Public Administration Scholarship and the Politics of Coproducing Academic–Practitioner Research

Developing greater cooperation between researchers and practitioners is a long‐standing concern in social science. Academics and practitioners working together to coproduce research offers a number of potential gains for public administration scholarship, but it also raises some dilemmas. The benefits include bringing local knowledge to bear on the field, making better informed policy, and putting research to better use. However, coproduction of research also involves managing ambiguous loyalties, reconciling different interests, and negotiating competing goals. The authors reflect on their experience of coproducing a research project in the United Kingdom and discuss the challenges that coproducers of research confront. They situate the discussion within a consideration of traditions of public administration scholarship and debates about the role of the academy to understand better the politics of their joint practice. Thinking about the politics of coproduction is timely and enables the authors to become more attuned to the benefits and constraints of this mode of research..     

Identity-Lineup Location Influences Target Selection: Evidence from Eye Movements

Eyewitnesses often have to recognize the perpetrators of an observed crime from identity lineups. In the construction of these lineups, a decision must be made concerning where a suspect should be placed, but whether location in a lineup affects the identification of a perpetrator has received little attention. This study explored this problem with a face-matching task, in which observers decided if pairs of faces depict the same person or two different people (Experiment 1), and with a lineup task in which the presence of a target had to be detected in an identity parade of five faces (Experiment 2). In addition, this study also explored if high accuracy is related to a perceptual pop-out effect, whereby the target is detected rapidly among the lineup. In both experiments, observers?? eye movements revealed that location determines the order in which people were viewed, whereby faces on the left side were consistently viewed first. This location effect was reflected also in observers?? responses, so that a foil face on the left side of a lineup display was more likely to be misidentified as the target. However, identification accuracy was not related to a pop-out effect. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

Academic entrepreneurship,technology transfer and society: where next?

I outline a synthesis of micro and macro levels that attempts to provide a broader conceptualization of academic entrepreneurship and an appreciation of the contextual heterogeneity of academic entrepreneurship and the implications for how it occurs. The micro-level concerns how firms orchestrate their resources and capabilities, specifically knowing where resources come from and how to accumulate, bundle and configure them to generate sustainable returns. At the macro level, I analyse four different dimensions of context: temporal, institutional, social and spatial. Consequently, I argue that there is a need for a reconciliation of utilitarian and education-for-education’s sake perspectives on the role of universities.     

Medical regulation of cognitive enhancement devices: some concerns

The authors present a cogent and detailed case for altering the Medical Devices Directive to allow regulation of cognitive enhancement devices (CEDs). Protection against significant risk of harm, especially for the vulnerable, and promotion of benefit through informed use of CEDs are all good features of the proposal. However, the pre-market approval process has limitations, which we explore. We raise the possibility of ‘risk compensation’ in response to the introduction of safety measures, which could alter its effectiveness. The proposal alludes to use of ‘formally trained practitioners,’ which provide a further tier of regulation for CEDs within the proposal. We consider some positive and negative implications of this aspect of the proposal that might warrant further consideration.     

Entrepreneurship ecosystems: an agent-based simulation approach

Knowledge acquisition and development of capabilities constitutes a key perspective in studies regarding the formation of new ventures. When examining entrepreneurship ecosystems, we find that the composition of a region influences the new knowledge acquired by the venture. The main aim of this study is to examine the influence of the new venture, the entrepreneur’s social capital, and the firm performance on the new venture’s knowledge acquisition activities. In particular, the study examines how the institutional context of a region influences new ventures’ knowledge acquisition actions during its growth, and in turn the level of sustained entrepreneurial activity within the region. The paper focuses on the formation of alliances by new ventures, one particular form of knowledge acquisition process that has been established as critical to new venture success in the high technology sector. The mechanisms for acquiring and transforming knowledge have the greatest impact on new venture formation, and in this context, the concepts of strategic knowledge arbitrage and strategic knowledge serendipity (SKARSE?) are validated through an agent-based simulation model. The main results focus on the effects of interactions between entrepreneurs and institutions in the process of new venture formation from a knowledge creation, dissemination, and absorption perspective.     

The effect of misperception on strategic behavior in legislative settings: Social psychology meets rational choice

This paper is about the conditions under which simple social psychological processes can affect collective decisions. In rational choice theory, social psychological effects are said to cancel out, be randomized, or be corrected by communication. Yet as Janis and Mann (1977) argued, there are generally recurring conditions in which such factors influence individual decisions. The question is, Under what conditions can we expect these factors to affect collective decisions? This paper suggests a general approach to identifying the effects of strategic misperception, illustrates it with an example of a social psychological process that affects player perceptions, and describes the preference distributions in which this simple process would change majority voting outcomes. The general conclusion is that strategic misperception may affect majority decisions under so many distributions of preferences that decisions cannot be predicted from knowledge of actors' preferences alone.     

Sampling Increases Music Sales: An Empirical Copyright Study

The Supreme Court instructs that the most important consideration in analyzing fair use is the effect on the market for the original. Employing music sales data, this article presents evidence of digital sampling's effect on the sales of sampled songs. Our results indicate that a reassessment of fair use in the area of music sampling is needed since sales of sampled songs increased after being repurposed within new songs. These results are robust and highly statistically significant. Findings of this nature favor a judicial determination that sampling constitutes a fair use, even when considering the influence that a new work has on extant licensing markets for sample clearance. This article argues that the current sample–licensing market is a product of aberrant antisampling case law arising from a lack of relevant empirical data and nonutilitarian judicial opinions. As set forth herein, the goal of encouraging creative activity without hindering copyright owners’ capacity to financially gain from their work is served by implementing a limited presumption of fair use for sampling. The findings are further applicable outside of the fair use analysis, as the study is important in the private law when viewed through a law and strategy lens. Forward thinking music firms should reframe their approach by encouraging sampling of their works to secure cost‐free advertising and achieve a competitive advantage.     

Forensic Performance Analysis of Load‐Limiting Devices in Automotive Seat Belt Retractors

The introduction of frontal airbags and seatbelt pretensioners for front seat occupants provided an opportunity to address injuries caused by seatbelt loading by introducing load‐limiters, which were intended to reduce belt loading while maintaining proper restraint. Investigation and forensic analysis of real‐world crashes identified that the implementation of these devices, in some circumstances, increased the potential of injury. This paper focuses on the trade‐offs of load‐limiters, that is, the reduction loading to the occupant versus the corresponding increase in seatbelt webbing and occupant movement. If the additional webbing introduced is not controlled, the risk of injury to the occupant is increased and could result in more frequent and severe injuries rather than a reduction. This paper quantifies the webbing introduced by load‐limiter activation through forensic analysis of the seatbelt involved in real‐world crashes and testing and assesses its effect on the injuries sustained by the occupant.