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on Knowledge Management and Knowledge Economy |
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Issue of 2008‒11‒04
twelve papers chosen by Laura Stefanescu European Research Centre of Managerial Studies in Business Administration |
| By: | David Cayla (ATOM - Analyse Théorique des Organisations et des Marchés - Université Panthéon-Sorbonne - Paris I) |
| Abstract: | This paper aims to analyze learning as a two-type process. A dynamic equilibrium process represents a stable learning process, that may express an individualistic behavioral learning or an organizational adaptation. A teleological process represents an intentional, goal-oriented, learning process. This second type of learning can express an individualistic cognitive learning or a managerial organizational change. It is argued that this learning typology can helps to understand why similar organizations or individuals may learn differently when confronted to the same environmental stimuli. |
| Keywords: | Dynamic Equilibrium; Learning; Organizational Learning; Teleology |
| Date: | 2008–06–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:paris1:halshs-00267975_v1&r=knm |
| By: | Bergmann, E. Ariel; Stewart, Mairi; Watson, Fiona; Colombo, Sergio; Ready, Richard; Hanley, Nick |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we investigate whether people's knowledge of the past influences their preferences and values towards future landscape change. "Knowledge of the past" is one aspect of the information set held by individuals, and a well-established finding in economics is that changes in information can change preferences and values. The particular aspects of knowledge of the past we work with here are (i) awareness of past landuse, as represented by woodland cover and (ii) awareness of differing and sometimes contradictory literary impressions of this past landscape. The case studies used here relate to prospective changes in woodland cover in two UK national parks, the Lake District and the Trossachs. We find that people who are made aware that the landscape has changed over time, or that perceptions of the landscape have changed over time, are more likely to favour changes to the current landscape (are less likely to favour the status quo). Knowledge of the past therefore seems to have an impact on preferences for future landscapes. We also investigate the impacts on preferences of how "special", how "wild" and how "worked in" people perceive the landscapes of these two national parks to be. |
| Keywords: | woodland management; landscape preferences; landscape change; national parks; environmental history |
| Date: | 2008–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:stl:stledp:2008-05&r=knm |
| By: | Gautier Duflos (CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - CNRS : UMR8174 - Université Panthéon-Sorbonne - Paris I, EEP-PSE - Ecole d'Économie de Paris - Paris School of Economics - Ecole d'Économie de Paris); Etienne Pfister (BETA-Règles - Université de Nancy II) |
| Abstract: | This article analyzes the individual determinants of acquisition activity and target choices in the pharmaceutical industry over the period 1978-2002. The "innovation gap" hypothesis states that acquiring firms lack promising drug compounds and acquire firms with more promising drug prospects. A duration model implemented over a panel of more than 400 firms relates the probabilities of being an purchaser or a target to financial, R&D ant patent data to investigate this explanation more deeply. Results show that purchasers are firms with a lower Tobin's Q and decreasing sales, which could indicate that acquisitions are used to compensate for low internal growth prospects. Firms with a higher proportion of radical patents in their portfolio, especially in pharmaceutical and biothechnological patent classes, face a higher probability of being targeted, indicating that acquiring firms are indeed searching for innovative competencies. However, acquiring firms also present a significant absorptive capacity : their R&D investment increases in the year preceding the operation and their patent stock is larger and more diversified than for non-acquiring firms. Finally, we observe that over the last ten years of the sample period, firms have paid a greater attention to the size of the target's portfolio. |
| Keywords: | M&A, pharmaceutical, innovations, patent citations. |
| Date: | 2008–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:paris1:halshs-00331211_v1&r=knm |
| By: | Olivier Bruno (GREDEG - Groupe de Recherche en Droit, Economie et Gestion - CNRS : UMR6227 - Université de Nice Sophia-Antipolis); Cuong Le Van (CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - CNRS : UMR8174 - Université Panthéon-Sorbonne - Paris I, EEP-PSE - Ecole d'Économie de Paris - Paris School of Economics - Ecole d'Économie de Paris); Benoit Masquin (GREDEG - Groupe de Recherche en Droit, Economie et Gestion - CNRS : UMR6227 - Université de Nice Sophia-Antipolis) |
