Intellectual property (IP) management: organizational processes and structures, and the role of IP donations

This paper examines intellectual property (IP) management in U.S. companies and addresses three questions: What are typical sources of IP? How do companies manage IP? What role do donations of IP play in IP management? We used in-depth interviews and an on-line survey to gather data. We found that firms develop their IP position from a wide variety of sources such as joint ventures, acquisitions, and consulting contracts, but internal development is still the primary source of IP. Organizationally, three structural archetypes of IP management were identified: a centralized structure, a purely decentralized IP structure and a compromise structure involving a divisional assignment where a multi-business unit or division committee oversees IP. IP donations clearly do not appear to be a major phenomenon at the present time. Our survey results suggest that tax benefits are an important driver and that recent tax law changes have diminished the incentives to donate IP. The uncertainty of tax benefits and the costs associated with IP valuation appear to be the main disincentives.     

Psychology and legal change

This article takes stock of one aspect of psychologically based empirical jurisprudence-its role in legal change over the last decade. It assesses the ways in which the increased involvement of psychology in the legal process has influenced and affected the nature and direction of legal change. While acknowledging very real and tangible successes, it also identifies several problem areas, ones whose significance may grow in light of an increasingly unsympathetic, conservative judiciary. The direction of psychology and law, as an applied academic discipline, and the future of empirically based legal change are also examined.This article is based on an Invited Address to Division 41, APA Annual Convention, New Orleans, August, 1989.     

LOCAL INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT GROUPS: PERSPECTIVES AND PROFILES

Local industrial development groups (LIDGs) are often among the most visible organizations involved in community economic development. LIDGs annually spend billions of dollars directly or indirectly in various promotional and community improvement efforts. Yet relatively little is known about their organizational forms, their operating strategies, or their real impact on the economic development of communities. The study reported here was undertaken by researchers from three academic backgrounds in order to capture a rich, comprehensive view of this organizational type. In this paper, we discuss the research perspectives which informed our overall approach to the study, and subsequently, we present and discuss a preliminary profile of LIDGs, based on our recent national survey.     

Neutrality,negativity, or both? A reply to Wattenberg

Although there are indications that the two major parties in the U.S. have come to have new meaning for many citizens in the 1980s, Wattenberg's data do provide convincing support for his general argument on declining party salience. The following article attempts to clarify the meaning of this trend and to show that a lack of confidence in political parties as representative institutions is indeed an obstacle to the restoration of partisan attachments at the mass level. Both CPS survey data and depth interview materials are utilized in an effort to understand more fully the complex relationship between the American public and its party system.     

Rorty's Poetic Politics

In reading Rorty as political theorists we must separate his critique of epistemology from his advocacy of a new style of philosophy. If we concentrate on the detail and presuppositions of the latter, we will find insufficient reason to grant that his political project is coherent or that it derives any support from his attack on 'Enlightenment' philosophy. We will see that historicist accounts can never reasonably compel belief; that no-one (save the epistemologist manque craving a role) could accept that there is a compelling social need for poetic and literary exclamations; and that great men cannot be allowed to set our political agenda.     

Employment,privatization, and managerial choice: Does contracting out reduce public sector employment?

We examine the effects of governments' use of alternative service provision on public employment using panel data from a nationally representative sample of local governments. We model the effects of alternative service provision on the size of the public workforce and hypothesize that alternative provision jointly impacts both full‐ and part‐time employment. We find evidence of an inter‐relationship between these employment types. Our results from seemingly unrelated and 3SLS regressions indicate that full‐time employment in the public sector declines when additional services are provided by for‐profit providers, while part‐time employment increases. The net employment effect in the public sector is negative when government services are moved to the for‐profit sector. These combined effects result in a compositional shift toward more part‐time public sector employment. © 2006 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management     

Intergovernmental Grants: A Formal Model of Interrelated National and Subnational Political Decisions

Intergovernmental grants are based on the interrelated choicesof: (i) the national government deciding whether to offer thegrant; (ii) the national government determining grant conditions;(iii) the subnational government deciding whether to acceptthe grant; and (iv) the subnational government determining policy,including spending levels, upon grant receipt. Empirically andtheoretically, scholars often study these decisions separately,leading to an incomplete understanding of grant-related behavior.This article develops a noncooperative game theoretic modelthat simultaneously captures all four of these decisions. Thisapproach helps to better explain puzzles surrounding intergovernmentalgrants, including the ‘flypaper effect,’ asymmetricresponses of recipient governments to grant increases and decreases,the grant-acceptance decisions of subnational governments, andtradeoffs between the size of grants and the strings that areattached.     

How much did droughts matter? Linking rainfall and GDP growth in Zimbabwe

Since 2000, Zimbabwe's government, as well as other internationalaid organizations, have repeatedly blamed the country's sharpeconomic downturn on persistent and severe droughts. Indeed,past research has shown strong links between rainfall and maizeyields in sub-Saharan Africa, suggesting that the lack of rainfallis an attractive culprit for the recent collapse of Zimbabwe'sagriculture-based economy. This article probes this hypothesisfurther, by examining primary data from 38 countrywide rainfallstations during the 1960–1961/2002–2003 time-frame,in order to put the recent economic decline in better historicalcontext. The article finds little evidence that Zimbabwe's recenteconomic difficulties were caused by either low or erratic rainfall,suggesting that the recent collapse of the economy is far morelikely a result of government mismanagement.