Promoting university startups: international patterns, vicarious learning and policy implications

Anecdotal evidence indicates universities around the world fashion programs to permit or encourage university-linked start ups, in pursuit of improved regional wealth and job creation, often influenced by the iconic vision of Silicon Valley. This paper explores whether these programs are leading to a pattern of similar startups across the world, and gradually improving performance, or to ongoing variation in activities and outcomes, with potential for both harmful and serendipitous unintended outcomes. We use a theoretical lens of research on multiple organizations trying to learn from others—or repeated vicarious organizational learning. The paper first suggests that while startup programs share similar goals they do not generate similar startups across regions and time, with important variation in structure, links to home schools, and localization. It then posits that these programs appear to have varied outcomes in terms of their economic goals, and stresses the difficulty and importance of evaluating this issue. Finally, the paper details important potential unintended (collateral) outcomes, both harmful and valued. Dangers noted include not only traditional concerns with science norms or faculty time, but also the potential impact on humanities and the social sciences. Potential collateral benefits include facilitating the ability of students and citizens to create new forms of value more broadly. Theoretically, the paper speculates that ongoing vicarious learning by multiple organizations in this context may increase or at least sustain variation in outcomes, leading to some excellent but many indeterminate or harmful outcomes rather than homogenization among startups or outcomes. From a policy viewpoint, our review suggests that policymakers should abandon the search for a ‘secret sauce’ that will assure regional growth from startups. Instead, we suggest that they tailor programs to local skills and experience, actively monitor economic and non-economic impact, and expand the overall vision to include values and skills of autonomy and the creation of new forms of value more broadly.     

Imprinting and the progeny of university spin-offs

In this paper, we employ a genealogical imprinting approach to theorize that experiences incurred during the founding of a first-generation university spin-off will influence future spin-off activity from the focal firm. We propose that firms that secure equity investment during their founding process will have a higher likelihood of generating subsequent spin-offs, and that this impact is conditional on the human capital of the founding team. We test our hypotheses on a sample of 101 first generation university spin-offs around a large US research university and their subsequent progeny firms. This study develops a new understanding of multi-generational spin-off processes in a region.     

Mobilizing local resources in developing countries

Many developing countries are putting increased pressure on local governments to mobilize resources, especially to meet the recurrent costs of operating and maintaining locally sited capital projects. Local taxes, user charges and voluntary contributions are all possible mechanisms to carry out these efforts. Yet several important issues arise whenever these mobilization instruments are contemplated and evaluated. Several, often competing, objectives must be considered when evaluating fiscal instruments including the ability of the mechanism to raise revenues, its effect on economic efficiency, its equity implications and its administrative feasibility. After discussing each of these objectives, we show how numerous constraints, including those imposed by the political/legal system, administrative structure, the economy and the culture of the country, must be recognized while searching for a workable set of reforms that will mobilize additional resources without doing great harm to the other objectives. The key to these reforms would seem to be incentives or disincentives inherent in the revenue structure. Without recognizing these incentives or attempting to alter them, resource mobilization efforts are likely to go astray.     

A Lingering Question of Priorities: Athletic Budgets and Academic Performance Revisited1

Many organization theories suggest that divergent goals can hamper an organization's pursuit of its primary mission. An earlier version of this article analyzed the effect of the pursuit of divergent goals on American public schools. This is an update of the original article that adds two years of data to the original study. Using an educational production function, this article assesses the relationships between athletic budgets and various aggregate measures of academic performance. Controlling for various known components of academic performance, athletic budgets have a significant negative relationship with academic performance. Schools that devote a large amount of resources to athletic budgets have lower levels of academic achievement. A focus on athletics seems to institutionalize goals that conflict with the schools’ academic missions.     

Empirical evaluation of bureaucratic models of inefficiency

Two separate but related strands of literature exist regarding the efficiency of public sector service provision – the theoretical base developed in the bureaucratic models of supply and the methodological base developed in the operations research and economic literatures. Most analyses focus exclusively on either the measurement or causes of inefficiency. This paper seeks to empirically test bureaucratic models of supply by drawing on the measurement literature. In anticipation of the results, it is found that there does exist empirical evidence supporting some of the implications of these models.     

Service Providers’ Knowledge and Perceptions of the Legal Service Needs of Crime Victims

Currently, there is an expansive body of victimization literature within the criminal justice field, which covers a number of essential topics such as victimization trends and patterns, short-and long-term effects of victimization, as well as specific effects of intimate partner violence and sexual assault victimization. Despite the variety of topics examined by empirical research, there is a noticeable lack of discourse pertaining to civil legal services for crime victims. This study is among the first to take a close look at civil legal services for victims by exploring three uncharted areas including: (a) service providers’ knowledge of civil legal services, (b) the legal needs of crime victims and available services, and (c) barriers between victims and accessing civil legal services. Using quantitative and qualitative data from interviews with service providers, policy implications and future research recommendations are discussed.     

The neuroendocrine effects of the TASER X26®: A brief report

IntroductionLaw enforcement officers use conducted electrical weapons (CEW) such as the TASER X26^® to control violently resistive subjects. There are no studies in the medical literature examining the effects of these weapons on the human stress response. This is the first study to compare the human stress response to conducted electrical weapons, oleoresin capsicum (O.C.), a cold-water tank immersion, and a defensive tactics drill.MethodsSubjects were randomized to one of the four interventions studied. Subjects received either a 5-s exposure from the TASER X26 CEW with the probes fired into the back from 7 ft, a 5-s spray of O.C., a skin and mucous membrane irritant, to the eyes, a 45-s exposure of the hand and forearm in a 0 °C cold water tank, or a 1-min defensive tactics drill.ResultsAlpha-amylase had the greatest increase from baseline at 10–15 min with the defensive tactics drill. Cortisol had the greatest increase at 15–20 min with O.C. Cortisol remained most elevated at 40–60 min in the defensive tactics drill group.ConclusionsOur preliminary data suggests that physical exertion during custodial arrest may be most activating of the human stress response, particularly the sympathetic–adrenal–medulla axis. This may suggest that techniques to limit the duration of this exertion may be the safest means to apprehend subjects, particularly those at high-risk for in-custody death. Conducted electrical weapons were not more activating of the human stress response than other uses of force.     

The Reagan Deficit

This paper analyzes the U.S. federal budget deficit during the Reagan administration and its short- and longer-term consequences for the aggregate economy. While budget policies of the Reagan administration do not account for all of the increases in annual deficits or in outstanding federal debt during the Reagan era, an analysis indicates that the administration's program of tax reduction and defense spending build-up were the major sources of deficit growth after the recovery from the recession of 1981-82. For the near-term future, the legacy of the Reagan deficits includes (1) the failure of domestically owned capital formation to expand at rates comparable to our major trading partners, (2) the necessity of diverting U.S. products and income to servicing foreign creditors, and (3) the need for rates of interest and profits to be high enough to induce foreigners to retain their holdings of U.S. assets lest divestiture cause a virtual collapse in the exchange rate. The final evaluation of the impact of the Reagan deficit hinges on whether the Reagan era of high consumption prosperity proves a good trade-off with the consequences of attenuated macropolicy responses to recession, lower levels of U.S. owned capital stock, and remittances to foreign creditors.