Split Sentencing in Florida: Race/Ethnicity,Gender, Age,and the Mitigation of Prison Sentence Length

American Journal of Criminal Justice - Corresponding with the theoretical expectations of the causal attributions and focal concerns perspectives, a vast body of sentencing literature has shown...     

Public Management on the Ground: Clustering Managers Based on Their Behavior

Public management research has identified a dizzying array of management variables that affect organizational performance. While scholars have learned much by analyzing one or a few specific behavioral dimensions of public management at a time, we argue for the value of a more holistic and inductive approach that uses data on several aspects of public management for identifying manager types. Such an approach accounts for both the cognitive processes of people affected by management and the reality that managers’ individual behavioral decisions are interrelated. We examine the overlap of 21 aspects of public school management behavior using cluster analysis. We identify four different manager types (“firefighters,” “laissez-faire managers,” “administrators,” and “proactive floor managers”), each reflecting a distinct constellation of managerial behaviors. The manager types we call “administrators” and “proactive floor managers” are associated with relatively better outcomes, while “firefighters” are associated with relatively worse outcomes.     

Entrepreneurial finance and technology transfer

Scholars in technology transfer come from a variety of different backgrounds and employ different theoretical and methodological assumptions. Such multidisciplinary approach has fertilized the evolution of a florid technology transfer literature, with insights from entrepreneurship, economics, and management. This paper brings the perspective of entrepreneurial finance into the realm of technology transfer, and identifies emerging topics that can complement our understanding of some aspects of technology transfer, especially with regard to supply-side public policies. This article introduces the rationale for the special issue dedicated to entrepreneurial finance and technology transfer. We summarize the main topics and themes covered by a selection of papers presented at the annual conference of the Technology Transfer Society in 2013, and suggest areas for future research.     

Die sozialen Konsequenzen der Restitution von Grundeigentum in Deutschland und Polen

Der Artikel vergleicht die Restitution von Immobilieneigentum in Polen und Deutschland. In Polen gibt es bisher keine gesetzliche Regelung, aber über Verwaltungsentscheidungen wird dennoch Privateigentum restituiert; in Deutschland ist der Restitutionsprozess weitgehend abgeschlossen. Die Analyse geht der Frage nach, ob die moralisch und funktional begründete Privatisierung ihre vorgegebenen Ziele erreicht hat. Die Privatisierung von Häusern und Grundstücken greift in einen sensiblen, mit persönlichen Emotionen verquickten Bereich der Sozialordnung ein, so dass die doppelte Zielsetzung der Restitution, sowohl historische Gerechtigkeit als auch kapitalistische Marktverhältnisse herzustellen, besonderen Schwierigkeiten begegnet. Die Analyse der sozialen und ökonomischen Konsequenzen der sehr unterschiedlich gestalteten Prozesse zeigt, dass in beiden Gesellschaften das anspruchsvolle Ziel einer Herstellung historischer Gerechtigkeit nicht ohne die Entstehung neuer sozialer Ungleichheiten und Ungerechtigkeiten umgesetzt werden konnte. An den Beispielen Prenzlauer Berg und Kleinmachnow in der Region Berlin werden große Unterschiede in der Akzeptanz der Rückgabe durch die Betroffenen deutlich.     

Performance of technology transfer offices in Germany

The aim of this study is to empirically analyze the performance of technology transfer offices (TTO) in Germany. Although being one of the largest and innovative economies in the world, there is only scarce evidence about the role and performance of TTO in university–industry technology transfer. While policy makers and university managers are often quite optimistic about the impact of TTO in fostering technology transfer into the region, consulting firms and research institutes report such institutions in Germany as superfluous and counterproductive. Using the number of invention disclosures as a performance measure, we analyze how variance in performance can be explained by different organizational structures and variables of TTO. Controlling for regional endowment and university specific effects, our results reveal that TTO performance is mainly a function of the kind of labor division within the TTO and the research intensity of the university. Knowing the drivers of TTO performance may help policy makers and university managers to reflect their strategies, mitigate weak points and thus foster performance.