Trust Formation in University–Industry Collaborations in the U.S. Biotechnology Industry: IP Policies,Shared Governance,and Champions*,†

Haggling over rights to potential inventions can be a major roadblock to successful university–industry (UI) collaborations. Yet such collaborations are critical for innovation in science‐based industries. This study examines the roles of universities' intellectual property (IP) policies and of shared governance for trust formation between academe and industry. The study also examines how UI champions moderate this process and how trust between university and industry partners affects UI collaboration outcomes. The analysis of survey data of 105 recent UI collaborations in the U.S. biotechnology industry indicates that the flexibility and transparency of university IP policies and shared governance by UI partners are both positively related to trust formation. The activities of UI champions amplify the positive effects of shared governance and at the same time reduce the importance of university IP policies for trust formation between UI partners. The amount of trust between partners is positively related to knowledge transfer and innovation performance. The findings suggest that despite widely reported industry concerns over the control of IP, UI research partners can develop a trustful environment and thereby plant the seeds for a successful collaboration. In order to enhance trust, companies should not only consider university IP policies, but also need to actively engage in shared governance with university partners. UI collaboration champions can help shift the attention of company managers from formal rules set by university IP policies toward shared project planning, coordination, and implementation with university partners.     

Industrial leadership in science-based industries: A co-evolution model

In this paper, we seek to analyse the role of national university systems in combination with technological and market factors as sources of industrial leadership and industry growth in science-based industries. We propose a model in which national university systems and their respective national firms and industries are considered as co-evolving. National firms compete on a worldwide level and they rely on the progress of science and the availability of scientists to innovate. As the global industry develops, firms try to mold their national university systems, but they achieve different degrees of success. Apart from highlighting the role of institutional responsiveness as a source of competitive advantage, our model points to the access to essential inputs for production, the technological and strategic characteristics of firms, the international diffusion of knowledge, and the initial distribution of market demand as key sources of leadership and industry growth. The international mobility of scientists seems to foster the emergence of industrial leadership shifts.     

Adding critical accounting voices to migration studies

The field of migration study is continually evolving and frequently controversial, as diverse people cross the globe and as social and economic transformations prevail. Although scholars in many disciplines have actively contributed to migration research, accounting scholars have been less actively engaged, despite migration's use of concepts so closely aligned with accounting: costs, benefits, risk, and control. This paper considers how accounting researchers may contribute to the study of migration, highlighting the potential for critical researchers to re-define terrains of discourse.Migration theories are introduced, illustrating the complexities and interconnectedness of the role of globalisation, poverty, state functioning, and the social sciences. We integrate previous research of accounting, revealing the discipline as part of the language and neoliberal agenda imbued in migration issues, and its participation in co-creating precarious boundaries and myopic concepts defining the debates. We provide a case analysis, specifically illustrating accounting's calculative practices and rhetoric as limiting and obscuring social issues in migration, providing yet another instance of accounting's participation in social controversies.The rhetoric of accounting as merely a technique and the prevailing view of its objectivity are disputed as we reveal accounting's role in creating a simplifying reality, ignoring the complex interdependencies and powerful forces at play in migration arenas. Although much work is to be done in the accounting field to illuminate its role regarding migration issues, we are optimistic that critical researchers can provide expanded ways of thinking and a contribution to the deliberations. The work's originality is contained in its unique framing of migration discourse, revealing the skewed and shadowy assumptions of its traditional discourse, and examining how critical research expands possibilities for promoting social justice in the migration landscape.     

Human resources roles: ideal versus practiced: a cross-country comparison among organizations in Asia

Human capital and its associated principles of talent management are sound platforms on which to leverage a company's fundamental resources to attain corporate goals. Unfortunately, the importance of human resource management (HRM) within organizations is often overlooked. The fundamental problem observed by many researchers in the HRM field is the discrepancy between what are considered ideal HRM roles and what is actually practiced by HRM managers. To understand the current human resource (HR) philosophy and the specific roles practiced by HR professionals among Asian companies, a survey was conducted with 377 HR managers in four Asian countries – India, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. Our research has shown and, hence, reiterated the sense that there are considerable differences between the current HR functions as practiced and the ideal HR functions, as indicated by the survey respondents. In addition, the survey results have identified significant differences among countries, especially in areas such as strategic practices and the roles of HR managers. Differences between practice and ideal in HR administration are also observed at different levels of management. It was also observed that differences among countries exist depending on the type of organization, the size of the organization, and whether the HR managers work for HR departments or for other functional departments.     

