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The structure of a policy communication network shows the effect of policy communication on social media. Policies need to be dynamically adjusted during the implementation process, which may affect the policy’s interaction on social media. Based on the Policy Network Theory, this study explores the effects of policy communication changes on social media before and after the adjustment of China’s Mass Entrepreneurship and Innovation (MEI) Policy using Exponential Random Graph Models (ERGMs) analysis and community analysis. The study reveals that after the policy adjustment, the communication network structure indicated a significant increase in triangular configurations, yet the formation of edges remained constrained. Meanwhile, cross-community connections in the communication network decreased, with communities exhibiting localized contraction, and emotional polarization becoming more pronounced. These phenomena occurred because policy adjustments have boosted interaction levels through new incentive mechanisms, whereas the content and delivery methods of policy communication remain insufficiently engaging, which constrains relationship-building. Additionally, the policy’s evolution from a mobilization–participation model to a vertical governance paradigm has systematically reconfigured inter-community interaction patterns, resulting in structural transformations in cross-group information flows. To enhance the dissemination of policies on social media, it is recommended to intervene in the policy communication network structure through role embedding, shift from a reactive public sentiment management paradigm to proactive emotional governance, and strengthen policy communication strategies that emphasize emotional resonance. These measures can improve the effectiveness of policy communication and help address the challenges posed by emotional polarization and network fragmentation.
The literature on policy coordination between government agencies reveals little about how coordination is managed in centralized political systems. This paper, therefore, presents a dynamic and quantitative analysis of policy coordination in China based on the science and technology (S&T) policy documents issued by China’s central government agencies in the period 1978–2019. From a series of snapshots depicting inter-agency policy development in five historical stages over this timeframe, we find that (1) policy coordination has developed steadily and has mainly occurred to interpret macro strategies and put in place more detailed implementation measures. (2) Ministries under the purview of the State Council have played a leading role in policy coordination, while other types of agencies have cooperated in more supporting roles. (3) Coordination efforts have mainly focused on inclusive and national demand-oriented themes, such as high-tech industrialization, rural S&T, and social development. This research offers a panoramic view of policy coordination trajectories and mechanisms in centralized political systems. As such, it adds to the analysis methods available for quantitatively studying policy documents.
Collaboration between public administration organizations and various stakeholders is often prescribed as a potential solution to the current complex problems of governance, such as climate change. According to the Advocacy Coalition Framework, shared beliefs are one of the most important drivers of collaboration. However, studies investigating the role of beliefs in collaboration show mixed results. Some argue that similarity of general normative and empirical policy beliefs elicits collaboration, while others focus on beliefs concerning policy instruments. Proposing a new divisive beliefs hypothesis, we suggest that agreeing on those beliefs over which there is substantial disagreement in the policy subsystem is what matters for collaboration. Testing our hypotheses using policy network analysis and data on climate policy subsystems in eleven countries (Australia, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Germany, Finland, Ireland, Japan, Korea, Portugal, Sweden, and Taiwan), we find belief similarity to be a stronger predictor of collaboration when the focus is divisive beliefs rather than normative and empirical policy beliefs or beliefs concerning policy instruments. This knowledge can be useful for managing collaborative governance networks because it helps to identify potential competing coalitions and to broker compromises between them.
Community detection (or clustering) in large-scale graphs is an important problem in graph mining. Communities reveal interesting organizational and functional characteristics of a network. Louvain algorithm is an efficient sequential algorithm for community detection. However, such sequential algorithms fail to scale for emerging large-scale data. Scalable parallel algorithms are necessary to process large graph datasets. In this work, we show a comparative analysis of our different parallel implementations of Louvain algorithm. We design parallel algorithms for Louvain method in shared memory and distributed memory settings. Developing distributed memory parallel algorithms is challenging because of inter-process communication and load balancing issues. We incorporate dynamic load balancing in our final algorithm DPLAL (Distributed Parallel Louvain Algorithm with Load-balancing). DPLAL overcomes the performance bottleneck of the previous algorithms and shows around 12-fold speedup scaling to a larger number of processors. We also compare the performance of our algorithm with some other prominent algorithms in the literature and get better or comparable performance . We identify the challenges in developing distributed memory algorithm and provide an optimized solution DPLAL showing performance analysis of the algorithm on large-scale real-world networks from different domains.
Many policy systems are experimenting with collaborative institutions to manage complex policy problems in the face of persistent conflict and scientific uncertainty. Policy networks are central to the theory of why collaborative institutions are effective. While many policy systems naturally become segregated, fragmented, or siloed due to homophily, collaborative institutions are hypothesized to create more integrated systems of organizational collaboration. Collaborative institutions may therefore be evaluated by the extent to which they reduce the tendency towards homophily and increase the integration of policy networks. This paper evaluates three collaborative institutions in regional land use planning and specifies a theory of the program from two prominent frameworks: Institutional Collective Action (ICA) and the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF). Results show that three forms of homophily are at work and that in some cases, collaborative institutions successfully reduce the tendency towards network segregation.