| Abstract: | We develop a model of optimal pattern of economic development that is first rooted in physical capital accumulation and then in technical progress. We study an economy where capital accumulation and innovative activity take place within a two sector model. The first sector produces a consumption good using physical capital and non skilled labor. Technological progress in the consumption sector is driven by the research activity that takes place in the second sector. Research activity which produces new technologies requires technological capital and skilled labor. New technologies induce an endogenous increase of the Total Factor Productivity of the consumption sector. Physical and technological capital are not substitutable while skilled and non skilled labor may be substitutable. We show that under conditions of the adoption process of new technologies, the optimal strategy for a developing country consists in accumulating physical capital first; postponing the importation of technological capital to the second stage of development. This result is due to a threshold effect from which new technologies begin to have an impact on the productivity of the consumption sector. However, we show that once a certain level of wealth is reached, it becomes optimal for the economy to import technological capital toproduce new technologies. |
| Keywords: | economic development, technical progress, skilled labor, non skilled labor, total factor productivity , new technology, developing countries |
| Date: | 2008–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:paris1:halshs-00101361_v2&r=knm |
| By: | Jan Gunnarsson (Department of Economics, University of Copenhagen); Torsten Wallin |
| Abstract: | This article examines how the birth and the development of regional systems of innovation are connected with economic selection and points to implications for regional-level policies. The research questions are explored using an evolutionary model, which emphasises geographical spaces and production of intermediate goods. In particular we are concerned with how cooperative behaviour of technology producers is affected by the need to protect technological secrecies and of being financially constrained by forms demanding innovative input. Based on the theoretical model, we provide an analysis using computer simulations. The primary fidings are, firstly, that the model generates predictions suited for empirical research on how economic selection influences cooperative behaviour of innovative actors. Secondly, we demonstrate how a region's entrepreneurial activity and growth can be controlled in a decentralised way by regions. |
| Keywords: | social capital; social identity; civil society; open methods of coordination |
| JEL: | L24 O33 R38 |
| Date: | 2008–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:kud:kuiedp:0823&r=knm |
| By: | Uwe Cantner (Department of Economics, Friedrich-Schiller-University); Andreas Meder (Department of Economics, Friedrich-Schiller-University); Tina Wolf (Department of Economics, Friedrich-Schiller-University) |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the possible presence of three problems in regional innovation systems (RIS): intermediation, reciprocity and compatibility. Based on ï¬rm data gathered for three different regions, Northern Hesse, Jena and Sophia Antipolis, we can show that a low propensity to cooperate in a RIS is related to poorly performing intermediaries and a low complementarity with the regional knowledge base. The issue of trust in cooperating tends to have no effect on the propensity to cooperate. However, it is a main determinant of failed cooperation projects. |
| Keywords: | regional innovation systems, reciprocity, intermediation, complementarity, cooperation |
| JEL: | D81 O18 P25 |
| Date: | 2008–10–28 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jrp:jrpwrp:2008-081&r=knm |
| By: | Jeroen de Jong; Eric von Hippel |
| Abstract: | The contribution of this paper is threefold. Firstly, we measure the incidence of user innovation in a broad sample of firms. Previous work has collected repeated evidence on the frequency of user innovation in a variety of industries and products, but so far its incidence has not been demonstrated in samples of larger business populations. Secondly, we assess if current innovation surveys adequately capture user innovation. Surveys such as the CIS (Community Innovation Survey) take a producer perspective and seem to overlook that in practice many innovation efforts are done by users to satisfy their process needs. Thirdly, we explore to what extent user innovations are transferred to producer firms. In doing so we assess if user innovation is marked by voluntary spillovers which is a strong argument to justify policies for user innovation. Drawing on survey data of 2 416 SMEs in the Netherlands, we find that 21% of all SMEs engage in user innovation, i.e. they develop and/or significantly modify existing techniques, equipment or software to satisfy their own process-related needs. We also find that user innovation is remains largely invisible in the current innovation surveys. Next, in a survey of technology-based small firms in the Netherlands we identified 364 specific user innovations. We found that users tend not to patent or protect their innovations, and that one out of four is transferred to producers. The data suggest a significant feedstock of voluntary knowledge spillovers from users to producer firms. We conclude that future innovation surveys should explicitly capture user innovation, and develop some recommendations to guide this effort. We also plea for more research on policies for user innovation. |
| Date: | 2008–10–21 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eim:papers:h200814&r=knm |
| By: | Michael Rothgang |
| Abstract: | The EU Barcelona target assumes a close causal relationship between corporate R&D, the competitiveness of business firms and the economic performance of industrial countries. Testing this hypothesis, this paper contrasts innovation and production activities in four research-intensive manufacturing sectors (chemicals and pharmaceuticals, motor vehicles, machinery, and electrical engineering). Starting point are observed long-term changes in worldwide value added of the manufacturing sector.The empirical analysis is based on a unique survey of R&D-intensive business firms in Germany and 50 personal interviews in large industrial companies. The results show that there is no simple connection between R&D and competitiveness. Moreover, the likely consequences of promoting R&D differ substantially between industries. |
