Patterns of industry interaction with federal laboratories

This article describes the results of a study of interactions between corporate members of the Industrial Research Institute and federal laboratories. The data were derived from a survey conducted in 1992, building on a similar survey conducted in 1988. The survey addressed questions about the barriers to more frequent and effective interaction, the types of interactions that pay off most for the firm, and the form that payoffs take. Since 1988, federal labs have become a more visible source of external technology and information for large, research-intensive companies, but they still lag considerably behind universities and other companies. The greatest increases in interaction with federal labs have occurred in technology licensing, contract research, and cooperative research, with cooperative research regarded as having the greatest future promise for companies. Perhaps the most significant result of the survey was that companies tend to interact with federal laboratories for reasons that have far more to do with long-term, less tangible payoffs than with expectations of business opportunities or technology commercialization. Both federal policy makers and lab managers should consider incentives to promote types of interactions that have high payoff, especially cooperative research, and initiate the kinds of informal contacts that must occur before downstream commitments are made: professional interactions at the person-to-person level, workshops, and seminars. Additionally, companies and federal labs should clearly acknowledge the high value offered by some of the less tangible payoffs from interaction, and work to develop evidence of these kinds of payoffs that will have as much credibility as the more tangible forms, such as expected profits from new business opportunities.     

A Comparison of Criminological and Public Health Models: Geographic and Social Diversity Associated with Methamphetamine Laboratory Seizures

In the 1990s methamphetamine (meth) emerged as a significant drug problem in the United States. Along with more widespread meth use was a growing pattern of localized production of the drug in small-scale clandestine laboratories, creating public health issues beyond the drug’s direct harms to the health of users. Early efforts in analyzing aggregate patterns of meth lab production across communities suggest this phenomenon is different from other types of crime and drug problems, showing distinctive geographic patterns and different causal/etiological dynamics. This paper assesses the viability of public health outcomes as predictors of methamphetamine laboratory problems and compares them with traditional criminological predictors as explanations for aggregate patterns in meth lab problems across U.S. counties. It documents how local variations in meth production are different from other types of crime patterns and identifies whether geographic variations in local meth labs might be more effectively predicted and explained in public health terms.     

The R&D performance of the South African manufacturing sector, 1970–1993

In this article we undertake a detailed exploration of the research and development activities in one particular middle-income country. We explore what the data from R&D surveys can tell us about the levels, the determinants and the effectiveness of R&D in the manufacturing sector. We point to some of the broader factors that may have influenced South Africa’s drive to improve the technological capacity of its manufacturing sector, but we mostly focus on those issues associated directly with R&D. We show that the degree of interaction between the different domains of R&D activity, business, government and the tertiary sector has been weak, and that the possibility of positive spill-overs between these domains has not been fully exploited. In addition, little or no policy intervention designed to stimulate R&D activity by industry has been deployed in South Africa. We find that South African R&D activity has mainly been reactive in character and suggest that this lies at the heart of South Africa’s mixed R&D performance in relation to other developing countries.     

The problem of untested sexual assault kits: why are some kits never submitted to a crime laboratory?

Victims of sexual assault are often advised to seek postassault medical care to have a forensic exam, which includes evidence collection (termed a sexual assault kit [SAK]). After the exam, law enforcement personnel are supposed to submit the SAK to a crime laboratory for analysis. However, recent media reports suggest that in many communities throughout the United States, thousands of SAKs are left untested. Few studies have examined the rate at which law enforcement submits SAKs to crime labs or the factors that may predict them to do so. Thus, the purpose of this exploratory study is twofold: (a) to examine the percentage of SAKs law enforcement submits to crime labs in cases in which a sexual assault nurse examiner (SANE) performed the exam with adult victims and (b) to explore whether assault and law enforcement characteristics predict whether SAKs are submitted to a crime lab. This study found that only 58.6% of the SAKs were submitted to the crime lab within a large Midwestern county. Using binary logistic regression, this study found that kits were significantly as likely to be submitted when there were documented physical (nonanogenital) injuries compared with kits that did not have documented physical injuries. In addition, kits that were handled by a law enforcement agency that had a high level of engagement with the SANE program were significantly as likely to be submitted as law enforcement agencies with a low or medium level of engagement. Kits were significantly less likely to be submitted when victims cleaned themselves after the sexual assault (e.g., bathing). No association was found between kit submission and the victim-offender relationship, suspected drug-facilitated sexual assault, anogenital injury, and when the victim consumed alcohol or drugs before the assault. This article concludes with a discussion of the implications for research and practice.     