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In polycentric governance systems, decisions that influence a given policy issue are often made across a series of forums: venues where actors meet to resolve collective action problems. Here, we examine who does and does not participate in forums, and the factors driving that participation. We analyse forum participation patterns of 307 actors involved in Swiss water governance, who could participate in water governance forums. We find that the majority of actors do not participate in any forums. Results from a Bayesian multi-level logistic regression model show that especially those concerned with a broader range of policy issues and those that have more organizational resources at their disposal are more likely to participate. To a lesser extent, this also holds for organizations that represent policy beliefs consistent with median beliefs in the system. A belief that increased cross-sectoral coordination is needed to promote more effective governance does not have a discernible impact on participation. These results question the integrative characteristics often attributed to forums in polycentric governance more generally.
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Managing environmental problems requires cross‐sectoral and cross‐level collaboration among actors. Scholars of institutional arrangements investigate how rules shape such collaboration. Scholars of the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) look for explanations for collaboration in actors' values and beliefs. Rarely have these two factors been considered together when studying collaborative behavior. This paper considers institutional arrangements and actor values to examine the structure and potential drivers of actor collaboration. The study combines the Institutional Analysis and Development framework and the ACF, applying social network analysis to explore an interaction network prescribed by rules and a surveyed collaboration network. It tests the influence of actor beliefs, reputation, and institutional arrangements on collaboration investigating water management in the German Ruhr catchment. The study finds that perceived power and actor beliefs explain actor collaboration better than institutional arrangements and that perceived interactions are more diverse and denser than hierarchically structured networks of prescribed interactions.
The exchange of information among organizations is the lifeblood of governance networks. It is a necessary condition for successful governance. Political divides between organizations often impede information exchange. We ask which organizations are most likely to broker information across political divides. We consider survey (n = 312) evidence of technical information exchange in Swiss water governance. Bayesian exponential random graph modeling results show that scientific organizations play crucial roles for cross‐divide brokerage. To a lesser extent, this also holds for higher‐level governmental agencies. Participation in policy forums is associated with a higher likelihood of brokering across political divides. There is however no clear benefit to participating in more than two or three forums. We conclude that an active role played by scientific organizations is the most promising avenue to increase information flow across political divides. Beyond this, we suggest setting up carefully constructed exchange forums and selectively engaging moderate members of subgroups.
Effectiveness has been understood at three levels of analysis in the scholarly study of policy design. The first is at the systemic level indicating what entails effective formulation environments or spaces making them conducive to successful design. The second reflects more program level concerns, surrounding how policy tool portfolios or mixes can be effectively constructed to address complex policy objectives. The third is a more specific instrument level, focusing on what accounts for and constitutes the effectiveness of particular types of policy tools. Undergirding these three levels of analysis are comparative research concerns that concentrate on the capacities of government and political actors to devise and implement effective designs. This paper presents a systematic review of a largely scattered yet quickly burgeoning body of knowledge in the policy sciences, which broadly asks what capacities engender effectiveness at the multiple levels of policy design? The findings bring to light lessons about design effectiveness at the level of formulation spaces, policy mixes and policy programs. Further, this review points to a future research agenda for design studies that is sensitive to the relative orders of policy capacity, temporality and complementarities between the various dimensions of policy capacity.
Public R&D subsidy is a commonly adopted policy instrument to promote firms’ exploratory innovation that encourages novel knowledge learning. Under the multi-level institutional settings such as China, however, it is unclear in current literature as to whether central and local-level governmental R&D subsidy programs exert heterogeneous influences on recipient firms’ exploratory innovation. By employing an exclusive panel data of manufacturing firms in Jiangsu Province, this study investigates the heterogeneous effects of central and local R&D subsidies on firms’ exploratory innovation. Considering that regional innovation contexts may influence the learning and innovation of subsidy recipients, we further test the interaction effects of specialized industrial agglomeration and R&D subsidies. We find that R&D subsidies in general do promote firms’ exploratory innovation, and the local R&D subsidy exhibits a more salient effect. In addition, the positive effect of subsidies is stronger for the recipients in a highly specialized industrial agglomeration. This study contributes to R&D subsidy literature and extends our knowledge on the different roles of central and local governments in firms’ learning behaviors and technological upgrading.
Explaining collaboration between actors involved in policy processes is crucial for understanding these processes and their outcomes. The policy science literature has advanced several hypotheses explicating what enables or hinders collaboration. However, only a handful of studies compare these factors across different policy contexts. This paper investigates the role of beliefs and influence in shaping collaboration under conditions of high and low conflict by estimating Exponential Random Graph Models using network survey data on the climate policy domains in four countries. Results show that both beliefs and influence are associated with the formation of collaboration ties in the high conflict contexts of South Korea and the United States, whereas neither are significant in the low conflict contexts of Sweden and Switzerland. By considering the level of conflict, our findings provide a more nuanced understanding of when beliefs and influence shape collaboration patterns.
