Managing technological distance in internal and external collaborations: absorptive capacity routines and social integration for innovation

While high technological distance to project partners outside of the established value chain can positively influence innovation performance, project goals can only be achieved if the social integration of project members is improved in terms of coordination and communication. This paper draws on embeddedness and absorptive capacity literature to explore how social integration mechanisms translate into different learning outcomes in distant collaborations within and across organizational boundaries. Drawing upon expert interviews with project members as our primary source of data, we conducted an in-depth multiple case study analysis of a number of inter-organizational projects. Our findings indicate that the effect of different types of social integration mechanisms on learning outcomes also affect the ability to bridge distances in process and product technology. Moreover, they suggest that it is not just the extent, but also the interplay of social integration mechanisms surrounding internal and external absorptive capacity routines that enable project members to engage in the exploration, transformation and exploitation of distant knowledge. In examining how social integration mechanisms foster learning outcome in distant collaborations, our study contributes to the literature on absorptive capacity.     

Does neighborhood matter? Assessing recent evidence

Abstract

This article synthesizes findings from a wide range of empirical research into how neighborhoods affect families and children. It lays out a conceptual framework for understanding how neighborhoods may affect people at different life stages. It then identifies methodological challenges, summarizes past research findings, and suggests priorities for future work.

Despite a growing body of evidence that neighborhood conditions play a role in shaping individual outcomes, serious methodological challenges remain that suggest some caution in interpreting this evidence. Moreover, no consensus emerges about which neighborhood characteristics affect which outcomes, or about what types of families may be most influenced by neighborhood conditions. Finally, existing studies provide little empirical evidence about the causal mechanisms through which neighborhood environment influences individual outcomes. To be useful to policy makers, future empirical research should tackle the critical question of how and for whom neighborhood matters.     

Not the only game in towns: explaining changes in municipal councils in post-revolutionary Tunisia

This study sheds light on the relationship between local and national elites during political transitions. Examining local councils in post-revolutionary Tunisia (2011–2013), it examines why and when the composition of councils changed in the absence of local elections. The study yields two important lessons. First, changes in councils resulted from a power struggle between national and local elites. Councils were more likely to remain in place when local parties and unions helped council members resist pressures from above. The interplay of local and national actors, and not the council’s competencies, explains when changes took place. Second, all councils became politicized in the process. Far from being caretaker councils impartially addressing local needs, the councils were institutions playing important roles in the struggles between local and national political elites. Councils were arenas in which political power, and notions of legitimate representation, were contested in the absence of elections. The argument is supported by quantitative analyses of original data and four comparative case studies based on qualitative fieldwork. The findings highlight the importance of local councils in transition processes and provide a basis for further work exploring local-national engagement in democratization.     

Excavating Concealed Tradeoffs: How Russians Watch the News

Citizens in democracies are expected to make better decisions if they understand policy tradeoffs. However, politicians rarely have incentives to communicate them; citizens are uncomfortable choosing among valued outcomes; and devising a common metric is difficult. It is not surprising that in the United States the environment provides relatively little cuing or priming of tradeoffs in television news. Russian citizens, on the other hand, face a media environment in which tradeoff cuing is intentionally suppressed by owners' agendas, yet viewers detect concealed tradeoffs even in the absence of tradeoff priming and viewpoint diversity. Analysis of discourse among ordinary Russians in 16 focus groups convened in four cities, differentiated by political reform and media market environments, showed that when watching news in which tradeoffs are thoroughly concealed, viewers challenge stories by offering a broad spectrum of uncued tradeoffs. Tradeoffs come from diverse policy domains and represent a range of cognitive strategies, some of which are considerably more abstract than others and link elements of their observations and assumptions (together with what they can extract from the stories) into complex reasoning outcomes.     

The Swedish Constitution and Social Democratic Power: Measuring the Mechanical Effect of a Political Institution

Recent discussions of Swedish political change have focused on the decline of Social Democratic 'hegemony' and on the end of the 'Swedish model'. In contrast to preference– or interest –driven explanations for these developments, this paper investigates the impact of constitutional changes made in 1969 in Sweden, which included the elimination of the Upper House or First Chamber of the Swedish parliament and the introduction of a more directly proportional electoral system. Using a simulation model, the actual electoral results from 1969 through 1994 were plugged into the formulas set forth by the old constitutional rules, in order to generate the number of parliamentary seats each party would have received under the old system. This simulation shows that the Social Democratic Party would have received a significantly larger share of parliamentary seats under the old constitutional rules than under the current constitution. Thus one can conclude that the new constitution decreased Social Democratic power in Sweden.     

Project Plowshare versus the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty

In 1957, representatives from the United States Atomic Energy Commission, the University of California Radiation Laboratory at Livermore, and other centres involved in nuclear research established Project Plowshare, a programme to apply the atom to what they called “peaceful nuclear explosions.” Although those involved in Plowshare proposed a variety of projects, they devoted most of their resources to the construction of a sea-level isthmian canal that would replace the existing Panama Canal. Turning that proposal into reality, however, ran into numerous roadblocks, amongst them the 1968 Treaty on the Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. By 1970, the canal project had collapsed, and not long thereafter, Plowshare itself came to an end. But one desire of Plowshare scientists, that of creating “clean” nuclear explosives, may be in the offing. If developed, such devices could pose a threat to the existing non-proliferation regime.