Innovation practices in emerging economies: Do university partnerships matter?

The Journal of Technology Transfer - Enterprises’ resources and capabilities determine their ability to achieve competitive advantage. In this regard, the key innovation challenges that...     

Voices on Paper: Multimodal Texts and Indigenous Literacy in Brazil

This paper focuses on the recent production of multimodal writing in an indigenous community in Brazil, resulting from the equally recent introduction of literacy. Seeing this form of writing as part of the process of intercultural semiosis and cultural translation, the paper discusses how concepts of local indigenous oral culture and received wisdom interact with the Western concept of writing as the ‘record’ or ‘representation’ of speech, bringing to writing the indigenous notion of cultural ‘enactment’ or ‘performativity’. In an effort to overcome a view of alphabetic writing as semantically only propositional, mimetic and decontextualized, the Kashinawa´ community, by adding visual components to alphabetic texts, appear to transform writing into contextualized performative ‘poiesis’, which simul taneously inaugurates a complex process of semiosis inseparable and only comprehensible from their local cultural perspective.     

Ethics and good urban governance in Toronto: The Bellamy report and integrity in public service

Abstract: Ethics has often been of central academic and policy concern but has also emerged as a central public and media issue in Canadian politics. In Toronto, there have been a number of scandals over the past few years that have brought the discussion of ethics in the municipal public service to the forefront as well. This article analyses some of the ethical problems that municipal public servants face and the institutional culture that allows ethics violations to occur. These are illustrated by the Toronto computer‐leasing and external contracts scandals, which were the subject of an inquiry, beginning in 2002, and subsequent report by Madam Justice Denise E. Bellamy, in 2005. The author looks at the case of Wanda Liczyk to illustrate how the decision‐making process can be corrupted and how this can lead to loss of public trust and inefficient and inequitable government. The challenge for urban governance is to create a municipal public service that is professional and accountable and that follows an ethical public‐service model based on ethical codes, leadership and an understanding of underlying ethical principles. This would help regain public trust and maintain a public service that is efficient and therefore better able to handle the increasing challenges of local government. Sommaire: L'éthique a souvent été une préoccupation fondamentale sur le plan de la theorie et de la politique, mais elle est également devenue une question d'intérêt public et une question médiatique dans la politique canadienne. Å Toronto, un certain nombre de scandales survenus ces derniéres années ont également porté le debat sur 1'éthique dans la fonction publique municipale à l'avant‐scéne. Le présent article analyse certains problemes d'éthique auxquels font face les fonctionnaires municipaux et la culture institutionnelle qui permet la violation de l'éthique. De tels cas sont illustrés par les scandales concernant la location d'ordinateurs et les contrats externes qui sont survenus à Toronto et ont fait l'objet d'une enquete à partir de 2002, puis d'un rapport par Madame la juge Denise E. Bellamy, en 2005. L'auteur prend le cas de Wanda Liczyk pour illustrer la manière dont le processus de prise de décision peut être corrompu et comment cela conduit à la perte de la confiance du public et a un gouvernement inefficace et inéquitable. Le défi pour la gouvernance urbaine consiste à créer une fonction publique municipale qui soit professionnelle et imputable et qui suive un modèle de fonction publique éthique fondé sur des codes déontologiques, le leadership et une compréhension des principes éthiques sous‐jacents. Cela aiderait à regagner la confiance du public et à maintenir une fonction publique qui soit efficace et par conséquent mieux en mesure de relever les défis croissants auxquels fait face le gouvernement local.     

Jagdrecht von Bund und Ländern – Ausgewählte Bereiche der Landesjagdgesetze Brandenburgs, Mecklenburg-Vorpommerns und Sachsen-Anhalts unter der Lupe

