Facilitating technology transfer among organizations: An applied communication strategy concept for organizational boundary spanners

Facilitating technology transfer from one organization to another is a complex process. Organization representatives are key players in the facilitation process and act to span the boundary between organizations. This paper offers a conceptual framework concerning organizational “boundary” spanners who must cross lines to transfer technology. From a communication viewpoint, boundary spanners need to reduce uncertainty, process information, and provide representation in order to achieve organizational outcomes of building relationships, achieving performance, and applying technology. This framework describes several strategies involved in the process of technology transfer: inquiry, self-disclosure, enhancing self-image, bargaining, and relationship-building. In short, we argue that individual boundary spanners need to be effective communicators when facilitating the technology transfer process.     

Forgetting the Führer: the Recent History of the Holocaust Denial Movement in Germany

The crimes committed by National Socialist Germany during the Second World War place Germany in a unique position for the Holocaust denial movement, and combine its so-called "academic" aspect with its political core. In no other country has the movement attracted so much publicity for its pernicious mixture of lies, distortions and half-truths as it has in Germany since the late 1980s. The introduction of laws in 1985 and 1994 that target " die Auschwitzlüge " (Auschwitz-Lie) changed the frequency of Holocaust denial in German public life, if not its nature. This article is an analysis of the German Holocaust denial movement since 1988, with an emphasis on the most important individuals and events that have influenced the movement's direction in this period. It also includes an examination of the laws that seek to stop its spread.     

Democratic Legitimacy and the 2000 Election

Law and Philosophy -     

Mass Administrative Reorganization,Media Attention,and the Paradox of Information

How does media attention influence government decisions about whether to terminate independent administrative agencies? The authors argue that an agency's salience with partisan audiences has a direct effect, but a high media profile can disrupt normal government monitoring processes and obfuscate termination decisions. This argument is evaluated in the context of a recent mass administrative reorganization by the British coalition government using probit and heteroscedastic probit regression models. The evidence suggests that termination is less likely for agencies salient in newspapers popular with the government's core supporters but not those read by its minority coalition partner. We also find that agencies with greater overall newspaper salience as well as younger agencies have a higher error variance.     

Decentralising to Villages in Indonesia: Money (and Other) Mistakes

Nearly 15 years after embarking on its large‐scale decentralisation programme, Indonesia has decided to extend its efforts to the village level. Decentralising to villages is intended to improve service delivery performance at the lowest administrative tier and reduce social inequality and poverty. A number of potential difficulties with the design of Indonesia's nascent village decentralisation initiative have already become apparent. Methods used to allocate funds to villages are particularly problematic. Oddly, fund distribution procedures insist to a large extent on equal per village allocations, despite the significant heterogeneity of villages. And they ignore other sources of revenue to which villages have access. In the event, village revenues will be very inequitably distributed: villages with high levels of poverty will receive less money than they need and villages with access to significant funding from oil and gas revenues will receive more than required. Also, village service responsibilities are unclearly defined, village financial management systems are inadequately prepared to handle large increases in funding, and mechanisms to monitor and control village spending are underdeveloped. These difficulties will severely constrain the achievement of official objectives and create further challenges for reformers in their attempts to combat corruption at the subnational level. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.