While scholars and practitioners frequently laud the potential of networks to address complex policy problems, empirical evidence of the effectiveness of networks is scarce. This study examines how changes in network structure (centralization and transitivity), network composition (sector diversity and geographic range), and tie properties (stability and strength) influence community level outcomes. Relying on a statutory requirement in the state of Iowa requiring local governments to file all instances of intergovernmental and intersectoral collaboration, we measure collaboration networks in 81 counties over 17 years in the areas of crime and economic development. Using fixed effects models, we examine how changes in the structure and composition of these county‐level networks affect substantive policy outcomes. Our findings indicate that network properties matter, but that the specific properties may be context dependent. We find network centralization and stability are stronger predictors of crime while network composition is more strongly associated with economic development.
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The conditions under which policy beliefs and influential actors shape collaborative behaviour in governance networks are not well understood. This paper applies exponential random graph models to network data from Finland and Sweden to investigate how beliefs, reputational power and the role of public authorities' structure collaboration ties in the two countries' climate change governance networks. Results show that only in Finland's conflictual climate policy domain do actors collaborate with those with similar beliefs and with reputational power, while only in Sweden's consensual climate policy domain do public authorities play central impartial coordinating roles. These results indicate that conflict is present in a governance network when beliefs and reputational power determine collaboration and that it is absent when public authorities occupy central roles. They also suggest that relative success in climate policy action is likely to occur when public authorities take on network manager roles.
Collaborative leadership has stood at the heart of European politics since its inception. Yet EU scholars have only recently started to examine the concept and mainly from an institutional perspective. This article conceptualises the phenomenon of collaborative leadership from an actor-centered perspective. It explores a central condition for successful collaborative leadership identified in the literature: the existence of shared beliefs among the leaders involved. To do this, the article focuses on four events in the history of European Economic and Monetary Union. Using the method of cognitive mapping, the study establishes the extent of congruence in the beliefs on European integration and fiscal and monetary policy of the four leadership trios overseeing these events. On the basis of a survey of leading experts in the field, the article reveals that the level of cognitive proximity in leaders’ beliefs aligns with the perceived success with which the trios exerted collaborative leadership.
It is well known that public agencies are nearly immortal, but what explains their termination? This article argues that apart from conventional antecedents, political salience defined by top leaders largely shapes government agencies' life cycle. In one of the first large‐N analyses of agency termination in a non‐Western authoritarian regime, we used longitudinal data for the central apparatus in China from 1949 to 1976 to test this hypothesis. We specifically used Chairman Mao's written directives to measure political salience and found that agencies that received more directives were less likely to be terminated. In contrast, agencies less attended to the boss were less likely to survive major restructurings. We also found that peripheral agencies (e.g., smaller, lower‐ranking agencies with noncore functions) benefited more from leaders' attention. We compare the results with the existing literature and suggest some theoretical and policy implications.
Explaining the mechanisms that structure policy networks is an important subject of public management research as networks are key mechanisms of convening actors across public, private, and nonprofit sectors to design and implement public policies. Previous research focuses on the positive role of trust in building network structures in the context of social service delivery. But many policy networks can be adversarial, particularly those that operate in a regulatory context. We know little about the role of distrust in building network structures in this context. This study conceptualizes distrust as a distinct concept from the absence of trust, and examines why stake-holders stay connected with distrusted stakeholders in a regulatory policy network. Using a mixed-method analysis of a local hydraulic fracturing policy network in New York, we found that actors stay connected with stakeholders they distrust to perform information processing, bridging, and demarcating operations, which in turn create reciprocating, bridging and/or bonding structures. Our findings suggest three implications for public management research relevant to both regulatory and service networks: distrust can create network connectivity, connectivity can structure networks in particular ways, and brokers do not reduce transaction costs if they lack skills in principled engagement.
Brokerage and brokering are pervasive and consequential organizational phenomena. Prevailing models underscore social structure and focus on the consequences that come from brokerage —occupying a bridging position between disconnected others in a network. In contrast, emerging models underscore social interactions and focus on brokering — the behavioral processes through which organizational actors shape others’ relationships. Our review led us to develop a novel framework as a means to integrate and organize a wide range of theoretical insights and empirical findings on brokerage and brokering. The COR (Changing Others’ Relationships) framework captures the following ideas that emerged from our review: (a) different triadic configurations enable different forms of brokering, which in turn, produce distinct effects on others’ relationships; (b) brokering is a multifaceted social influence process that can take the form of intermediation (connecting disconnected others) or modification (changing others’ preexisting relationships); (c) comparing social relations pre-brokering versus post-brokering reveals a broker’s impact; (d) brokering can influence others’ relationships positively or negatively; and (e) information and incentives are two principal means through which individuals change others’ relationships. Overall, the current review integrates multiple streams of research relevant to brokerage and brokering — including those on structural holes, organizational innovation, boundary spanning, social and political skill, workplace gossip, third-party conflict managers, and labor relations — and links each of the emergent themes identified in the current review to promising directions for future research on brokerage and brokering.