The Criminal Justice System Creates Incentives for False Convictions

Abstract

The American criminal justice system creates incentives for false conviction. For example, many public crime labs are funded in part per conviction. We show that the number of false convictions per year in the American criminal justice system should be considered “high.” We examine the incentives of police, forensic scientists, prosecutors, and public defenders in the U.S. Police, prosecutors, and forensic scientists often have an incentive to garner convictions with little incentive to convict the right person. These incentives create what economists call a “multitask problem” that seems to be resulting in a needlessly high rate of false convictions. Public defenders lack the resources and incentives needed to provide a vigorous defense for their clients. Corrective measures are discussed, along with a call for more research.     

Technology Transfer via the Internet: A Way to Link Public Science and Enterprises?

The Internet is receiving increasing attention as a medium for technology transfer between public research and the business sector. Technology policy hopes that Internet presentations of research activities at public institutions will facilitate the exploitation of research results, particularly from those institutions not engaged in technology transfer so far. Based on a survey of public research units in natural sciences and engineering in Germany, we analyze the determinants of firm contacts established via the Internet. Special attention is paid to the effect of experiences in firm interaction in the past. Estimation results suggest that Internet contact to firms is more likely to be established by public research units that are already well situated in the transfer market. Research units that orient their homepage design towards the business sector are more likely to build Internet-based contact with firms. However, there is no evidence that public research units that have not been engaged with firms so far, use the Internet more intensively to get into the transfer business. Our results show that the Internet has a certain potential for advancing technology transfer at public research, although this potential is not fully utilized yet, at least in the case of Germany.     

A cure for the Blues: resolving nonprofit Blue Cross conversions

This Article analyzes the issues involved in converting nonprofit Blue Cross organizations to for-profit status. These issues have arisen in the context of litigation regarding the "reorganization" of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Missouri ("BCBSMo"). BCBSMo had reorganized by creating and transferring a majority of its business to a new for-profit subsidiary. Missouri consumer groups and state regulators characterized the "reorganization" as a conversion requiring BCBSMo to transfer its assets to a foundation dedicated to charitable health purposes. BCBSMo, however, denied that it had any obligation to leave behind its assets in the nonprofit sector. The BCBSMo litigation raises issues common to most conversions of nonprofit healthcare organizations, particularly conversions of nonprofit Blue Cross plans. This Article provides a road map for state regulators and the public to follow in ensuring that the public interest is fully protected in such conversions.     

Never mind the quality feel the width: University–industry links and government financial support for innovation in small high-technology businesses in the UK and the USA

In this paper we use a size and industry matched sample of over 1,900 UK and US businesses for the period 2004–05 in the manufacturing and business services sectors to analyse the relative “strength” of the university–industry ecosystems in which these firms operate in the two economies. Our analysis shows that in both countries universities per se play a quantitatively smaller role as a source of knowledge for business innovation than either the business sector itself or a variety of organisations intermediating between the university and business sectors. Our analysis reveals a much more diffuse university–industry ecosystem in the UK in which a higher proportion of businesses claim links external to themselves in their pursuit of knowledge for innovation and a higher proportion report directly connecting with universities. US firms are more likely to access knowledge through a combination of business and intermediary sources and are less likely to have established formal collaborative or partnership agreements in the 3 years prior to the survey. We also find, however, that a higher proportion of US firms place a very high value on the connections they have with universities and are much more likely to commit resources to support such innovation related university interactions. A similar pattern of diffuse but weaker links characterise the supply of public sector financial assistance for innovation in our sample firms. UK firms are more likely to be in receipt of assistance, but receive far less per firm in absolute terms and relative to their R&D expenditures. It appears that the UK university–industry ecosystem is characterised by a greater width than quality of interaction.     

Social and economic impact of the commercialization of the Argus II artificial retina in the United States

Each year, the United States invests about $45 billion in research conducted by federal researchers within federal laboratories. These efforts generate extensive social benefits when results are transferred to the private sector. It is important that we effectively quantify the economic and societal impact of federal technology transfer activities to inform taxpayers and policymakers about the value of public investments in this form of research. The Argus II device, an artificial retina commercialized in the United States by Second Sight in 2013, provides a rich example of how private sector innovation can be enhanced by research collaborations with federal labs and academia. Over the 25-year journey from idea to product, Second Sight carried out research and development collaborations with six Department of Energy national laboratories and seven universities. The case of Argus II also offers valuable insight into (1) how private industry, academia, and government can work together to bring socially beneficial innovations to fruition and (2) the tradeoffs inherent in these public–private collaborations. In this paper, we use a Markov model to estimate the realized and potential future social benefits associated with Argus II. We provide an interactive tool that can be used to replicate our findings and modify assumptions using updated patient information as it becomes available. We also provide insight into the aspects of federal involvement surrounding the development of Argus II that contributed to its successful commercialization and discuss other spillover benefits from these public–private collaborations.     

