Transformer in navigation: Diverse government roles for open innovation in China's high-speed rail

Based on a longitudinal case study of China's high-speed rail embedded in the emerging economy context, we focus on what role the government plays and how that matters to open innovation (OI) for competitive advantage. By linking the OI literature with the national political institutions literature to motivate our research question, we propose a statist-based OI view to differentiate diverse government roles, investigating how government adopts roles in a combined way to push OI in stages. Our findings suggest that government is an important strategic decision-maker for OI. Specifically, the government plays various roles as commander, protector, cultivator, and intermediator, reflecting state activism derived from national political institutions, to construct institutional-level OI for domestic OI activities, and inbound and outbound OI across national borders. We find government can deliberately and strategically use its diverse roles in a combined way to push OI for competitive advantage through the industrial evolutionary process over time. Our study contributes to the OI literature and integrates the strategic management literature with the study of OI to provide new insights to explain the origins of competitive advantage from the state perspective.     

Engaging leader – Engaged employees? A cross-lagged study on employee engagement

The goal of this study is to provide a cross-lagged examination of the relationships between engaging leadership, job resources and employee work engagement. We propose a mediation model and we postulate that engaging leadership can increase perceptions of three specific job resources (i.e. autonomy, support from colleagues and opportunities for learning and development) which theoretically correspond to the three facets of engaging leadership (i.e., inspiring, connecting and strengthening, respectively). Subsequently, in keeping with the extant body of Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) research, we link job resources to employee work engagement. Our hypotheses were tested on data collected at two time-points – T1 (N = 759) and T2 (N = 273) –from employees working for a hotel chain in the Netherlands. In line with our expectations, engaging leadership showed a significant cross-lagged relationship with autonomy and support from colleagues, but did not predict learning opportunities and work engagement across time. While we formulated specific hypotheses, we also tested reversed causation relationships. We found no direct effect from engaging leadership on employee work engagement, however, the reversed effect was significant; employee perceptions of engaging leadership were shaped by their own engagement experiences. Importantly, engaged employees at T1 reported more job resources at T2. By providing a cross-lagged examination of our model, we showed that engaging leaders as well as employees’ positive affective state of being engaged, are essential to shaping a resourceful work context. A comprehensive view on the triggers and outcomes of work engagement and engaging leadership is needed, as the traditional unidirectional cause-effect rationale fails to explain how these concepts relate to one another and to employee experiences of job resources.     

Negotiating Accessibility for Electronic Resources

Abstract

Accessibility of library electronic resources is a must. Its importance derives from professional ethics of librarianship, rising total costs of acquisition, and mounting legal challenges to colleges and universities that fail to provide resources accessible to users with disabilities. Library staff are responsible for ensuring the accessibility of vendor-licensed eresources. This column reviews the accessibility clauses of nine model license agreements for electronic resources. It describes terms that should go into an optimal accessibility clause and creates a composite model clause. It also provides guidance for library staff seeking to negotiate stronger accessibility language into vendor license agreements. Finally, it addresses the impact of accommodation requests on the total cost of acquiring library eresources, concluding with a call to redouble efforts to advocate for greater accessibility and educate both vendors and library staff about its importance.     

People with disability and new disaster communications: access and the social media mash-up

This article explores how a lack of access to increasingly complex and overlapping digital communications platforms in times of disaster for people with disabilities has the potential to make already life-threatening situations considerably more dangerous. As we are increasingly coming to rely on a social media mash-up of digital platforms to assist in communications during disaster situations, the issue of accessibility for people with disabilities is as dire as if it was high ground during a tsunami or transport during a typhoon. The contemporary social media environment is characterised by a complex and overlapping network of complementary platforms, populated by user-generated content, where people communicate and exchange ideas. In this environment, YouTube videos are posted to Facebook and embedded in blogs, and Twitter is used to link to these other sites and is itself embedded in other platforms. These networks are increasingly supplementing and supplanting more traditional communication platforms, such as the television and radio, particularly in times of disaster. The concern of this paper is that the elements from which this mash-up of communications channels is made are not always accessible to people with disabilities. This evolving network of social media-based communication exposes the limits of existing Internet-based universal design.     

“Who generates this city”? Socialist strategy in contemporary London

This essay, based on a “militant ethnography” of the attempts of the small radical grassroots activist group, Our London (a pseudonym), to mobilize a collective oppositional politics through activities around an election campaign, engages critically with E. Laclau and C. Mouffe's arguments on discourse and collectivity in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (London: Verso, 1985). I argue, on the basis of my findings, that while their model does provide insights that help describe the process of building collectivity from among disparate perspectives and identities, we need to go beyond a focus on discourse alone and consider the ways politics is shaped by material contexts. This is necessary if we are to understand the continued appeal of class politics as well as the difficulties in mobilizing collectivity in highly unequal and fragmented cities. From an activist perspective, the essay also highlights how developing a conception of collective interests and a critique of overarching systems of exploitation can be important in building political unity.     

浅析加强和改进高校的思想政治教育工作

高校的思想政治教育工作在我国的现代化建设和发展中占有着举足轻重的作用,但高校思想政治工作在实际的操作中依然存在着不容忽视的问题。文章试从高校思想政治教育工作的必要性、紧迫性两方面出发,对加强高校思想政治工作进行探索,进而提出一些改进措施,以期进一步强化高校思想政治教育工作。     

对增强新时期大学生思想政治教育理论说服力的思考

国务院《关于进一步加强和改进大学生思想政治教育的意见》科学地阐明了重视科学理论、加强理论武装对于做好新形势下大学生思想政治教育的极端重要性,明确了理论在思想政治教育中的基础性作用。探析增强大学生思想政治教育理论说服力的路径,是贯彻《意见》精神、做好新世纪新阶段大学生思想政治教育工作的必然要求。     

成都市民旅游感应空间研究

旅游感应强度是研究旅游感应空间的一个角度。通过对《成都晚报》“旅游”专刊最近 6年的统计 ,得到全国 34个省级行政区及四川省内分地区作为旅游目的地的出现频次 ,以此频次来表征成都市民对国内及省内旅游目的地的感应强度。利用感应强度从省际和省内不同尺度揭示了成都市民旅游感应空间的特点 ,并发现旅游感应空间的一些新特征     

论保护知识产权对信息资源共享的影响

在知识经济环境下 ,信息资源共享是提高整个社会信息资源获知能力与利用率的关键。保护知识产权就是保护知识生产者生产知识的动力 ,就是保护资源共享的源泉。它可以极大地促进知识资源的生产和有序利用。同时 ,保护知识产权又将在一定程度上限制和约束资源共享。因此 ,保护知识产权 ,充分发挥资源共享的功能 ,需要加强知识产权保护的立法、执法及宣传 ,实现保护知识产权与资源共享的有机结合     

开发我国人力资源创新能力的对策研究

创新是推动社会发展的动力 ,特别是在知识经济时代 ,一个国家竞争能力的强弱主要依赖于创新 ,而创新源于具有创新能力的人才。笔者从分析影响人力资源创新能力的心理因素和社会环境因素入手 ,针对这些影响因素提出了开发我国人力资源创新能力的对策。