Patterns of organisational innovation: comparison of western and eastern countries in Europe

West European (WE) countries perform better in innovation than their counterparts in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). In this paper organisational innovation (OI) patterns in CEE compared to WE are studied. The paper exploits the Community Innovation Survey 2008, 2010 and 2012 and uses this firm-level innovation data from 12 countries. The authors introduce a novel approach, which elucidates seven types of OI patterns based on an intensity of firms’ engagement in OI. According to this notation most companies in WE were found to be complex internal innovators or complex innovators. In CEE, the largest share of companies in this period were exclusively work management-oriented. This picture remains the same throughout the three waves of the survey. The differences in OI can largely be explained through the differences in the background variables of the companies or through other innovation types, so if CEE and WE companies converge in these terms, much of the difference in OI also disappears. Nevertheless, there is also a part of the divergence which can be related to the societal level through path dependent developments in these countries.     

Implementations,change management and evaluation: A case study of the centre for excellence in teaching and learning in reusable learning objects

Abstract

This paper describes an e-learning project in the area of reusable learning objects (RLOs) that has attempted to bring about technological and cultural change across three diverse universities. The three partner universities in the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning in Reusable Learning Objects (RLO-CETL) are London Metropolitan University (LMU), the Universities of Cambridge (CAM) and Nottingham (NOTT). The goal of our study was to gain an improved understanding of the following question: what are the cultural differences across three organisations in the management of people and change? The work described in this paper draws on an institutional change model and grounded theory to provide a framework for the qualitative analysis of data from practitioners from the three partner sites. A key facet of our change model is the notion of the tipping point; this is a point at which enough individuals in a system have adopted an innovation so that the innovation's further rate of adoption becomes self-sustaining. It appears that key pockets in some of the partner sites have hit the tipping point. Various other findings are presented on the basis of our qualitative analysis, which draw out the cultural differences across the three sites. The paper concludes by asserting that the qualitative analysis has raised various issues, which are worthy of further research, particularly the under-researched role of students as key change agents.     

Laptops for students: Understanding and evaluating the drivers for change

Abstract

This paper describes the development of the student laptop initiative at the University of Strathclyde, examines the process by which this project became an embedded service and assesses the impact that this technology-rich, pedagogically flexible initiative has had on institutional structures, roles and processes. The authors use the MIT90s Model for Institutional Change to explore the way in which technology influences organisational development. A wealth of quantitative and qualitative evidence has been gathered over the last 7 years to support the examination of whether the benefits of the initiative justify the cost to the student and to the institution.     

Changing the Status Quo of Migration and Asylum Policies in Turkey: A Narrative Inquiry

Abstract

Turkey has been experiencing a migration policy transformation in the wake of a new ruling entitled the ‘Foreigners and International Protection Law’ (FIPL). This qualitative inquiry investigates this major change process by focusing on the planned reorganisation which is a result of the legislation process, with the aim of connecting the change process to a change model. The researcher interviewed twenty-seven middle and upper-level managers and experts from the Foreigners, Border, and Asylum Department (FBAD) and Asylum and Migration Bureau (AMB) of the Turkish Ministry of the Interior. Both their implementation of the change process and perceptions on such a transformation period were investigated. The study also examined the change process of the irregular migration and asylum regime within Turkey’s bid for full European Union membership as well as implementation of the draft FIPL. This study provides an example of a policy change process by analysing how governmental practice and legislation have evolved with regard to irregular migration, asylum seekers, and refugees in Turkey. The results noticeably reveal that, instead of seeing irregular migration and asylum as merely a threat to national security or a welfare issue, Turkey has chosen a way of developing a humanitarian approach in both the legislative and administrative fields. This is the first study which attempts to analyse a particular policy change process in the migration and asylum regime in Turkey. The results could influence policy dynamics and set priorities by suggesting policy solutions.     

Communicating across,within and between,cultures: Toward inclusion and social change

In this article, I provide some reflections on the theme of this special issue and the recent World Public Relations Forum, “Communication across cultures”. In doing so, I was initially tempted to respond with a “how to”, but instead asked myself a fundamental question: “Who is communicating with whom, and why? ” The reason I pose this question is because we need to take stock of our assumptions and the perspectives we take as communication scholars and practitioners. As we face the new opportunities and challenges of global, highly mobile, and increasingly diverse and digitally savvy publics, we also need to clarify some of our assumptions. To expound on this, I will touch on the global, mobile and multicultural context; then discuss how inclusion must be combined with a focus on diversity, and conclude with a call for practitioners communicating across, within and between cultures to advocate for social change.     