Calls for better use of scientific evidence to inform policy decisions stem from the belief that enhanced outcomes for the society can be expected. Yet, the introduction of evidence-based practices in innovation policymaking has not come without criticism. This introductory article sets the scene for the short collection of papers that address specific issues regarding the prospect of better evidence-based policy in the area of industrial research and innovation (IRI). It identifies and discusses key challenges for the transition towards evidence-based IRI policy. It then introduces the three papers, which build upon and depart from related assumptions or narratives reflecting the current state of practices in IRI policy.
This study explores how policy funding context—defined as whether funding for a social service policy domain is discretionary or mandated—affects network structures in social service domains. We present comparative findings from two social service policy networks which differ with respect to funding context: A 47-actor adult basic education policy network that is funded discretionarily and a 40-actor mental health policy network where spending is mandated. Both are located in a US state we pseudonymed “Newstatia.” Using an exponential random graph model, we found that policy funding contexts affect how the locus of resource dependence interacts with the nature of client groups to determine the array of interest organizations engaged in the networks, which leads to differentials in network structure across these domains. We suggest that policy funding contexts are before resource dependence and client factors when explaining network structure. This opens space for reconsideration of the causal claims between policy funding contexts, resource dependence, advocacy mobilization, and network structures.
Rapidly increasing number of web pages or documents leads to topic specific filtering in order to find web pages or documents efficiently. This is a preliminary research that uses cosine similarity to implement text relevance in order to find topic specific document. This research is divided into three parts. The first part is text-preprocessing. In this part, the punctuation in a document will be removed, then convert the document to lower case, implement stop word removal and then extracting the root word by using Porter Stemming algorithm. The second part is keywords weighting. Keyword weighting will be used by the next part, the text relevance calculation. Text relevance calculation will result the value between 0 and 1. The closer value to 1, then both documents are more related, vice versa.
The structure of political and administrative institutions is important for achieving public goals. It is not fixed, however, but may change as a result of environmental and cultural processes or because of changes in leadership. Structural changes in the central government apparatus feature prominently in the recent strand of reform and change literature, but we know little about structural changes in contexts other than Western democracies. In this article, we analyze the main types of and possible reasons for structural changes in the central government apparatus in China over the past seventy years. We find interesting patterns of structural change in line with administrative developments. Using the multiple perspectives of organization theory, these can be primarily explained by political cycles or action taken by the central leadership, but they have also been influenced by cultural elements, economic growth, and societal transformation.
Points for practitioners
We document the key patterns of organizational restructuring in China's central government from 1949 to 2016. Political cycles and economic reform and development are found to be the key drivers of structural evolution. The results show that the political will of top leaders plays a crucial role in navigating structural reforms, yet institutional reforms are still largely confined to rhetoric and symbolism without substantively transforming the landscape of government architecture. Sustained structural reforms are difficult to achieve successfully, which suggests that alternative avenues may be required to streamline administrative processes and improve interagency coordination.
In rapidly changing regional economies, less innovative European regions (henceforth referred to as lagging-behind regions) must actively work to reduce the gap between them and knowledge-intensive regions. Recent literature has stressed that the lack of efficient institutional settings reduces the opportunities of local knowledge spillover and increases the need for local organisations to exploit collaborative networks to better support their innovation performance. In this light, since increasing attention has recently been directed at the role of inter-regional collaborations, we have measured the capacity of local innovative organisations embedded in lagging-behind European regions to develop internal and external regional inventors' networks by exploring their collaborative patenting processes. Then, a seven-year panel dataset (2002-2008) was organised using patents data at a regional level to validate the research hypothesis that collaborations, and specifically with highly innovative (knowledge-intensive) regions, positively affect the innovation performances of lagging-behind regions. Finally, the implications of EU policies for supporting lagging-behind regions are discussed.
Proximity, knowledge base and the innovation process: towards an integrated framework. Regional Studies. The proximity concept refers to types of inter-organizational relationships that are expected to facilitate interactive learning and collaborative innovation. Different forms of proximity include geographical, cognitive, social, institutional and organizational proximity. This paper argues that the relative importance of each proximity dimension depends on the type of knowledge being produced. It distinguishes between analytical, synthetic and symbolic knowledge, the intensity of which in turn varies with research, development and marketing stages of new product development. The case study of Unilever’s Becel diet margarine serves as a first example of such an integrated framework.
