Understanding the determinants of novel technology adoption among teachers: the case of 3D printing

The Journal of Technology Transfer - 3D printing consists of novel technologies that raised high expectations about their future impact on economy and society. However, despite major efforts of...     

BodyShock: A technology transfer case study

This case study presents a test of a technology transfer model developed by Karl Dakin of The Denver Technology Exchange Corporation. The model involves the creation of a new business organization dedicated solely to completing the transfer of a technology to a single application. In this case, the technology is the BodyShock, developed by Jim Hartway with JH Design, Inc., of Littleton, Colorado.     

The rank,stock, order and epidemic effects of technology adoption: an empirical study of bounce protection programs

Karshenas and Stoneman (RAND J Econ 24(4):503–528, 1993) gathered four theories of technology adoption: the rank, stock, order and epidemic effects. Tests of these four effects reveal support for rank and epidemic but not the stock or order effects. Since then numerous other studies have tried to find evidence in support of the stock and order effects. But evidence has been elusive, until now. Further, a survey by Frame and White (J Econ Lit 42:116–144, 2004) concludes that much more work is needed into financial innovation. This paper accomplishes three goals: (1) evidence is found to support certain technology adoption theories (the order effects and possibly the stock effects), (2) since the technology under consideration is a financial innovation called bounce protection, the paper answers Frame and White’s call for papers, and (3) refinements are made to the Karshenas and Stoneman methodology and found to be superior to the original empirical model.

The role of government regulations in the adoption of cloud computing: A case study of local government

Cloud computing is a technology that facilitates improved productivity, improved efficiency and lower costs. This technology has the potential to improve the reliability and scalability of organizational systems and leads to an enhanced focus on core business and strategy. Despite the Australian Federal Government's ‘cloud-first’ strategy and policies and the Queensland State Government's ‘digital-first’ strategy, the adoption of cloud services at the local government level has been limited, largely due to a lack of specificity among government regulations and a lack of regulations that provide support to local governments. This empirical study deploys a mixed research method designed to develop a cloud regulations model to assist governments in adopting cloud computing services. By integrating Australian Cloud Policy Frameworks with the extant research on cloud computing, this study conducted 21 field interviews with Information Technology (IT) managers and surveyed 480 IT staff from Australia's 47 local governments. This research paper presents and validates a revised set of factors used to develop government regulations specific to cloud computing adoption. The factors that we found to be statistically significant were cost, quality of services, security, privacy, management, government-based facilitating conditions, and firm-based facilitating conditions regulations. Based on these findings, this research concludes that government regulation is a significant aspect in decision making for the adoption of any new technology such as cloud computing.     

Volunteerism and technology transfer: A case study

The withdrawl of Federal funds in a number of social service programs and state and local government budgets calls for an upsurge in volunteerism. Since August 1978, a Technical Volunteer Service (TVS) has been doing just that at one of the nation’s largest Federal laboratories. As measured by service to the community, acceptance by laboratory management, and satisfaction for the volunteers, this program has been an outstanding success. The time is ripe to transfer this program to other Federal laboratories, universities and industry. This paper describes the program and offers practical suggestions for its transfer to other organizations.     

Measuring technology transfer performance: A case study

The debate continues on how to measure results of technology transfer. New and revised models are being conceived and tested in various economic settings. This paper addresses the performance measures that are being derived from the Huntsville/Madison County Chamber of Commerce technology transfer program.     

Men who batter women: A study in power

The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between a batterer's perception of his partner's power and the severely of violent tactics. Subjects for this study were 21 males, who had been arrested for domestic assault. Batterers whose educational level was higher than their partners used more severity violent tactics in assault. A correlation was found between reward power and severity of abuse, indicating that batterers perceive their partners as having a high ability to reward.     

The value of the hospital autopsy. A study of causes and modes of death estimated before and after autopsy

Among 312 consecutive deaths in a Danish Central Hospital autopsy was performed in the pathology department on 266 cases, i.e. 85%. Retrospectively, the underlying causes of death were estimated from the clinical information alone by an experienced clinician and subsequently compared with the autopsy report. The definite cause of death was determined jointly by the clinician and the pathologist. The clinician's diagnosis was thereby confirmed as incorrect in 18% of the cases if small differences in site and type of malignant tumours were not considered. This is less than in many other investigations, but it is stressed that this could partly be because formal errors in completing the death certificate were avoided. The main causes of death were ischaemic heart disease and neoplasia. Clinical diagnosis of malignant diseases was never found to be erroneous. There was a slight tendency to clinically overestimate ischaemic heart disease, but in general the different errors outweighed each other, so that the total number of different causes of death before and after autopsy was nearly the same. The original death certificate was investigated in 12 accidental cases. Hereby it was found that the mode of death was originally stated erroneously as natural in 7 cases, i.e. 4.5%. It is concluded that hospital autopsy is still needed for the control and correction of causes of death, and it is stressed that clinicians as well as pathologists should be more aware of cases with a trauma in the history to avoid errors in the mode of death. Such errors can imply legal as well as insurance problems.     

