Cultural legitimacy and framing struggles in innovation journeys: A cultural-performative perspective and a case study of Dutch nuclear energy (1945-1986)

This article contributes to the field of innovation studies by addressing the role of cultural legitimacy in technical innovation journeys. The article develops a new perspective that connects insights from discourse theory, interpretive approaches to culture, cultural sociology and social movement theory. In contrast to functionalist and structuralist approaches (which tend to conceptualize culture in a top-down deterministic manner), our cultural-performative perspective emphasizes agency, collective sensemaking and framing struggles. Cultural change is a contested process, in which various groups perform on public stages to influence the attitudes and opinions of relevant audiences who provide financial resources, protection or support relevant for innovation journeys. We demonstrate the usefulness of this perspective with a longitudinal case study of nuclear energy in the Netherlands (1945-1986), which encompasses both the creation of legitimacy in the 1950s and 1960s, and its contestation by an anti-nuclear movement in the 1970s, which halted the innovation journey.     

Suspending disbelief: Influencing engagement in scenarios of forest futures

Scenario analysis is an approach to long-term planning that informs decision-making in contexts of highly uncertain future conditions. Scenario-based studies are rapidly growing in popularity, yet many aspects of the method are not fully understood. Participants' willingness to suspend disbelief in possible futures is an integral component of scenario-based studies, essential for considering alternative future scenarios, yet little is known about the factors that affect it. Participation in a scenario project does not necessarily imply willingness or ability to suspend disbelief; participants may not suspend disbelief simply upon request. However, the scenario literature says little about the aspects of scenario-based studies that influence suspension of disbelief.This article explores the factors that influenced the suspension of disbelief in one scenario exercise about the future of Canada's forests. Participants differed in their abilities to suspend disbelief in the scenarios in part because of their past experiences and expertise in particular areas, and their assessments of probable and desired future outcomes. Elements of the project design and implementation influenced participants' abilities to engage the scenarios. The results have implications for those interested in using scenarios for helping people and communities envision possible - and sustainable - futures.     

The state of technological and social change: Impressions

As the long-wave theory has predicted, we are seeing a period of consolidation in which the pace of radical technological innovation seems exceeded by the pace of social change. Peter Drucker's dictum, that technology changes faster than society, appears now to have been reversed. The article offers research and anecdotal support for these assertions, linking them to specific trends and trend interactions, including patents and intellectual property litigation, new product development, and politics and revolution.     

An alternative to the weighted score card approach to measuring performance: An analysis of English and Welsh probation boards

The UK government published a weighted score card approach in 2003 to analyse the performance of Probation Boards in England and Wales. However, there has not been a thorough analysis of whether non-parametric methods could provide more advanced options for analysing performance than the standard Weighted Score Card approach – a variant of the Balanced Score Card. Our results show there is considerable divergence in the ranks of Probation Boards from that of the WSC when we include the input variable ‘resource expenditure’ within a DEA model, calling into question recent policy initiatives to increase efficiency in the national probation service.     

Competition and public high school performance

Increasing the level of school competition has been suggested as a way to improve school performance. This study examines one of the most extreme examples of such reform using data from New Zealand public high schools. In the 1990s school zoning was abolished in New Zealand and public schools competed for students, not just with private schools, but also with each other. A categorical Data Envelopment Analysis model using data on school resources and student academic performance, stratified using student socio-economic characteristics, is used to calculate efficiency scores for schools. A regression model is then used to analyse differences in these efficiency scores and their relationship to different levels of competition.     

Forecasting performances of three automated modelling techniques during the economic crisis 2007–2009

In this work we consider the forecasting of macroeconomic variables during an economic crisis. The focus is on a specific class of models, the so-called single hidden-layer feed-forward autoregressive neural network models. What makes these models interesting in the present context is the fact that they form a class of universal approximators and may be expected to work well during exceptional periods such as major economic crises. Neural network models are often difficult to estimate, and we follow the idea of White (2006) of transforming the specification and nonlinear estimation problem into a linear model selection and estimation problem. To this end, we employ three automatic modelling devices. One of them is White’s QuickNet, but we also consider Autometrics, which is well known to time series econometricians, and the Marginal Bridge Estimator, which is better known to statisticians. The performances of these three model selectors are compared by looking at the accuracy of the forecasts of the estimated neural network models. We apply the neural network model and the three modelling techniques to monthly industrial production and unemployment series from the G7 countries and the four Scandinavian ones, and focus on forecasting during the economic crisis 2007–2009. The forecast accuracy is measured using the root mean square forecast error. Hypothesis testing is also used to compare the performances of the different techniques.     

New evidence on the efficiency of Italian airports: A bootstrapped DEA analysis

A bootstrapped DEA procedure is used to estimate technical efficiency of 18 Italian airports during the period 2000-2004. Departing from previous studies, we separate the efficiency related to ability to manage airside activities (operational) from that related to the management of all business activities (financial). In general, Italian airports operate at poor levels of efficiency, with slightly better performance in terms of their financial activities. In the current study, selected intrinsic and environmental characteristics are considered as possible drivers of Italian airport performance. In particular, we found that: (i) the airport dimension does not allows for operational efficiency advantages, (ii) on the other hand, the airport dimension allows for financial efficiency advantages for the case of hubs and disadvantages for the case of the smallest airports (iii) the type(s) of concession agreement(s) might be considered as important source of technical efficiency differentials for those airports running marginal commercial activities; (iv) the introduction of a dual-till price cap regulation might create incentives which lead to the increase of financial efficiency at the detriment of the operational performance. Lastly, the development of a second hub (Milano Malpensa), has negatively affected the performance of the country’s national hub (Roma Fiumicino).