Drawing on and extending institutional logics and resource dependence theories, this paper posits that for cross-sector partnerships to survive, organizations need to share compatible institutional logics, but depend less on each other’s resources. Asymmetrical cross-sector partnerships may lead to a breakup if organizations are forced to operate under incompatible institutional logics. The findings of this study show that the challenges posed by incompatible logics of partners could be mitigated by the degree of resource interdependence between organizations. Capturing the effects of context and transactions on the actors’ strategic behavior, the findings, based on dataset of project-level partnership ties between 1312 organizations in the carbon-offset market, support these hypotheses. The paper concludes by discussing implications of organizations' responses to keep acting under or reinterpreting existing institutional logics in asymmetrical cross-sector relationships.
This paper addresses a number of fundamental research questions on university–industry (U–I) collaborations. Are U–I collaborations intrinsically different from other forms of collaboration, such as inter-firm or inter-university collaborations? Are they more difficult to form? Is their output qualitatively different? What factors facilitate their development? By looking at the collaborative behavior of all Italian inventors over the 1978–2007 period, the empirical analysis shows that U–I collaborations are less likely to happen when compared to collaborations involving exclusively university partners of business partners, and suggests that they tend to generate patents of more general applicability in subsequent inventions—measured by forward-citations. As emphasized by the literature, geographical proximity plays an important role in facilitating all forms of collaboration. At the same time, it works as a possible substitute for institutional proximity, facilitating U–I collaborations. However, the involvement of ‘star inventors’ on both sides of the collaboration can play an equally important role in ‘bridging’ universities and industry.
Novel combinations of technologies are usually the result of collaborative work that builds on existing knowledge. Albeit inventors and their respective communities tend to be specialized, inventor collaborations across differently specialized peers have the potential to generate co-inventor networks that provide access to a diverse set of knowledge and facilitate the production of radical novelty. Previous research has demonstrated that short access in large co-inventor networks enables innovative outcomes in regional economies. However, how connections in the network across different technological knowledge domains matter and what impact they might generate is still unknown. The present investigation focuses on ‘atypical’ combinations of technologies as indicated in patent documents. In particular, the role of technological specializations linked in co-inventor networks that result in radical innovation in European regions is analyzed. Our results confirm that the share of atypical patents is growing in regions where bridging ties establish short access to and across cohesive co-inventor sub-networks. Furthermore, the evidence suggests that the strong specialization of co-inventor communities in regions fosters atypical combinations because these communities manage to increase the scale and scope of novel combinations. Thus, bridges between communities that are specialized in different technologies favor atypical innovation outcomes. The work shows that not diversity per se, but links across variously specialized inventor communities can foster radical innovation.
Interlocal collaboration for service delivery (ICSD) for migrant workers has grown rapidly in the postpandemic era. Nevertheless, limited research has investigated the mechanisms through which localities interact with one another in the implementation process. This study explores under what conditions a city collaborates more with one city than another in ICSD for migrant workers in Guangdong Province, China. Our results show that geographical proximity, workforce similarity, and administrative status asymmetry are positively related to partner selection. City mayors’ personal connections are associated with a higher collaboration degree. However, problem severity has negative impacts on both partner selection and collaboration degree.
This paper examines brokerage dynamics in technology transfer networks (TTNs), i.e., hybrid networks of different actors operating in the transitional area between knowledge and business ecosystems (i.e., innovation ecotones), with research organizations as anchor tenants. This particular type of network is gaining increasing attention. However, despite evidence of the importance of brokerage dynamics for knowledge mobility anchored in science and technology research, three main questions remain open: Who acts as network broker in TTNs? What are their specific functions? What mechanisms do they adopt to support these functions? To answer these questions, we conducted an in-depth multi-case study focusing on three European centers of excellence in scientific research, namely the University of Cambridge (UK), the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (Switzerland), and the Italian Institute of Technology (Italy). We find that institutional actors as well as individuals act as network brokers in TTNs, and that brokerage manifests with varying degrees of formalization related to the TTN's level of maturity. We also identify six network brokerage functions, namely conflict resolution, spreading knowledge, linking idea fragments, connecting problems to solutions, expanding the network, and strengthening the network, and five mechanisms, namely endorsement, mediation, events, antennas, and digital support systems, that support these functions.
Understanding the national innovation capability involves the consideration of a variety of evolving institutional structures within the national innovation system (NIS). The variety of and interactions among institutional structures requires a systemic and dynamic approach to the NIS. In this respect, a configurational approach generates specific configurational conditions of the institutional structures, and offers a comprehensive and integrated approach to deal with the inherently complex and evolving nature of the NIS. In this research, using the Global Innovation Index (GII) data, we employ a fuzzy model with the Observer Kalman filter identification (OKID) method to develop configurational combinations. Our analysis provides a characterization of the impact of specific institutional structures on national innovation capability, while accounting for time and the innovation level of the countries. By explaining which specific institutional structures impact national innovation capability, this study contributes to the design of the innovation systems with a systemic approach and our understanding of which institutional structures to support innovation.