Evolution of organizational governance and human resource management in China's township and village enterprises

This study reviews the evolution of organizational governance and human resource management practices in China's non-state sector, with a focus on China's township and village enterprises (TVEs). The empirical investigation on twenty TVEs located in Southern China provided the evidence that, as enterprises move towards a more formal corporate governance structure with clearer property rights relations, their human resource management practices tend to become more marketized, in order to meet the challenge of increased competition in the highly dynamic, transitional Chinese economy.     

Extreme returns and intensity of trading

Asymmetric information models of market microstructure claim that variables such as trading intensity are proxies for latent information on the value of financial assets. We consider the interval‐valued time series (ITS) of low/high returns and explore the relationship between these extreme returns and the intensity of trading. We assume that the returns (or prices) are generated by a latent process with some unknown conditional density. At each period of time, from this density, we have some random draws (trades) and the lowest and highest returns are the realized extreme observations of the latent process over the sample of draws. In this context, we propose a semiparametric model of extreme returns that exploits the results provided by extreme value theory. If properly centered and standardized extremes have well‐defined limiting distributions, the conditional mean of extreme returns is a nonlinear function of the conditional moments of the latent process and of the conditional intensity of the process that governs the number of draws. We implement a two‐step estimation procedure. First, we estimate parametrically the regressors that will enter into the nonlinear function, and in a second step we estimate nonparametrically the conditional mean of extreme returns as a function of the generated regressors. Unlike current models for ITS, the proposed semiparametric model is robust to misspecification of the conditional density of the latent process. We fit several nonlinear and linear models to the 5‐minute and 1‐minute low/high returns to seven major banks and technology stocks, and find that the nonlinear specification is superior to the current linear models and that the conditional volatility of the latent process and the conditional intensity of the trading process are major drivers of the dynamics of extreme returns.     

PERSPECTIVE: Trends and Drivers of Success in NPD Practices: Results of the 2003 PDMA Best Practices Study*

Since 1990, the Product Development & Management Association (PDMA) has sponsored best practice research projects to identify trends in new product development (NPD) management practices and to discern which practices are associated with higher degrees of success. The objective of this ongoing research is to assist managers in determining how to improve their own product development methods and practices. This paper presents results, recommendations, and implications for NPD practice stemming from PDMA's third best practices study, which was conducted in 2003. In the eight years since the previous best practices study was conducted, firms have become slightly more conservative in the portfolio of projects, with lower percentages of the total number of projects in the new‐to‐the‐world and new‐to‐the‐firm categories. Although success rates and development efficiencies have remained stable, this more conservative approach to NPD seems to have negatively impacted the sales and profits impact of the new products that have been commercialized. As formal processes for NPD are now the norm, attention is moving to managing the multiple projects across the portfolio in a more orchestrated manner. Finally, firms are implementing a wide variety of software support tools for various aspects of NPD. NPD areas still seriously in need of improved management include idea management, project leadership and training, cross‐functional training and team communication support, and innovation support and leadership by management. In terms of aspects of NPD management that differentiate the “best from the rest,” the findings indicate that the best firms emphasize and integrate their innovation strategy across all the levels of the firm, better support their people and team communications, conduct extensive experimentation, and use numerous kinds of new methods and techniques to support NPD. All companies appear to continue to struggle with the recording of ideas and making them readily available to others in the organization, even the best. What remains unclear is whether there is a preferable approach for organizing the NPD endeavor, as no one organizational approach distinguished top NPD performers.     

Internet Word of Mouth gewinnt Automobilkäufer in China

Internet Word of Mouth (IWoM) als Instrument der Markenkommunikation hat in China stark an Bedeutung gewonnen und bietet vielseitige M?glichkeiten zur Analyse kundeninduzierter Kommunikationsinhalte. Vor allem die chinesische Automobilbranche nutzt das Tool zur Identifikation und Akquise neuer Automobilkunden. Dieser Beitrag zeigt M?glichkeiten einer IWoM-Strategie für den chinesischen Markt.     

Organisation of R&D departments as determinant of innovation: testing alternative explanations

This study sheds light on understanding the effect of two organisational variables, formalisation and communication, on innovation. The prevailing belief that formalisation hinders innovation while communication fosters it seems too simplistic. Therefore, we explore two possible explanations in such relationships: (1) the effect of organisational variables on innovation may be conditioned by the type of innovation (radical vs incremental) and (2) the possibility to find a curvilinear, inverted U-shaped relationship, instead of linear, between these two organisational variables and innovation. This empirical study has been undertaken in R&D departments, considering a sample of Spanish companies belonging to different innovative industries. The results show that the relationship between formalisation and innovative performance is negative when innovation radicalness is low, while it is positive when radicalness is high. On the contrary, the relationship between communication and innovative performance is linear and positive. The existence of a curvilinear relationship, then, could not be demonstrated.