Evaluation of the impact of European community research programmes upon industrial competitiveness

The precise meaning of competitiveness is examined. Some basic concepts are reviewed and from these is chosen a relative concept which must be measured dynamically. The paper then discusses the application of this concept to the evaluation of R&D programmes, in particular the EC Framework Programme. Practical guidance is provided.
How firms expect to enhance their competitiveness must be understood by the evaluator. Technology transfer within and beyond projects is significant. The results of an evaluation must be relevant to current decisions if it is to be useful to policymakers.     

Confounded,augmented and constrained replicator dynamics

The quantitative methodology derived from replicator dynamics for empirical studies of economic evolution is becoming increasingly well developed in theory but is rarely applied in practice. One reason is the relatively naïve nature of current methods, which focus on the evolution of a single characteristic in a single environment. This assumption constrains the analysis of real selection processes in which firms operate in several markets and their products have several characteristics that interact to determine fitness. This entails that measurement of economic selection becomes confounded: characteristics that are associated with firm growth are not becoming more frequent in the population. The reason for confounded selection is that characteristics interact to augment or constrain the rate and direction of evolution and one-dimensional, single trait replicator dynamics cannot cope with confounded selection. The contribution of this paper is to develop an approach that serves to explicitly analyse confounded selection. The primary elements of the method are the selection gradients of the characteristics and the covariance matrix of the characteristics. Based on these, the method motivates a taxonomy of selection based on the interaction of characteristics. Applying the method to a population of firms will shed light on potentially confounded selection. It will reveal the indirect effects of characteristics on selection and the augmentation and constraints created thereby.     

Prequalification: Using systems to problem dissolve

The requirement to prequalify prior to tendering for a project is often reported as burdensome. We need more ways to think constructively about this sort of project management problem. The pragmatists argue that constructive thinking includes encouraging stakeholders to shift from their default conception of a problematic situation. Ackoff ( 2006 ) suggested a way of doing this. He called it “problem dissolving.” This includes “zooming out” from the situation to conceive of the old problem situation as just one element in a metasystem. This article explains how and why problem dissolving might be used to reconceptualize prequalification. After ex‐plaining the approach, it tests the approach on industry experts. Projects are human activity systems, so it seemed reasonable to reflect on prequalification using the attributes of a project as a system: purpose, transformation, connectivity, and boundary. A reconceptualization of prequalification emerged where it was seen to have the potential to become a policy mechanism for improving the industry.     

Consumption,preferences, and the evolutionary agenda

The purpose of this paper is to provide a preliminary evolutionary account of preferences, consumption and demand. This is particularly relevant for the study of innovation which offers consumers the opportunity to develop new behaviours. The paper approaches this question in two stages. First it recognises the importance of time as well as income constraints on consumer behaviour. Secondly, it develops a behavioural approach to consumption routines in terms of Herrnstein's concept of meloriation. In this account the focus is upon activities for which commodities and time are inputs and, with innovation, time is rescheduled on many fronts. Consumer learning is related to a replicator dynamic process. It is shown how changes in wages, prices and the time required to consume influence the demand for activities.     

Women, Management and Globalization in the Middle East

This paper provides new theoretical insights into the interconnections and relationships between women, management and globalization in the Middle East (ME). The discussion is positioned within broader globalization debates about women’s social status in ME economies. Based on case study evidence and the UN datasets, the article critiques social, cultural and economic reasons for women’s limited advancement in the public sphere. These include the prevalence of the patriarchal work contract within public and private institutions, as well as cultural and ethical values which create strongly defined gender roles. The discussion examines the complexities of conceptualizing women’s equality and empowerment in Islamic states. The paper reveals that there have been significant achievements in advancing women in leadership and political roles, but that there are still institutional and cultural barriers embedded in business systems. Linking feminist, development and management theoretical strands a development framework is proposed which is sensitive to the Islamic Shar’ia encompassing government, organization and individual level strategies. It is suggested that scholars should integrate literatures from gender and management, development and Middle East studies, and in particular that critical scholars of gender and organization should consider the interrelations of the national and transnational in critiques of contemporary global capitalism to understand the complexity of women and social change in the ME.     

Technology and policy in cable TV development in the UK

Although cable TV is often viewed in an entertainment context, its importance for technology policy rests with its relation to future national broadband network development. The authors argue that it could provide a means of assessing the benefits and technical direction of this greater project and government support for early cable ventures is advised for this purpose. Government policy should stress incremental technical advance and address the development problems likely to be encountered by cable TV as an infant technology.     

Inflation and output dynamics with a floating exchange rate

The purpose of this paper is to extend a simple monetarist model of price output fluctuations in a closed economy to the case of a small open economy with a floating exchange rate. Trade and capital flows are explicitly incorporated into the model, exchange rate expectations and inflation expectations are treated separately and exchange rate expectations are integrated into the demand for money function. The properties of the model are investigated under the limiting cases of perfect capital mobility and zero capital mobility. Stability conditions and short run price-output trade-offs are derived and the conclusions for cyclical output patterns are deduced. It is also shown how the short run movement of the exchange rate deviates from purchasing power parity in a systematic fashion.     

Capitalism and evolution

In this paper I to ask an old fashioned question, “Why do capitalist economies evolve in the way that they do?” The answer will lie, in the nature of human curiosity and the corresponding growth of knowledge and in the particular instituted rules of the game that induce the self transformation of each particular economic order. The essential idea is this; the manner of self transforming is contingent on the manner of self-ordering, so that different instituting frames have different dynamic consequences. The notion of order provides the bridge to the systemic properties of the economy, the nature of its parts and the manner of their interconnection, while the notion of transformation provides the link with evolution and the open-ended, essentially unpredictable, development of capitalism. From my perspective capitalist economies are ignorance economies, in which highly specialised individuals and teams know a great deal about very little, so that the productive strength of the system, its collective knowing, depends on how the pools of specialised, narrow understandings are connected. Connectivity requires organisation and organisation depends on rules of the game and on belief and trust so that we can rely upon the testimony and actions of others. Failure of trust leads to failure of connectivity and a corresponding loss of system coherence. Order is central to the notion of economic evolution and, in practice, economic configurations demonstrate immense richness and subtlety but order is not equilibrium. Systems in equilibrium do not evolve. That the day to day structures of capitalism are the product of ordering processes in the epistemic as well as the material realm seems to me self evident and it is equally self evident that these structures are restless, that their development is open-ended and unpredictable.