Answering how and why policies emerge and interact with one another will advance our understanding of the evolution of policies. The paper investigates policy emergence as a practice defining possible policy objects in a specific domain and policy interaction as a practice enabling the defined objects. To trace the policy evolution, we define three types of citations to describe policymaking processes, establish the citation and co-citation networks of policy documents, and then conduct a natural language processing-based bibliometric analysis. We reveal the patterns of policymaking practices and identify the focal policies in a given domain. The results within the context of Chinese innovation and entrepreneurial policies suggest the information contained in focal policies drives the direction of future policy themes, as well as regular policies, tend to cite focal policies and follow the ideas of focal policies to achieve their goals. Our findings also provide some implications for Chinese future policymaking.
The transition literature (especially within economic geography, urban studies and political ecology) highlights that the proximity between actors plays a crucial role in determining the dynamics of sustainable transitions. Economic geographers distinguish between absolute (spatial) and relative (non-spatial) proximity. These play different roles in the transition process, though relative proximity has been scarcely investigated in empirical studies. To overcome this limitation, we investigated the relevance of spatial and non-spatial proximity in the evolution of a technological niche. We also explored the roles of different kinds of non-spatial proximity (i.e. cognitive, organizational, social, institutional), in niche evolution, in terms of network expansion. To this end, we analyzed the Italian biofuel niche, as it has already undergone different evolution phases. We found that the most relevant drivers of niche networking were social, cognitive and institutional proximity. Additionally, while social proximity was relevant throughout the entire life span of the niche, cognitive and institutional proximity gained significance only in the maturity phase, marking a transition point in the niche evolution. From these findings we derive that policy makers should (i) concentrate on social proximity to speed up niche evolution and (ii) increase cognitive and institutional proximity in the development phase in order to consolidate the niche in the maturity phase. This could occur through initiatives aimed at creating common experiences (e.g. business incubators, technological communities) and the intervention of national and/or supranational institutions to create network externality conditions by means of R&D subsidies.
The present research analyzes the determinants of the technological impact of the innovations developed by R&D collaborations between universities and Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). Specifically, by adopting a multilevel approach, this study reveals the significant role played by SMEs’ absorptive capacity, as well as by social and geographical proximity between the partnering organizations. In addition, this article shows the positive impact of the regional knowledge spillovers that are close to the technological fields of the innovations developed. The findings provide a better understanding of interactive learning in R&D collaborations between universities and SMEs, explaining how it may be further nurtured by knowledge spillovers available in SMEs’ Regional Innovation Systems (RIS). The article may also support SME managers in the definition of these collaborations, university managers in the orientation of their technology transfer effort, as well as policy makers interested in the development of a more effective RIS.
This article develops a relational explanation for judicial corruption, namely, a spatial theory of institutional proximity, to complement existing behavioral and institutional approaches. Institutional proximity refers to the spatial proximity between adjacent political or social institutions, including courts. This proximity can be a result of political or administrative regulations, workplace interactions, or the mobility of individual actors between them. Linking ecologies and space travelers are two key spatial mechanisms through which institutional proximity enables judicial corruption. They pave the pathways of judicial corruption, that is, how corrupt transactions and related social interactions are facilitated by and communicated through institutions adjacent to the court. The theory is operationalized in the context of Chinese courts and the various pathways of judicial corruption are exemplified through a number of publicly reported cases in China.
Coopetition is a universal relationship in policy networks where various organizations cooperate and also compete with one another. Dealing with the ambivalent relationships in policy networks, organizations in the network need to assess their internal and external environments. However, such assessments are usually inclined to be biased for various reasons. The question is “if multiple organizations’ assessment biases interact with one another, what happens to mutual trust or distrust?” This study explores the patterns and impact of interactions of assessment biases using surveys and interviews administered to nuclear‐related public institutions in South Korea. The findings imply that the interactions of individual biases impact trust and distrust differently according to diverse dimensions of bias, including power, cooperation, competition, and contribution in policy networks. What determines trust or distrust among network members may not only be whether biases exist, but also how biases of network members are combined and matched.
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This paper evaluates the effectiveness of a policy mix between general innovation policies and environmental policies in fostering the adoption of global warming-related eco-innovations both in the short term and long term. Focusing on process eco-innovations, we investigate whether the combined impact of general innovation and environmental policy instruments, which we term a cross-instrumental policy mix, is greater than their individual impact. We examined data from the Mannheim Innovation Panel on German firms, investigating both cross-sectional data from 2015 and longitudinal data from two waves of the survey conducted in 2009 and 2015. We apply two models, based respectively on a matching analysis and a panel analysis. We find that cross-instrumental policy mix has a stronger positive effect on process eco-innovations than the impact of general innovation policy instruments alone, both in the short and long term. In contrast, although we expected the greater impact of a cross-instrumental policy mix relative to environmental policy instruments, this argument is not supported by our empirical results. Our study offers policy implications concerning the coordination of innovation and environmental policies in achieving an optimal policy mix.
