Strategies for best practice in research and technology institutes: an overview of a benchmarking exercise

Many technology institutes have been criticised for their dislocation from, or lack of relevance to, industry. This paper provides an overview of a major benchmaking study which analyzed in depth the most successful technology institutes from eight nations (four in Europe and four in East Asia). Institutes selected for study met a criterion which included a combination of dynamism, relevance to industry, contribution to the national science and technology infrastructure, independent fund-raising capability, innovative organizational structures, and effective management. The paper examines the activities engaged in by the eight institutes, the principal challenges they face, and identifies the main success factors underlying their achievements. The paper attempts to illustrate practical, best practice strategies by showing how leading technology institutes have successfully contributed to their national system of innovation. To this end, success factors have been categorized into those factors which are under the direct control of the institutes (internal), which are outside of their influence (external), and those which can be affected to a lesser or greater extent.     

AUDITOR OBJECTIVITY: THE EFFECT OF PRIOR INVOLVEMENT IN AUDIT PROGRAMME DESIGN

This study tests whether the involvement of independent auditors in the design of an audit programme affects their subsequent audit work relating to that audit area. Two groups of subjects played roles in designing partial audit programmes for a particular account. They also evaluated partial audit programmes for another account designed by someone else. A third group merely evaluated partial audit programmes for both accounts. All subjects were informed that both audit programmes were implemented and of potential problems that could be attributed to either of the two accounts. Subjects were asked to allocate 15 hours to investigate either or both of the accounts in question. Our hypothesis was that auditors who had a role in designing a partial audit programme would allocate less audit effort to that account than auditors who had no role in the programme design. Comparisons of the hours allocated provided some support for this hypothesis.     

Fallacies in the interpretation of a european monetary aggregate

Conclusions This paper leads to the following two conclusions regarding the role of a European monetary aggregate in stages two and three of the process towards EMU. First, the relatively high stability of the demand for a European monetary aggregate is no indication for a high degree of currency substitution. Calls for a more symmetric monetary coordination scheme during stage two therefore cannot be based on this argument. Second, present estimates of European money demand functions give an overly optimistic idea of money demand stability after EMU.     

Growth,distribution and motivation in LDCs

Economic growth leads, according to Kuznets, at first to glaring income disparities and only when a certain state of development has been reached to a levelling of incomes. Translating this thesis to the developing countries, one would have to assume that there exists a constant conflict of objectives between an equitable income distribution and increased economic growth. The author examines various alternative explanations of the personal distribution of income to answer the question how the distribution objective can be attained and what effect certain measures of distribution policy have on growth.