The Open2-Innova8ion Tool—A software tool for rating organisational innovation performance

The Open2-Innova8ion Tool is an interactive, multi-media, web-based software tool for rating organisational innovation performance. This tool was designed for organisations to use as an adaptation of the European Commission's work on developing empirical measures of national innovation performance with the Summary Innovation Index (SII). It is designed for users with experience of employment in an organisation, from senior managers to all types of employees, with an interest in rating the innovation performance of their organisation. The Tool is quick and intuitive to use, and provides textual feedback, together with graphic ratings using Google meters. Feedback is based on user perceptions of organisational indicators of Innovation Enablers, Activities, and Outputs to provide an overall rating of innovation performance; this can be compared with a self-rating of innovativeness to allow some interpretation of the congruence between the user and their organisation. This prototype Tool was trialled and evaluated during a workshop on low carbon vehicle innovation, with participants (innovators) representing organisations from the surface transport industry as part of the U-STIR programme with EU Framework 7 funding. This publically available web-tool has applications to education, training, and research http://design.open.ac.uk/itool/.     

Managing innovation for sustainability

‘Sustainability’ is a major and growing driver of business change. Its implications for innovation are clear – living and working in a world of up to 9 billion people with rising expectations, providing energy, food and resource security, dealing with climate change, ecosystem degradation, a widening economic divide and a host of other interdependent issues will require massive change in products, services, processes, marketing approaches and the underlying business models which frame them. The focus of this paper is to develop an understanding of new approaches to innovation management required to take account of the growing pressures and emerging opportunities in the ‘sustainability’ agenda. In particular, it draws on case studies of a variety of organisations to help answer the question of what practical actions might be taken beyond the rhetoric of moving towards greater sustainability or ‘greening’ of business.     

Nano-worlds as Schumpeterian emergence and Polanyian double-movements

The overarching question raised in this special issue is whether societies can, do or indeed should steer new and emergent science and technological development and its management on to trajectories construed as more or less 'desirable'. It therefore sits at the interface of two arenas. These are governance: processes of shaping/steering emergent technologies and markets; and sustainability: normative agendas incorporating a range of potentially competing conjectures and internally inconsistent desires such as to facilitate rather than stifle innovation, to enable economic development, to anticipate or deploy strategies to cope with risk and uncertainty, and to encourage technological developments that benefit rather than harm humans, their quality of life and the natural environment. Despite the potential for apparent empirical inconsistencies and contradictions that manifest as outcomes of the negotiation of these aims, there is (pace Karl Polanyi) a normative entry point to all of the articles and the material they draw upon, which is the idea that markets and technologies should be the handmaiden of societies, not vice versa.

It is now widely recognized that 'nanotechnology' is a diverse set of feasible procedures emerging from scientific possibilities to enable the production of artefacts at the nanoscale creating new products, processes and services. Attention has to be paid to the desirability of these artefacts, which involve social, economic, ecologic, political and ethical matters that surround their emergence. The purpose of this special issue is to set out the current and future prospects for the widespread use (or innovation) of technological convergence at the nanoscale to create nano-artefacts, and the needs for governance and regulation that will accompany these innovations.     

The sceptical consumer? Exploring views about food assurance

The problem of trust in food production and regulation has increasingly been raised as a practical and policy issue in recent years and one solution has been to provide more and better information about food production and regulation, especially through food assurance schemes. To look for evidence that this might be successful, this paper uses a small empirical study of how UK consumers think about food information and food assurance claims, using a statement sorting exercise (Q methodology) to identify key factors or shared views. We found that our consumers, despite differences in sociodemographics, gender, diet and shopping habits, tended to share a baseline of scepticism about food information and food assurance claims. We speculate that such scepticism may mean that, rather than providing a solution to the problem of distrust, food assurance schemes may themselves come to be distrusted.     

A place for visual research methods in the field of leisure studies? Evidence from two studies of older adults’ active leisure

Few researchers have explored perceptions of the local environment as a potential precursor to older adults’ active leisure participation; fewer still have employed visual research methods as a tool for examining the modalities of environmental influences on leisure behaviour. This article introduces leisure researchers to the visual research techniques of Q method with photographs and photovoice and highlights the opportunities and challenges resulting from the use of visual techniques with populations of older adults. Data obtained in two visual research studies undertaken in 2008 and 2011 reveal the importance of home and local environment as a nexus for leisure participation and identify conditions that may facilitate activity participation in later life. Environmental conditions that are particularly significant in the case of older adults include the home garden, natural and aesthetically pleasing settings, the local social network and functional neighbourhood facilities. Visual research methods were used to generate these findings. Such research methods provide rich and nuanced data in studies concerning environment-behaviour interactions, which may be difficult to attain using conventional research methods.     

Would you believe it? A detailed investigation of believability in comparative price advertising

Abstract

The construct of believability has been shown to be a key variable in consumers' evaluations of comparative price offers. This paper provides a detailed investigation of believability in the context of such offers. In particular, it investigates the impact of the presence of, level of, and type of advertised reference prices (ARPs) on believability across a range of product contexts. An experimental methodology is adopted for the study. Findings show that the presence of an ARP does not enhance believability but that the presence of a time limit does. Believability is also shown to vary inversely with the level of ARP but is not related to semantic cues, such as list prices, contained within the offer. The study provides evidence that the product context of the offer impacts on believability. Two interaction effects are also identified. The paper contributes to the extant literature by providing new insights into how consumers' believability is influenced by how a comparative price offer is presented. Such insights will be of interest to academics interested in pricing, practitioners seeking to ensure that their promotions have maximum impact, and policymakers hoping to ensure that consumers are not misled by dishonest comparative price advertising.     

Accounting and Auditing Activities of the Ontario Securities Commission, 1960s to 2008 Part 3: The Fifth Chief Accountant, 1996–2008

We present Part 3 of a historical review and analysis of the role played by the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) in accounting and auditing from the 1960s onward. Part 1 dealt with the period from the 1960s to 1985 (Zeff and Radcliffe, 2010a). Part 2 reviewed the work of the first four chief accountants, from 1986 to 1996 (Zeff and Radcliffe, 2010b). This third and final part reviews the work of the fifth chief accountant, John A. Carchrae, from 1996 to 2008. It began with the reorganization of the OSC and the reassignment of functions. The chief accountant position was now that of a permanent employee, albeit still as head of a very small department. The second part of Carchrae's tenure was dominated by the need to respond to the financial crises of the early 21^st century with extensive regulatory change as well as addressing the shift to international accounting standards in Canada.