Greater collaboration among nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) after disasters is important in helping them deliver
services, share information, and avoid resource duplication. Following a disaster, numerous NGOs, including a large number
of faith-based NGOs, typically offer disaster assistance. But to what extent do these NGOs providing disaster assistance
collaborate with each other? Does organizational homophily prevail? Or is the need to acquire resources an incentive for
collaboration? Are collaborations characterized by relationships of dependency? To answer these questions, we analyze
collaboration between international NGOs, local NGOs, faith-based organizations, and other organizations providing disaster
assistance in Haiti in the 3-year period following the 2010 earthquake. Data on these organizations and their networks were
analyzed using social network analysis methods. The major findings are that most organizations collaborate within sectoral
boundaries and that homophily is one of the main drivers of collaboration, illuminating power relationships in disaster
assistance networks.
The strategy literature has widely acknowledged the negative impact of cultural diversity between the partners of an alliance on their innovation performance. We argue that innovation is more challenging in alliances involving subsidiaries of multinational companies (MNCs), as they embody a dual background that encompasses the cultures of their host and home country. We also propose that the effect of cultural diversity is contingent on the content of the alliance, being positive in explorative and negative in exploitative alliances. Our findings, obtained from an analysis of 161 strategic alliances established by 31 MNC subsidiaries in the biotech industry from 1987 to 2010, confirm that subsidiaries are generally less innovative in alliances involving partners from other cultures. However, the impact of such cultural diversity becomes positive when those alliances focus on exploration activities, as the challenges of cultural diversity are offset by the benefits of exposure to novel cognitive schemes.
China’s provincial governments increasingly participate in interprovincial agreements (IPAs) to address regional policy problems. Nevertheless, limited research investigates the determinants of a province’s propensity to engage in bilateral agreements with another province. This article uses network data and employs network regressions to investigate this question in the context of China’s Pan Pearl River Delta (PPRD) regional network governance. We assess the factors that influence participation of bilateral IPAs among PPRD members. Our findings provide evidence that interprovincial participation in bilateral agreements spanning seven policy domains is driven by geographic proximity, economic and political statuses, institutional similarity, and cross-province leadership posting.
Article available here: https://charlesedquist.files.wordpress.com/2020/03/research-policy.pdf
A holistic innovation policy is defined in this article as a policy that integrates all public actions that influence or may influence innovation processes. The Swedish National Innovation Council (NIC) was created by the Swedish Prime Minister, Stefan Löfven, in February 2015. It is personally chaired by the prime minister. Another atypical characteristic of the Swedish NIC is that it has a dominant and wide focus on innovation policy. In other countries, such councils focus predominantly on science and/or research policy and treat innovation policy, if at all, as an “appendix” to research policy. The purpose of this article is to answer the following four questions: 1. Has Swedish innovation policy recently become more holistic? 2. Has the Swedish National Innovation Council (NIC) had a role in the transition towards a holistic innovation policy? 3. Have conceptual specifications and advancements played a role in the changes in Swedish innovation policy? 4. Can the Swedish NIC serve as a role model for other countries and regions in their attempts to initiate and govern a holistic innovation policy?
Research summary
This study examines the effectiveness of targets as a tool for the contractual governance of cross‐sector partnerships. Applying a difference‐in‐differences methodology, we find that the use of explicit targets within performance contracts is an effective means for improving partnership outcomes, especially where partner diversity and partnership capabilities are high. Furthermore, we find evidence that target intensity is associated with stronger partnership performance. These findings suggest that contractual forms with explicit targets may be a particularly successful approach for enhancing the public value created by cross‐sector partnerships. A downward turn in performance following the removal of targets lends further support to this conclusion.
Managerial summary
Cross‐sector partnerships have become a vital means for creating value in pursuit of the public interest. In particular, the effective management of these partnerships is regarded as holding the key to addressing the strategic and organizational challenges posed by major social and environmental issues, such as big data and climate change. In this article, we combine data on waste recycling from 2003‐2014 with information on performance contracts between local cross‐sector partnerships and higher levels of government in England to quantify the impact of governance by targets on the performance of those partnerships. The benefits of target‐setting for partnership performance that we identify are even stronger when partner diversity is high and partnership capabilities are strong. We discuss the managerial and policy implications of our findings.
Many years after the introduction of the innovation system concept in innovation policy design, it is still not clear whether innovation policy evaluation practices follow a system approach. Building on evaluation and innovation studies, this article develops the concept 'system oriented innovation policy evaluation’ based on four attributes (coverage, perspective, temporality and expertise). The attributes are used as analytical devices for gathering extensive empirical evidence on the actual practices of EU28 member states. The findings show that few countries have developed a type of innovation policy evaluation that is system oriented. The advent of a system approach to innovation policy evaluation offers the opportunity of comprehensive, contextualized and evidence-based innovation policy-making. However, there are still serious obstacles as such an approach requires important knowledge and organisational capacities. Overcoming these obstacles would need more decided evaluation capacity-building at the national level.
