Collaboration experience in the supply chain of knowledge and patent development

Abstract

In this paper, we aim at understanding the role of collaboration experience in supply chains of knowledge (SCoK). The SCoK of a company is its supply chain not related to the flow of physical goods but to the flow of R&D commodities. R&D commodities are for example patents, technologies, research services, studies, and projects, and, in high-tech industries, their development and commercialisation are considered as important as real products. To accomplish our aim in this paper, we fulfil the following research objectives: (1) investigate the relationship between the collaboration experience in SCoK and the propensity of the firm to develop new patents; (2) examine how the structural embeddedness of the firm within its SCoK mediates this relationship. We ground our conceptual model on the supply chain, open innovation and social capital literatures and empirically test our hypotheses on a cross-sectional data-set of 208 biotech companies that have signed 612 SCoK agreements in the years 2006–2010. The key findings of this study are: first, accumulating experience in SCoK collaborations facilitates the development of new patents; second, being central and bridging structural holes within the SCoK are two means by which the experience in SCoK collaborations is translated into new patents.     

Social welfare grey zones: how and why subnational actors provide when nations do not?

In an era where even citizenship is not a guarantee of access to the welfare state, can non-citizens gain access to social protection? Using health care as a lens, and the United States and Spain as cases, we find that non-citizens do have access to social protection via what we call ‘grey zones’, namely points of disagreement between national and local governments that create opportunities for non-citizens. Grey zones are possible due to processes that are often seen as disenfranchising: the denationalisation of policy and the disaggregation of citizenship. In addition, they tend to open up regardless of the nature or intent of national reforms. That said, we find significant variation in the extent to which subnational governments take advantage of them. While differences are somewhat explained by partisanship, significant outliers warrant further investigation.     

Advocacy Communication and Social Identity: An Exploration of Social Media Outreach

Increasingly, advocacy organizations employ social networking sites as inexpensive and often effective ways to disseminate outreach messages. For groups working to reach lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) youth, social media provide key platforms for connecting with target audiences. Although these young people increasingly utilize social media, little is known about how digital advocacy campaigns influence their sexual identity formation. This article applies concepts of social identity to examine how LGBTQ youth understand advocacy campaigns, how they perceive LGBTQ as a social category presented in campaigns, and what values they assign to LGBTQ group membership.     

Fanon’s other children: psychopolitical and pedagogical implications

Discussions of the writings of theorist, psychiatrist and revolutionary, Frantz Fanon, in the fields of education and childhood typically focus on his account of a traumatic encounter with a white child, whose fear at the sight of a black man is said to create a vilified, racialised identity and installs an irreversible social and corporeal alienation. Yet Fanon’s writings include a range of other depictions of children, childhood and education which reflect his broader views of colonial and decolonisation processes that include recognisable tropes of classic developmentalism, including gender chauvinisms. Nevertheless, it is suggested that the diversity and complexity of child-related allusions across his texts allow for other critical readings that can inform educational debates on anticolonial analyses, of children, childhood and of their more general role in post and anti-development discourse.     

Does schooling protect sexual health? The association between three measures of education and STIs among adolescents in Malawi

While multiple studies have documented shifting educational gradients in HIV prevalence, less attention has been given to the effect of school participation and academic skills on infection during adolescence. Using the Malawi Schooling and Adolescent Study, a longitudinal survey that followed 2,649 young people aged 14–17 at baseline from 2007 to 2013, we estimate the effect of three education variables: school enrolment, grade attainment, and academic skills—numeracy and Chichewa literacy—on herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2) and HIV incidence using interval-censored survival analysis. We find that grade attainment is significantly associated with lower rates of both HSV-2 and HIV among girls, and is negatively associated with HSV-2 but not HIV among boys. School enrolment and academic skills are not significantly associated with sexually transmitted infections (STIs) for boys or girls in our final models. Efforts to encourage school progression in high-prevalence settings in sub-Saharan Africa could well reduce, or at least postpone, acquisition of STIs.     

Dynamic and Marketing Capabilities as Predictors of Social Enterprises’ Performance

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - Social enterprises (SEs) have an increasingly important role in developing more equitable societies worldwide. The...     

‘Chinese-Mexicans’ and ‘Blackest Asians’: Filipino American youth resisting the racial binary

This study provides a deeper understanding of the interracial connections not just between non-whites and whites, but among non-whites. Filipino American youth attending high school in New York City contended with a dominant bipolar racial discourse that marginalizes the racialized experiences of Asians and Pacific Islanders. However, instead of feeling invisible or marginalized, data point to how they negotiated a black–white racial discourse to decide when and how they enter dialogues about race. Filipino youth reconceptualized this racial binary to position themselves on a continuum to form the racial ‘middle ground’ between blacks and whites. Importantly, rather than a racial hierarchy that places whites at the top, youth used discursive strategies to place themselves on a racial continuum that emphasizes the interconnectedness among racial minorities.