to a certain degree, from its Member states. This is closely linked to (a) the emergence of the Euro as a currency competing with the US dollar for the status of the ‘global reserve currency’ and (b) the construction of a common foreign and ‘security’ policy. Taking the German literature on the political economy of the state and on the European Integration, insights from neo-Gramscian International Political Economy, and the ‘scale debate’ in Anglophone geography as point of departure, I analyse the European ensemble of state apparatuses and demonstrate that these ambitions have failed, due to the status quo of a fragmented Europe.