Banking reforms and the evolution of cost efficiency in Indian public sector banks

This paper analyses the trends of cost efficiency and its components across Indian public sector banks (PSBs) during the post-deregulation period spanning from 1992/1993 to 2007/2008. The study also examines the issue of convergence in cost, technical and allocative efficiency levels of Indian PSBs. The empirical results indicate that deregulation has had a positive impact on the cost efficiency of Indian public sector banking industry over the period of study. Further, technical efficiency of Indian PSBs followed an uptrend, while allocative efficiency followed a path of deceleration. We note that in Indian public sector banking industry, the cost inefficiency is mainly driven by technical inefficiency rather than allocative inefficiency. The convergence analysis reveals that the inefficient PSBs are not only catching-up but also moving ahead of the efficient ones, i.e., the banks with the low level of cost efficiency at the beginning of the period are growing more rapidly than the highly cost efficient banks. In sum, the study confirms a strong presence of σ- and β-convergence in cost efficiency levels of Indian public sector banking industry.     

Managing competition between individual and organizational goals in cross-sector research and development centres

Research of potential socio-economic value is commonly conducted within cross-sector (government, university, business) centres. Success depends on partners whose objectives and strategies may converge or compete. Yet little empirical evidence exists on: (a) how individual researchers perceive the benefits of their participation, (b) how far the structures and functions of particular collaborative R&D centres coalesce around of researchers’ expectations and, (c) what problems arise for researchers who opt for a ‘second job’ in the centre. The paper presents a qualitative analysis of a survey of respondents from public sector organizations involved in Australian Cooperative Research Centres. A novel frame for analysing these data is the study of inter-organizational relationships (IOR). We use the perspective of the individual research scientists to illuminate the important management issues of trust, governance, and competition between functional domains, which emerge from IOR and which have been inadequately recognised in the context of collaborative R&D centres. The findings have implications for the management and of the centres, for the careers of research scientists and for public policy.     

How to Improve Forensic Science

Some institutional structures for inquiry produce better approximations to truth than others. The current institutional structure of police forensics gives each lab a monopoly in the analysis of the police evidence it receives. Forensic workers have inadequate incentives to produce reliable analyses of police evidence. Competition would create such incentives. I outline a system of “competitive self regulation” for police forensics.Each jurisdiction would have several competing forensic labs. Evidence would be divided and sent to one, two, or three separate labs.Chance would determine which labs and how many would receive evidence to analyze.Competitive selfregulation improves forensics by creating incentives for error detection and reducing incentives to produce biased analyses. JEL Classification: K14, K42, H11     

Food Fraud and the Partnership for a ‘Healthier’ America: A Case Study in State-Corporate Crime

At a moment of heightened public concern over food-related health issues, major corporations in the food industry have found their products and practices under scrutiny. Needing to be understood as socially responsible, these corporations have established partnerships with the state to construct a positive, proactive, and cooperative public image. One major public–private partnership that evolved from former First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move initiative—the Partnership for a Healthier America—serves as a case study in this paper, which analyzes the consequences and social harms perpetuated by a public health campaign bound by the imperative to maximize profit. By using trusted state actors to deliver accurate but deceptive claims about food companies’ commitment to public health, this public–private partnership actively misleads the public and potentially exacerbates public health challenges, warranting a skeptical revision of how we understand corporate social responsibility and neoliberal governance on issues of health and nutrition. As a form of fraud, these attempts to mislead the public go beyond the actions of public sector individuals or members of corporate boards, but are structurally incentivized by the legal rights, regulatory privileges, and profit-related incentives central to the modern corporate form. While conventional criminological research tends to underemphasize state and corporate harms, we make use of a critical criminological perspective to analyze state-corporate partnerships in the space between food industry practices and public health policy.     

Singapore's Personal Data Protection legislation: Business perspectives

As global digitalisation of information and interconnecting technologies along with new marketing practices and business processes vastly increase the opportunities for data collection, storage, usage and delivery, there is a corresponding increase in consumer expectations of data privacy. These expectations must be met if business organisations are to promote consumer trust and confidence and maintain their overall competitiveness in a global market. It goes without saying that information is the most valuable business asset and “privacy is good business and information can be the basis of bigger business”. The need to protect data privacy has long been recognised and implemented by major trading nations. Surprisingly, Singapore as a financial centre and nation aspiring to be a trusted data hosting hub has been slow in enacting specific data protection laws. The first piece of legislation that has emerged is a light-touch baseline framework applicable to all organisations except the public sector. This article considers the new legislation from the business perspective and the implications for private sector business organisations facing the challenges of compliance.     