Zusammenfassung  In Bund und L?ndern gibt es insgesamt 17 Jagdgesetze. Dazu kommen zahlreiche Rechtsverordnungen auf Bundes- und Landesebene, mannig faltige naturschutz-, tierschutz- und waffenrechtliche Regelungen, die das Jagdrecht beeinflussen oder aber durch das Jagdrecht selbst beeinflusst werden. Eine solche “Regelungsflut” hat selbstverst?ndlich auch auf die t?gliche Jagdpraxis nicht zu untersch?tzende Auswirkungen. Hierzu ein Beispiel: Ein Revierinhaber bewirtschaftet ein Jagdrevier, dass sich über die Grenzen zweier Bundesl?nder erstreckt. In jedem dieser L?nder gelten unterschiedliche gesetzliche Bestimmungen. Dies kann dazu führen, dass in jedem der zwei L?nder andere Tierarten zu verschiedenen Jahreszeiten bejagt werden dürfen, es kann unterschiedliche Regelungen zu sachlichen Verboten, verschiedenartige Bestimmungen zur Wildfolge und Nachsuche sowie anders geartete Verpflichtungen des Revierinhabers bei t?glichen Arbeiten im Revier (z.B. Jagdliche Einrichtungen, Kirrungen, Fütterungen etc.) geben. Für uns Grund genug, das Jagdrecht des Bundes und der L?nder (hier: Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern und Sachsen-Anhalt) etwas n?her zu beleuchten und anhand weniger beispielhaft herausgegriffener Regelungen, sowohl Unterschiede als auch Gemeinsamkeiten darzustellen. Nach einer kurzen Einleitung zu den Gesetzgebungskompetenzen im Bereich des Jagdwesens (A.), werden schwerpunktartig drei Themengebiete untersucht, die nicht nur für den am Jagdrecht interessierten Leser spannend, sondern auch in der jagdlichen Praxis relevant sind. Zun?chst widmen wir uns den nach Landesrecht jagdbaren Tierarten und ihren Jagd- und Schonzeiten (B.), danach betrachten wir die sog. “befriedeten Bezirke” (C.). Im Anschluss daran nehmen wir die unterschiedlichen L?nderregelungen zu Fütterungen und Kirrungen unter die Lupe (D.). Der Aufsatz endet mit einem Appell an die Legislative und Exekutive (E.).     

Commotio cordis as a result of a fight: Report of a case considered to be imprudent homicide

Commotio cordis is a clinic-pathological syndrome related to sudden death in young people involved in sports activities. It has been described, mainly, in athletes without previous cardiac anomalies who received a minor blow to the chest which produces ventricular fibrillation and cardiac arrest in the absence of structural damage to the ribs, sternum, or heart. There are few reported cases of commotio cordis associated with violent, non-sports related actions, which are commonly considered to be imprudent homicides. We present the case of a 20-year-old man, who was kicked in the chest during a fight; he suddenly collapsed although advanced cardio-respiratory resuscitation started shortly. Autopsy showed no cardiac lesions concluding that death was due to commotio cordis (blunt trauma to the chest). Toxicological analysis determined the presence of 5.14 mg/L benzoylecgonine in blood. On the basis of medico-legal investigation, the official prosecution considered the death to be imprudent homicide and the aggressor was sentenced to 4 years in prison. We emphasize the importance of the knowledge of the death circumstances through the witnesses’ testimony, prior to beginning the autopsy, to confirm this important medico-legal diagnosis. Arrhythmogenic effects of cocaine and its contribution in the production of these deaths are also exposed.     

Politicized U.S. Intelligence Polluted the World

On October 29, the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released a declassified version of its report on the origins of the novel coronavirus. It continues to imply the Chinese Government or a Wuhan lab is hiding something and not cooperating, while vilifying the World Health Organization (WHO) for telling the truth from the very beginning at that fateful first press conference.     

Can a contractarian be a paternalist? The logic of James M. Buchanan’s system

We consider the simplest version of a jungle economy à la Piccione-Rubinstein, wherein as many agents as goods are assumed, agents consume at most one indivisible good, and a transitive strong power relation exists. We first study the wilderness of jungle equilibria, i.e., whether they are Pareto-minimal (an allocation is Pareto-minimal if it is impossible to reduce the welfare of one agent without increasing the welfare of another). We show that jungle equilibria are not necessarily Pareto-minimal. We then study and characterize the set of Pareto-minimal jungle equilibria. Second, we tackle the case of equally powerful people, in contrast to the assumption that the power relation is asymetric. Assuming specifically a transitive weak power relation, we show that jungle equilibria exist, but that they are not always unique, nor Pareto-optimal. We also provide conditions under which those equilibria are Pareto-minimal.

     

Logrolling under fragmented authoritarianism: theory and evidence from China

This paper provides a rigorous theoretical and empirical analysis of the effect of logrolling between interest groups on social welfare in a non-democratic political system. In particular, we focus on China, where bureaucratic interest groups are separate vertical organizations reaching down from Beijing to the provinces and cities. The key question in this paper is: what are the effects of the logrolling of parochial interest groups on state policies and social welfare in autocracies? We address this question both theoretically and empirically. The theory predicts a specific distortion in resource allocation because of logrolling, while the empirical results confirm the theoretical prediction. We find policy outcomes under logrolling are characterized by excessive spending on all the interest groups’ preferred goods and insufficient spending on public goods. We test the existence of logrolling between the Ministry of Civil Affairs and Ministry of Health in China. Our result shows logrolling between the two ministries lead to inefficiencies in social security and health care policies.