Exploring linkages between organisational culture and gender equality work—An ethnography of a multinational engineering company

This article explores linkages between organisation-specific cultural narratives and gender-equality programme planning through the lens of the ‘historicity’ concept. The article argues that to fully understand problem definitions, programme design and organisational change processes related to gender equality, scholars and practitioners cannot focus one-sidedly on expected outcomes and effects; we must also factor in cultural narratives, because gender equality actors never arrive at their work as ‘tabulae rasae’. A community of actors always draws on shared dispositions that give sense, direction and shape to their anticipations of the future hereby guiding their actions in the present. Based on an ethnography of a multinational engineering company, the article shows how cultural narratives may serve in different ways as support factors for gender equality programme planning and implementation, if they are actively but mindfully engaged. This mindfulness is important as positive cultural narratives may entail problematic gender dimensions. On the other hand, negative cultural narratives may entail important learning outcomes that may benefit future gender equality initiatives. The analysis further points to the centrality of strategic communication, leadership commitment and comprehensive evaluation in order to mobilise the potential of cultural narratives as support factors to gender equality work. Finally, this article offers a rich example to scholars and practitioners of how to employ cultural analysis in relation to gender equality activities, and demonstrates the value of the insights produced by this analysis for the case company and its gender equality programme.     

Technology,social services and organizational innovation or how great expectations in London and Cardiff are dashed in Lowestoft and Cymtyrch

The purpose of this paper is to illuminate important aspects of the policy implementation process in UK welfare organizations. We draw on two evaluations in which we were each involved — those of the Integrated Children's System and the Children's Fund. Our interpretive frameworks share a concern to foreground the significance of the local, informal, and ground level, but do so in ways that acknowledge the encompassing governmental and policy contexts. We illustrate and assess the significance of multiple policy aspirations, the significance of local implementation contexts, the diverse ways in which practitioners gain and subsequently develop knowledge of how policy works, and how such knowledge moves about in organizations. We indicate the kinds of expertise that social service workers bring to and achieve as actors within policy innovations, and how they may manage and in some cases seek to control knowledge shifts between providers and users of services. We infer the inadequacy of conventional top-down models of implementing policy innovations.     

Work,family and public policy dynamics in France

To understand the relationships between changes to the family and changes to the sphere of work and employment, and how they have developed over time, requires considering a third factor, i.e. public policies, and in particular family policies. In this article, we attempt to clarify theoretically these interactions by taking into account the changes that have taken place in France since World War II. To appraise the French configuration in a special issue on Southern Europe, we begin by explaining why we consider France is following a ‘Southern path’. In a second section, we argue that family transformations are mainly the result of changes that affect work and employment. A similar process combining individualisation, flexibility and precariousness is affecting both spheres of existence. In a last section, we prose a matrix of ideas, ideologies and outcomes to understand the main family policy reforms since World War II.     

Omniscience at the Edge of Chaos: complexity,defences and change in a Children and Families Social Work department

ABSTRACT

This paper will explore a period of organisational change in a Children and Families Social Work team, applying ideas from complexity theory and psychoanalysis to explore the changes that occurred. In doing so it will critique the Newtonian concept of cause-and-effect linear causality, instead positing a nonlinear model of an organisation as a complex adaptive system in flux as it interacts with its environment. The paper will go on to posit that Bion’s psychoanalytic concepts of Omniscience and K Activity are self-organising forces in social care organisations, and when anxiety is not managed effectively, reductionist technical-rationale approaches to Children and Families Social Work dominate practice. It will conclude by outlining how the organisation’s effective management of anxiety through the creation of containment, created a series of organisational changes. These changes better supported the management of the complexity and uncertainty inherent in the social work task, raising possibilities of improvements in social work practice beyond the organisation.     

Memories of Conflict and Present-Day Struggles in Europe: New Tensions between Corporatism,Class, and Social Movements

This lecture addresses the connection between the production in the present of particular memories of the past and the ability to frame present-day conflicts in ways that render certain possibilities legitimate while excluding others. Through the ethnographic material I have gathered during my career I will show how different projects of the future (personal and collective) appeal to memories of conflict that link responsibilities and generations at different scales. Taking as my object of observation the transformations in economic relations in a heavy industrial region of northwestern Spain I will trace the connections between the languages and practices of contention, the reconfigured structures of production and governance, and the production of diverse memories (and silences) of conflict. Diverse memories produce struggles framed in class terms, or struggles framed in terms of corporatist interests, or in terms of contingently defined social claims. Through this often ambivalent delimitation of conflicts between past and present, the field of possible futures gets configured and with it the spectrum of possible political action.     

Promoting choice and control in residential services for people with learning disabilities

This paper discusses the gap between policy goals and practice in residential services for people with learning disabilities. Drawing on a nine month ethnographic study of three residential services, it outlines a range of obstacles to the promotion of choice and control that were routinely observed in the culture and working practices of the services. Issues discussed include conflicting service values and agendas, inspection regimes, an attention to the bigger decisions in a person's life when empowerment could more quickly and effectively be promoted at the level of everyday practice, problems of communication and interpretation and the pervasiveness of teaching. We offer a range of suggestions as to how these obstacles might be tackled.     