Research activities are increasingly global so that embeddedness in international knowledge networks is decisive for inventive and innovative performance. We analyze determinants of countries’ embeddedness in the global photovoltaics knowledge network for the period 1980–2015 and argue that positions in this network are determined by the structure and functionality of national research systems and by instruments within the policy-mix for renewable energies. We show that cohesion and connectedness of the national research system positively affect international embeddedness, whereas centralized systems are detrimental to embeddedness. This indicates that a diffusion oriented research system allows better access to international knowledge flows. Policy instruments, especially demand side instruments, show a positive effect on embeddedness.
Literature on innovation policy reveals little of how relations between government agencies as policymakers evolve. Taking the policy network approach, this paper investigates three mechanisms underlining the evolution of inter-government agency relations in emerging economies - policy agenda, power concentration and heterogeneity dependence, and applies them to the analysis of the evolution of innovation policymaking in China. Operationally, the paper proposes a social network analysis (SNA)-based method to quantitatively study China's innovation policy network, which consists of 463 innovation policy documents formulated by its central government ministries between 1980 and 2011. The findings show that the formal policy network for innovation has been not only sustained through the intervention of policy agendas but also self-organized because of policy network's nature of power concentration and heterogeneity dependence. The presence of such mixed mechanisms in China's innovation policy network's evolution differs from the findings from industrialized countries where self-organization plays a central role. This work advances our theoretical understanding of the evolution of innovation policy network and has implications for innovation policymaking in emerging economies.
This research examines the extent to which political similarities—that is, homophily between political actors at the local level—affect patterns of interorganizational collaboration in an emergency response situation. While the field of emergency management has focused on implementation-oriented arrangements among key stakeholders, few studies have systemically investigated the creation and development of interorganizational collaborations led by political actors, especially following catastrophic events. The analysis reveals that a dyadic tie with political homophily boosts local responders’ ties with other agencies during emergencies. Findings indicate that political solidarity, formulated by chief elected officials of municipalities and council members, can broaden the scope of interorganizational collaboration by mitigating institutional collective action problems at the local level. This research presents a critical recommendation for emergency managers that interlocal collaboration for timely response to a disaster is attributable to political similarities that facilitate frequent interlocal interactions through formal and/or informal agreements.
This paper investigates the actors- and relations-based mechanisms within the evolutionary process of inter-regional network using a unique database of China's technology transaction between regions. The results show that a focal region's level of technological and economic development has a significantly positive influence on its network position, and the narrow economic and technology gap between two regions has a positive influence on inter-regional technology transactions, although the evidence for the economic gap's influence is weak. That is, technological and economic factors could influence the evolutionary process of inter-regional networking based on technology transactions at the actor and relation level besides geographical proximity and preferential attachment.
R&D collaborations and the role of proximity. Regional Studies. This paper explores the impact of proximity measures on knowledge exchange measured by granted research and development (R&D) collaboration projects in German NUTS-3 regions. The results are obtained from a spatial interaction model including eigenvector spatial filters. Not only geographical but also other forms of proximity (technological, organizational and institutional) have a significant influence on the emergence of collaborations. Furthermore, the results suggest interdependences between proximity measures. Nevertheless, the analysis does not show that other forms of proximity may compensate for missing geographical proximity. The results indicate that (subsidized) collaborative innovation activities tend to cluster.
Development of technology in educational field brings the easier ways through the variety of facilitation for learning process, sharing files, giving assignment and assessment. Automated Essay Scoring (AES) is one of the development systems for determining a score automatically from text document source to facilitate the correction and scoring by utilizing applications that run on the computer. AES process is used to help the lecturers to score efficiently and effectively. Besides it can reduce the subjectivity scoring problem. However, implementation of AES depends on many factors and cases, such as language and mechanism of scoring process especially for essay scoring. A number of methods implemented for weighting the terms from document and reaching the solutions for handling comparative level between documents answer and expert's document still defined. In this research, we implemented the weighting of Term Frequency — Inverse Document Frequency (TF-IDF) method and Cosine Similarity with the measuring degree concept of similarity terms in a document. Tests carried out on a number of Indonesian text-based documents that have gone through the stage of pre-processing for data extraction purposes. This process results is in a ranking of the document weight that have closesness match level with expert's document.
In this paper we investigate the effect of geographical, organisational and social proximity on the propensity of organisations to collaborate internationally in knowledge production. We apply logistic regression models on data from water research projects in the European Union’s Framework Programme 1–7. Although the main challenges in the water sector typically cut across borders, knowledge development is traditionally organised in national systems. These systems have a long tradition in collaborating across societal sectors. Despite the fact that about half of the collaborations in the Framework Programmes are not proximate at all, we show that all three proximity dimensions contribute to the propensity to collaborate. The three dimensions of proximity are weakly correlated, and there is a small substitution effect between organisational and geographical proximity.