Interdependence and spillovers: is firm performance affected by others’ innovation activities?

The creation of new knowledge is a case in which agents' behaviour can affect the performance of other actors positively, given that new knowledge creates positive externalities in the market. In this context, we investigate the existence of performance spillovers associated with innovation activities by quantifying the innovation produced in surrounding firms and controlling for the fact that a firm is itself an innovation producer. We use data from the Third Community Innovation Survey (CIS III) that measures innovation in a broad way, not reducing it to R&D and patents, which departs from previous literature on spillovers. Furthermore, to tackle the endogeneity of the innovation variables on the firm production decision, we resort to the firm intellectual property protection methods as an instrument. We found a positive spillover of innovation on firm value added. The results also show that process innovation spillovers are more prevalent than product innovation spillovers.     

Adaptive Preferences and Capabilities: Some Preliminary Conceptual Explorations

The Capability Approach (CA) as developed by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum, has in part been a response to the problem of adaptive preferences. Their argument says that people might adapt to certain unfavorable circumstances and any self-evaluation in terms of satisfaction or happiness will in this case necessarily be distorted. To evaluate people's well-being in terms of functionings and capabilities guarantees a more objective picture of people's life. Next to this strong criticism on subjective measurements of well-being, we observe an increasing interest in Subjective Well-Being (SWB) or Happiness studies that are included in the broader field of Hedonic Psychology. In this paper, we thus revise the original critique of adaptive preferences and compare it with a more detailed analysis of adaptation as it is presented in hedonic psychology. It becomes clear that adaptation can be a positive as well as a negative phenomenon and that the adaptive preference critique had a particular narrow view on adaptation. However, this does not mean SWB-research is not any longer susceptible to this critique. An alternative way to assess people's subjective well-being, but which could be considered to be more in line with the CA, is proposed by Daniel Kahneman's Objective Happiness. These are all relatively new considerations, especially in economics. Therefore much more research needs to be done on the positive and negative aspects of adaptation to understand its consequences on well-being – especially when evaluated within the capability-space.     

Incumbent heterogeneity in creative destruction: a study of three Dutch newspaper organisations

With a study of three Dutch newspaper organisations, we identify four dimensions along which incumbent response to discontinuous change may differ: response timing (early or late), size of commitment to the new business (big or small), progression of commitment to the new business (continuous or intermittent), and approaches to bridging the capability gap (internal development, strategic alliance, or acquisition). These response strategies are neither mutually exclusive nor static, and their relative focus differs over time as well as across incumbents. Such inter-temporal and cross-sectional variations in response strategies are influenced by various incumbent-specific characteristics and shaped by interrelated contingencies internal or external to incumbents.     

‘Hybrid’ open source software virtual communities of practice – a conceptual framework

‘Hybrid’ open source software communities are conducive to knowledge integration and innovation, and can be seen through a community of practice lens. In this paper, we develop an integrated process theory of structural attributes and social mechanisms of hybrid virtual communities. We offer a dynamic view of knowledge integration and innovation in such communities. We also emphasise the multi-faceted nature of virtual communities and identify factors that regulate participation and sustain such communities. This has implications for theorising about knowledge integration and innovation in hybrid virtual settings. Finally, virtual ethnography and multi-level research are suggested for future research.     

城市“幸福社区”的构建模式探讨——武汉市“幸福社区”的调研报告

城市社区的建设目标应是满足社区居民的生活需求,培育和发展社区的社会资本,引导居民参与社区活动和社区建设,协同社会力量共建"幸福社区"。本文结合对武汉市创建"幸福社区"的实地调研,探索城市"幸福社区"的构建模式。     

提高大学新生适应能力的路径探索

大学新生初到大学校园,面对学习方式、生活环境、人际关系等方面错综复杂的变化,往往出现适应危机。通过对新生中经常出现的适应能力问题进行剖析,提出创新新生入学教育形式、加强专业导航和职业生涯规划教育、充分发挥高年级学生"朋辈辅导"作用、指导新生尽快建立良好的人际关系、加强心理健康教育,提高大学生心理素质、加强安全教育与法制教育、辅导员保持与学生的密切接触等七大举措,以帮助新生较快地适应大学,融入新的环境。     

支持协同创新体能力构建的知识管理方案设计

在界定协同创新概念的基础上,从主体、活动和客体三个角度对该概念进行了解析,明确了协同创新和一般创新的区别;明晰了协同创新体和协同创新体能力构建的概念,提出了协同创新体能力构建中的3个难题,即主体诚信问题、活动可持续发展问题、客体网络联接问题。针对上述问题,从3个方面提出了知识管理方案设计思路,包括知识创新多元化主体联盟、多维度活动联通、多层面客体联接。     

面向用户创新社区的企业知识创新价值链模型研究

定义了用户创新社区,根据SECI模型,描述了用户创新社区中的知识创新过程。基于网络环境下知识创新和用户行为特征,构建了基于用户创新社区的企业知识创新价值链模型,分别研究了模型中提出的知识创新辅助活动和知识创新基本活动。以小米科技为例,指出了实施基于用户创新社区的企业知识创新模式的具体实施步骤和措施。     

Industrial Effects of European Community Integration

This paper examines the potential effects of European Community (EC) integration. It develops a number of assumptions representing the EC directives, and introduces them in the INFORUM system of models, which links inter-industry dynamic macro-economic models of 10 countries. These assumptions include the deregulation of financial services, abolition of border controls, increased competition, economies of scale and opening up of government procurement. According to the system results, the European economies will experience higher economic growth and higher per capita income, with lower prices and higher labor productivity. It is expected that the rest of the world economies will not be affected significantly by the European integration. Finally, the integration process will generate diverse results across sectors in different countries.     

Conceptualising environmental collective action: why gender matters

This paper demonstrates how institutions for natural resourcemanagement (such as community forestry groups), which appearto be participative, equitable and efficient, can be found lackingon all three counts from a gender perspective. It also examinespossible gender differences in social networks, values and motivations.Although there is little to suggest that women are inherentlymore conservationist than men, the distinctness of women's socialnetworks embodying prior experience of successful cooperation,their higher dependence on these networks (as also on the commonsin general), and their potentially greater group homogeneityrelative to men, could provide an important (and largely ignored)basis for organising sustainable environmental collective action.The paper also outlines the factors that can constrain or facilitatewomen's participation in formal environmental management groups.Illustrative examples are drawn from rural South Asia.