浅议《机械设计基础》教学体会

根据《机械设计基础》课程的特点,结合近机械类专业教学的实际情况,从提高学生学习兴趣以及提高课堂教学效果的角度出发,介绍了几点教学体会,使课堂教学过程和课程设计环节相结合,提高教师的工程实践素质和科研教研水平等。     

Introduction: human resource management in Africa

This article introduces the special issue that seeks to spur the debate on the challenges of managing people in organizations in Africa. The debate on HRM in Africa has proceeded with tentative steps and now clearly needs to be located firmly within the international management context. It is not the purpose of this special issue to discover or develop an over-arching model of HRM. That has been attempted elsewhere. Our purpose is to bring together the various threads that characterize the on-going debate and hopefully move towards a more specific research agenda which captures the complexity of managing on the African continent. Some of these threads include the formulation of new perspectives on HR research, finding common ground with diverse disciplines and tackling enduring problems like ethnicity and discrimination.     

'More is not necessarily better': the relationship between the quantity and quality of training efforts

International comparisons indicate that, on average, Belgian companies spend less on training than their French, German and Dutch counterparts. Encouraging companies to commit to training has consequently been an important policy goal over the last few years. One notable aspect of the policy to encourage training efforts by companies is that the effort is always represented in terms of the resources invested (input), not in terms of the learning achieved (output) or the quality of training programmes (throughput). Government policy is aimed at increasing the level of investment in company training. One of the questions we wish to investigate is whether this input-oriented approach to the training issue is actually effective. Whether companies will succeed in raising human capital to ever-increasing levels may depend not only (and maybe not even chiefly) on the extent of financial investment in training. The investment level does not necessarily determine the quality of the training processes developed by companies. Therefore, this paper focuses on the following research questions: (1) to what extent do companies monitor the systematic development of sufficiently effective training processes? In other words, is qualitative under-investment an issue, alongside financial under-investment? (2) Is the level of financial investment in company training correlated to the quality of training processes? The empirical data confirm that a kind of 'qualitative' under-investment can be reported and that the relationship between the level of investment in training and the quality of the training programmes is weak.     

External linkages and product innovation in small manufacturing firms

The requirement for small firms to collaborate, as a means to supplementing and complementing limited internal resources, has dominated much of the academic and policy debate on regional development and small firm innovation throughout the late 1980s and 1990s. However, relatively little empirical work has sought to look further than simple frequency enumeration - noting that the most innovative and better performing firms are generally more likely to have links with external organizations. Based upon a sample of 228 small West Midlands' manufacturers, this study considers the source, function, geography and strength of innovation-related co-operation. While the general findings point to innovators making greater use of external linkages, of certain types and in particular directions (notably the preponderance of vertical value chain linkages), the results are less emphatic than might have been anticipated. This leads to consideration of the factors contributing to and impeding joint innovation and the firms' perceptions of the impact of innovation. From this, it appears that much of the observed difference between innovators and non-innovators lies in less objective measures. The data suggest the importance of inter-personal dynamics, attitude and expectations in facilitating successful collaboration.     

The institutional embeddedness of local inter-firm networks: a leverage for business creation

There is an increasing concern for the notion of ‘embeddedness’ of economic activity; yet the conceptualization of the concept and its operationalization remain underdeveloped. First, embeddedness may concern, on the one hand, the structure of relations that tie economic actors together (structural embeddedness) and, on the other hand, the social strands supplementing economic strands in each relation (substantive embeddedness). In this paper, a network framework is outlined which proposes several layers or ‘orders’ of embeddedness. Focusing on small firms, the point of departure is individual exchange relationships as personal ties combining economic and social concerns. First-order embeddedness concerns the localized business networks created by combining these dyadic relations. Second-order embeddedness is achieved when considering also the memberships of business persons in economic and social local institutions while third-order embeddedness concerns the special cases where these institutions bridge gaps between firms. The network model is operationalized and applied to a small Swedish industrial (furniture) community, its firms and economic/social institutions. The findings generally support the applicability of the model and demonstrate the supplementarity of different layers/orders of embeddedness. Further research challenges are deduced and implications for practitioners are provided.     

众筹中创新项目质量和报酬率的激励效应研究

众筹是整合社会分散财力资源从而实现筹资投资双方获得便利目的的一种有效的新型融资投资模式,属于互联网金融的一种形式.本文针对众筹过程中两大参与主体筹资方和投资方各自特征,依据成本收益理论,建立激励效用模型,考虑创新项目质量和报酬率两大因素的变化对众筹双方的期望效用的影响作用.研究结果表明:在三种不同的假设条件下,项目质量和报酬率两大因素影响众筹双方期望效用,进而可以激励双方主体,并且提出了众筹双方效用最优化状态的存在性.     

三螺旋理论的协同创新机制的研究:中国高校科技园案例

三螺旋模型是解释协同创新的实用理论,它阐述大学、产业、政府三个单位在创新体系内所扮演的角色.本研究以文献分析的方式,探讨高等教育在此模式内的互动角色,同时由中国的三个高校科技园区个案访谈、归纳来分析高等教育在此模式内的角色演进.这三个科学园区分别是北京航空航天大学科技园、苏州西安交通大学科技园、上海某大学科技园,分别位处中国三个重要的城市,以及三个不同的管理体系,因此研究成果具有代表性,也能说明新兴中国家应用三螺旋模型的成果.     

私营企业管理创新之管见

随着我国经济体制改革的深入,私营企业以其强大的生命力而不断发展壮大,现已成为推动国民经济发展的重要力量。私营企业必须创新管理机制,在企业内部管理上实现新的转变和突破。     

浅谈水闸职工思想政治工作的创新

创新是企业发展、进步的灵魂,在新的历史条件下,水闸职工思想政治工作的创新是关系到水利行业改革发展的一件大事,必须在队伍建设和指导思想、管理制度、针对性和实效性、形式和方法等方面进行创新,建立适应新形势要求的思想政治工作新机制。     

How different are the regional factors of high-tech and low-tech start-ups? Evidence from Japanese manufacturing industries

This paper analyzes regional determinants of the start-up ratio in the Japanese manufacturing sector. A major contribution of this study is the comparison between high-tech and low-tech industries. The empirical results using a sample of 253 industrial districts suggest that business density, weight of the manufacturing sector, and the average business size significantly influence the start-up ratio in both high-tech and low-tech industries. Distinct differences between these industries were found with regard to the effects of human capital, research institutes, and the weight of high-tech industries.