| Keywords: | Sectoral innovation systems, corporate R&D Strategies, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, machinery, electrical engineering,motor vehicles, bazaar effect |
| JEL: | L6 O23 R32 |
| Date: | 2008–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rwi:repape:0059&r=knm |
| By: | Fabio Mariani (CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - CNRS : UMR8174 - Université Panthéon-Sorbonne - Paris I) |
| Abstract: | This paper aims at explaining why countries with comparable levels of education still experience notable differences in terms of R&D and innovation. High-skilled migration, ultimately linked to differences in R&D costs, might be responsible for the persistence of such a gap. In fact, in a model where human capital accumulation and innovation are strategic complements, we show that allowing labor outflows may strengthen educational incentives in the lagging economy if migration is probabilistic in nature, but at the same time reduces the share of innovative production. Income (growth) might be consequently affected, and a positive migration chance is very unlikely to act as a substitute for educational subsidies. |
| Keywords: | Innovation; Education; Brain drain. |
| Date: | 2008 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:paris1:halshs-00308746_v1&r=knm |
| By: | Bénédicte Gendron (CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - CNRS : UMR8174 - Université Panthéon-Sorbonne - Paris I, LIRDEF - Laboratoire interdisciplinaire de recherche en didactique et formation - IUFM de Montpellier) |
| Abstract: | The creation of the vocational baccalauréat track in 1985 contributed to a main innovation in the French initial secondary education system. In its objective and in its innovative way of learning combining sandwich courses (work and school places learning), this program offer students who were at school in a failure situation a path for continuing their studies or a springboard to jump into a new career or professional plan. This diploma has been implemented in different ways: through student status or in apprenticeships, and through the responsibility of the Ministry of Education in vocational high schools but also, under the responsibility of the Ministry of Agriculture like in the Maisons Familiales Rurales (MFR). First, this paper will present the institutional framework: what is the Vocational Baccalauréat (VETBac) diploma, its roles and purposes? And as the national French system of education from the Ministry of education has been the subjects of number of articles in European VET reviews (Gendron, 2005), it will be presented more in details the MFR system less known and its philosophy. The second part, briefly developed here, will give some views of the convergence and divergence of the conditions of competence development of vocational baccalauréat trainees or students with a workplace learning focus in those two previous organizations. |
| Keywords: | Key words : vocational education and training, competencies development, apprenticeship, workplace learning. |
| Date: | 2008–02–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:paris1:halshs-00264800_v1&r=knm |
| By: | Ernest Miguélez (Faculty of Economics, University of Barcelona); Rosina Moreno (Faculty of Economics, University of Barcelona); Manuel Artís (Faculty of Economics, University of Barcelona) |
| Abstract: | In this paper we seek to verify the hypothesis that trust and cooperation between individuals, and between them and public institutions, can encourage technological innovation and the adoption of knowledge. Additionally, we test the extent to which the interaction of social capital with human capital and R&D expenditures improve their effect on a region’s ability to innovate. Our empirical evidence is taken from the Spanish regions and employs a knowledge production function and longitudinal count data models. Our results suggest that social capital correlates positively with innovation. Further, our analysis reveals a powerful interaction between human and social capital in the production of knowledge, whilst the complementarity with R&D efforts would seem less clear. |
| Keywords: | social capital, human capital, innovation, complementarities. |
| Date: | 2008–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ira:wpaper:200813&r=knm |
| By: | Oliviero A. Carboni |
| Abstract: | This paper uses a comprehensive firm level data set for the manufacturing sector in Italy to investigate the effect of government support on privately financed R&D expenditure. Estimates from a two-step equation model suggest that public assistance has a positive effect on private R&D investment. A non parametric matching procedure is also used to investigate the same effect. Here again the results suggest that the recipient firms achieve more private R&D than they would have without public support. The paper also examines whether public funding effects the financial sources available for R&D and finds that grants encourage credit financing for R&D. The effects on the use of internal sources are not conclusive. |
| Keywords: | Applied Econometrics, matching, public subsidies, R&D investment |
| JEL: | C24 L10 O30 O31 O38 |
| Date: | 2008 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cns:cnscwp:200815&r=knm |