Using database linkages to measure innovation,commercialization, and survival of small businesses

Here, we report the results of an outcomes evaluation of the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Programs at the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS). Since the programs’ inception, assessments of the SBIR/STTR programs at several federal agencies have utilized surveys of former grantees as the primary source of data. Response rates have typically been low, making non-response bias a potential threat to the validity of some of these studies’ results. Meanwhile, the availability of large publicly-available datasets continues to grow and methods of text mining and linking databases continue to improve. By linking NIGMS grant funding records, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office data, and business intelligence databases, we explored innovation, commercialization and survival for recipients of NIGMS SBIR/STTR funding. In doing so, we were able to more completely assess several key outcomes of the NIGMS SBIR/STTR program. Our evaluation demonstrated that the NIGMS program performed above baseline expectations along all dimensions, and comparably to other federal agency SBIR/STTR grant programs. In addition, we show that the use of extant data increasingly is a viable, less expensive, and more reliable approach to gathering data for evaluation studies.     

Initiating e-learning by stealth,participation and consultation in a late majority institution

Abstract

The extent to which opportunities afforded by e-learning are embraced by an institution can depend in large measure on whether it is perceived as enabling and transformative or as a major and disruptive distraction. Most case studies focus on the former. This paper describes how e-learning was introduced into the latter environment. The sensitivity of competing pressures in a research intensive university substantially influenced the manner in which e-learning was promoted. This paper tells that story, from initial stealth to eventual university acknowledgement of the relevance of e-learning specifically to its own context.     

Going Green: Environmental Protest,Policy, and CO2 Emissions in U.S. States, 1990–2007

A major goal of the environmental movement is to conserve or improve the natural environment, but evidence showing that environmental mobilization produces positive environmental outcomes is mixed. This article addresses a fundamental question about the relative impact of pro‐environmental mobilization and the scope of an environmental policy regime on the natural environment. Using panel data at the state level from 1990 through 2007, we explore how environmental protest and environmental policies independently (or jointly) reduce CO₂ emissions in U.S. states. We find that the level of emissions in a state declines in states with increases in pro‐environmental protest, net of the effects of the range of environmental policies enacted, gasoline taxes, liberal attitudes, reliance on the fossil fuel industry, number of registered lobbyist organizations, gross state product, and population size.     

Politics of innovation and development: The role of industry associations in integrating political,bureaucratic, industrial and health systems in India and South Africa

Integrating political, bureaucratic, industrial and healthcare systems has been a major challenge for politics of innovation and development policy in low‐ and middle‐income countries. This challenge has so far been understood in terms of separate industrial and health‐related innovation policies without paying adequate attention to the institutional roles of biopharmaceutical and other umbrella associations. This article seeks to examine such roles in the developmental contexts of South Africa and India. The argument put forward is that, in both countries, biopharmaceutical and umbrella associations have evolved from lobbying organizations to institutional partners who influence the politics of innovation and development—and therefore the degree of integration and fragmentation—of political, bureaucratic, industrial innovation and health systems.     

Feminist Institutional Activists: Venue Shifting,Strategic Adaptation,and Winning the Pregnancy Discrimination Act

We examine efforts of feminist institutional activists in the 1960s and 1970s as they worked to gain U.S. federal policy to combat workplace pregnancy discrimination. The success of these activists in winning policy change provides a case that allows us to develop a theoretical understanding of how feminist institutional activists can succeed in winning policy change. We find that when institutional activists strategically shifted governmental arenas and adapted their mobilization and discursive strategies to these arenas, they were able to dismantle policy‐specific barriers that impeded their goals. In taking these steps, feminist institutional activists were successful in opening up both contingent and structural opportunities, which ultimately allowed them to gain the policy change they sought.     

Technology,offshoring and the task content of occupations in the United Kingdom

The authors analyse change in employment levels and in the task content of occupations, both within occupations (i.e. at the intensive margin) and between occupations (i.e. at the extensive margin) in the United Kingdom over the period 1997–2006 using data from the national Skills Survey, which has comparable within‐occupation task data for three waves: 1997, 2001 and 2006. They find that within‐occupation task content changed significantly, and that the magnitude of change was similar to that found at the extensive margin. Their econometric results suggest that these intensive‐margin shifts can be explained by technological improvements but not by offshoring.     

Action,Technology, and the Homogenisation of Place: Why Climate Change is Antithetical to Political Action

According to Hannah Arendt, the concept of ‘political action’ is a fundamental component of the human condition because it encapsulates how the uniqueness of each human being intersects to create unpredictable political initiatives and effects. Recently, despite being one of the most daunting political challenges ever faced by humanity, there has been a noted collective action failure, or inaction, concerning the global threat of anthropogenic climate change. Why? This article seeks to explain this political inaction in a new way: by examining the metaphysical role that technology plays in disclosing the climate as a thinkable and global object. After applying the philosophy of Martin Heidegger to the complex mathematical general circulation models (GCMs) used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), this article details how the metaphysics underlying GCMs manifests the perceivable world by ‘enframing’ it, or by implicitly representing subjects, objects, and Nature itself, as a predictable, calculable, and orderable relation of static forces. When this metaphysical and mathematical uniformity constructs the climate as a calculable object that is globalised through the IPCC, it is ultimately found to be contradictory to the distinctness and unpredictability necessary for distinct human action to occur. Paradoxically, therefore, political action is argued to be metaphysically antithetical to the technologically enframed science, politics, and discourse, of global climate change itself. The importance of distinct and plural human places, when filtered through GCMs, becomes subsumed by the climate as a homogenous, calculative, and politically inactive, global object.