The who, what, and why of risk adjustment: a technology on the cusp of adoption

Risk adjustment (RA) consists of a series of techniques that account for the health status of patients when predicting or explaining costs of health care for defined populations or for evaluating retrospectively the performance of providers who care for them. Although the federal government seems to have settled on an approach to RA for Medicare Advantage programs, adoption and implementation of RA techniques elsewhere have proceeded much more slowly than was anticipated. This article examines factors affecting the adoption and use of RA outside the Medicare program using case studies in six U.S. health care markets (Baltimore, Seattle, Denver, Cleveland, Phoenix, and Atlanta) as of 2001. We found that for purchasing decisions, RA was used exclusively by public agencies. In the private sector, use of risk adjustment was uncommon and scattered and assumed informal and unexpected forms. The most common private sector use of RA was by health plans, which occasionally employed RA in negotiations with purchasers or to allocate resources internally among providers. The article uses classic technology diffusion theory to explain the adoption and use of RA in these six markets and derives lessons for health policy generally and for the future of RA in particular. For health policy generally, the differing experiences of public and private actors with RA serve as markers of the divergent paths that public and private health care sectors are pursuing with respect to managed care and risk sharing. For the future of RA in particular, its history suggests the need for health service researchers to consider barriers to use adoption and new analytic technologies as they develop them.     

Implementing robotics technology: A case study in organizational learning

A visionary manager will occasionally encounter a “wave-of-the-future” technology that can change the manufacturing process. Since such technologies are relatively unknown to others in the organization, its implementation can make or break its success. New Process Gear (NPG) plant, a division of New Venture Gear, Inc., has experienced this scenario with its robotics installation. This field study examines several robotics installations at NPG, starting with the earliest installation and proceeding through its latest installation of a complete robotics system. Through this experience, five areas emerged as necessary for successful new technology adoption: opportunity identification, high-quality equipment, supplier competence, training, and teamwork. By examining the robotics implementation process through various installations over time, several important lessons can be gleaned about new technology implementation that may be applicable to other technology applications.     

Expert systems for medical diagnosis: A study in technology transfer

Expert systems continue to evolve for specific applications in medical diagnosis. This is necessary because the influx of new information is so massive that the expert systems must be specialized. The research methodology for this study was based on the usage patterns of expert systems in clinical pathology with data obtained at 94 US medical schools from 202 medical-school-based clinical pathologists. The study showed the link between the use of expert systems in medical schools and within the professional medical community. Initial education in medical schools and ongoing communications through residency programs, post-doctoral fellowships and clinical usage at university hospitals with the goal of technology transfer between medical schools and physicians, seem to represent the future for this valuable diagnostic technique.     

Sociocultural causes of family violence: A theoretical comment

During the past decade, family violence has been increasingly reported and discussed by the mass media, as well as having become a subject of scholarly investigation in several academic disciplines. While there is an impressive number of empirical studies dealing with various aspects of family violence, they tend to focus on samples of the victims of such physical and sexual abuse. This paper seeks to supplement their findings by presenting a theoretical analysis of certain major sociocultural changes that have seriously weakened the moral standards that are the primary sociocultural deterrents of family and other interpersonal forms of violence. These changes include widespread residential mobility, the weakening of parental authority, and the impact of the themes of violence and sexuality that are emphasized by the mass media and popular culture.     

The value of eye-tracking technology in the analysis and interpretations of skeletal remains: A pilot study

This initial study is the first to use eye-trackers as a tool in order to study gaze pattern strategies and decision making processes involved in the assessment of skeletal remains. Three experienced participants were asked to wear eye-tracking glasses (Tobii Pro Glasses 2) when estimating sex and age-at-death of one set of skeletal remains from a known archeological sample. The study assessed participants' fixation points (the features of the skeleton focused on), fixation duration (the total time spent on each assessment and feature) as well as visit count and duration (the total number of visits and the duration of visits to particular areas). The preliminary results of this study identified differences in gaze “strategies” with regards to fixation points, visit duration, and visit counts between the participants. The data generated provide a starting point for assessing how such technologies could be used in order to more fully understand the decision making processes involved in forensic anthropological interpretations and their role in forensic reconstructions.     

The political economy of the green technology sector: A study about institutions, diffusion and efficiency

This paper discusses aspects related to the green technology sector (GT sector) in Germany. In a first step institutional reforms enabling diffusion of green technologies are analyzed. Cost arguments are also taken into account. In a second step a theoretical model developed by Tanguay et al. (Public Choice 120:1–27, 2004) is modified in order to evaluate the efficiency of the institutional setting in a political economy framework. The model is able to show that command and control policies (CCPs) are accompanied by cost-inefficiencies depending on the political weight of technology related interests groups. We further come to the result that relatively high marginal production costs may generate suboptimal high diffusion of a certain GT j. For relatively low marginal production costs policy induced demand may also be too low.