JAILS AND SERVICES FOR INMATES A Perspective on Some Critical Issues

The nature and scope of the jail role within the criminal justice system is explored. Questions are raised as to the types of functions which jails should perform, the appropriateness of jail services, and alternatives for the administration of jails. The authors suggest that solutions to the various issues require active involvement of an informed public providing policy direction to the criminal justice system. The paper concludes by observing that many of these critical jail issues can find satisfactory solution when there is a joint commitment on the part of practitioners, researchers, and the community sector to actively seek answers.     

Promoting small business through public-sector technology transfer

It is generally concluded that small businesses are the most effective institutional mechanism for the execution of technological innovation in the United States. Federal legislation provides for special considerations to be rendered to small businesses when public-sector technology is to be transferred to the private sector. Nevertheless, the activities of many federal laboratories lag in the transfer of technology to small businesses relative to large businesses. This paper examines the reasons for the current low level of interaction between federal laboratories and small businesses including the constraints typically encountered in working with small businesses. Recommendations are made to enhance the lab/small-business relationship. Finally, a sample program at Sandia National Laboratory for assistance to small businesses is described.     

Building successful technology transfer teams: A theory of cascading commitment

The attempt to transfer a technology from a publicly funded laboratory to a profit-oriented manufacturer can be a lengthy and complex process, involving several organizations and several key individuals within each organization. For example, a product technology transfer team may include the public lab itself, one or more end user organizations during product development and trial, a transfer agency, a public funding agency, the receptor manufacturer, and a private funding agency. Studies of such multi party transfers have suggested many factors that have contributed to their success or failure. We feel that most of these factors can be organized under the rubric of a more general theory of cascading commitment. Specifically, in this paper we propose that the likelihood of a transfer's success can be substantially affected by excellent management of the team building process by the public lab's R&D manager/director. Successful teams are built by gaining the commitment of appropriate individuals from appropriate organizations in a sequential cascading effect, by insightful and customized solicitation of each new team member to join at the appropriate stage of commercialization. To do this, the manager must be cognizant of, and individually appeal to, each new team member's perceptions of three sets of variables: evidence of the prior members' credibility, evidence of the prior members' commitment, and the set of personal benefits to be gained from participation.     

Layers of decision: Linking social definitions of corruption and willingness to take action

The literature available about social definitions of corruption is surprisingly discrete from that which addresses the issue of whistleblowing or the reporting of crime and corruption. The current study, however, empirically links the two. A survey of more than 1300 public sector employees was undertaken to explore: i) how and why public sector employees define some behaviours as corrupt; ii) factors which may hinder public sector employees taking action about corruption which they may observe at work; and iii) the link between i) and ii). The study found that within the New South Wales (NSW) public sector, views about what constitutes corruption are diverse and that this has a significant, though not exclusive, impact upon the action respondents said they would take in response to workplace corruption. The study discusses other factors which also impact upon the stated decision not to take action about corruption and suggests some possible courses of action for addressing these factors.The research upon which this paper is based formed part of the research program of the Independent Commission Against Corruption.     

Measurement and Growth of R&D Within the Service Economy

Twenty-five years ago, industrial performance of research and development (R&D) was primarily an activity undertaken by large traditional manufacturing firms. Only about 3 percent of the R&D conducted in industrial labs was done by service sector firms. By the late 1990s, however, such firms accounted for approximately 30 percent of the Nation's total industrial R&D expenditures, with a fairly large amount of the effort being directed toward the development and use of information technologies. Industry's increasing reliance on research and technology outsourcing also apparently has contributed to the service sector's substantial R&D expansion. This paper documents recent trends in US non-manufacturing R&D expenditures, highlighting their growth and focus and the difficulties in measuring these trends, as available from national R&D statistics. Broad comparisons with trends and concerns identified through other countries' surveys of service sector R&D are presented.     

A Transaction Cost Approach to the Autonomization of Government Organizations: A Political Transaction Cost Framework Confronted with Six Cases of Autonomization in the Netherlands

The aim of this paper is to explore the relevance of some important aspects of transaction cost economics (TCE) to a better understanding and explanation of the autonomization of government organizations. As TCE, with its focus on economic efficiency, was basically developed for the profit sector, its main concepts have to be adapted for the public sector. This paper presents a 'political transaction cost' framework which emphasizes 'political rationality' and 'political efficiency'. TCE's main concepts—the transaction characteristics specificity, frequency/scale and uncertainty and its assumptions about human behaviour, i.e. bounded rationality and opportunism,—are discussed for politically governed organizations and they are related to autonomization. The results of exploratory case research into six government organizations in the Netherlands suggest that such factors as bounded rationality, opportunism, political efficiency, and social institutions may have played an important part in the autonomization of the organizations involved. It seems that strictly economic aspects were less relevant whenever a decision to autonomize was taken and a specific form of autonomization was chosen.