A Review of: “CODE: Collaborative Ownership and the Digital Economy,edited by Rishab Aiyer Ghosh. Cambridge,MA: MIT Press, 2005. x + 345 pp. $37.50 (cloth). ISBN 0-262-07260-2.”

Various distributed work arrangements have been enabled by advances in information system and communication technologies. To date, these new arrangements have met with varying success, and it is unclear what outcomes society, organizations, and individuals expect from such new work settings. Moreover, we do not understand how aspects of the work environment, tasks, employees, management, and technology might interact to result in different outcomes. This article attempts to provide an integrative view of research on distributed work arrangements and provides a framework for exploring the impacts of these arrangements.     

Innovation and Australian Industrial Relations by Chris Fisher, (Croom Helm,Australia, 1983) pp . 226, $24.95 [hb], $12.95 [pb]

This paper is concerned with one aspect of the assessment of a new technology — describing the temporal utilisation of the technology in use. The technologies that are considered here are barium meal radiology and fibre optic endoscopy, two major diagnostic procedures for the upper gastrointenstinal tract. The data employed relate to private fee-for-service medicine in Australia and have been collected under Australia's health insurance arrangements. Statistically significant differences in utilisation rates for these diagnostic procedures are found between the states of Australia. Also it is shown that per capita use of these procedures is rising at an annual rate of 2.4 per cent per annum. Although it is not possible from the data employed here to specify what factors have determined these utilisation rates, some possible explanations are considered. A secondary aspect of the paper is that it demonstrates how data from the Health Insurance Collection can be analysed despite the changes to health insurance arrangements introduced by the Commonwealth government since 1975–76.     

Governance rigidity,industry evolution,and value capture in platform ecosystems

Existing work has shown how, in platform ecosystems, firms can capture above-average rents by controlling hard-to-replace segments. However, initial conditions can have a lasting effect on a platform owner's ability to capture value as the ecosystem in which it operates evolves. We develop a theoretical framework that first considers the role of bargaining power and industry life cycle stage, showing how these shape initial governance arrangements and the platform owner's subsequent ability to capture value based on the rigidity of these arrangements. We then develop propositions, focusing on contingencies that moderate this degree of governance rigidity in platform ecosystems. Our framework helps understand the combined effects of initial conditions and governance rigidity as key drivers of a platform owner's ability to capture rents. Once we consider these dynamics, controlling a hard-to-replace segment may neither be sufficient nor necessary to obtain a large share of the value created by an ecosystem.     

How top management team diversity affects innovativeness and performance via the strategic choice to focus on innovation fields

Past innovation research has largely neglected potential effects of corporate governance issues on strategic choices, and thereby on innovation management outcomes. The theory of upper echelon implies that strategic choices result from idiosyncrasies of top management teams (TMT). Building on this theory, we hypothesize that TMT diversity enhances firm performance by facilitating an innovation strategy that increases the firm's new product portfolio innovativeness. Our findings support the relevance of considering a corporate governance view for explaining innovation outcomes. Empirically, we can show that TMT diversity has a strong impact on the strategic choice of firms to focus on innovation fields. Such focus then drives new product portfolio innovativeness and firm performance. As corporate governance arrangements thus seem relevant in the context of innovation management, we can derive implications for both policy makers and innovation researchers.     

区块链:技术创新带来的制度变迁

基于计算机密码学、分布式系统以及博弈论等多学科理论,区块链实现了技术上的创新。区块链引发了信息存储与交互方式的变革,带来了更安全、更有效的交易模式,为优化资源配置提供了新的组织形式。区块链的技术突破,通过降低交易费用、减少交易中的不确定性与风险等,影响到经济社会制度层面的变迁。同时,区块链的纵深发展对制度如法律法规、信息产权等提出了新的要求,其应用边界也需要得到明晰。     

Always Articulating: Theorizing on Mobile and Wireless Technologies

Through this article we theorize on the nature and effects of articulation work relative to the take-up and use of information and communications technologies (ICT). Articulation work is “work that enables other work”: that which links people, processes, and technologies within organizations. Articulation work in organizations is both common and too often invisible from a managerial or budgetary perspective. Drawing on data from a study of the introduction and implementation of mobile computing technologies into criminal justice organizations, we highlight two findings: (1) There exist ongoing but unmet articulation needs present in any organization or work system. (2) Articulation is cumulative. We find, that as work becomes more complex (such as adding new work tasks and using new technologies), there is more articulation needed. These findings raise issues with assessing the costs of articulation on individuals, and making arrangements to accommodate explicit and implicit articulation in organizational work, particularly around the take-up and ongoing use of ICT-based systems.     

Always Articulating: Theorizing on Mobile and Wireless Technologies

Through this article we theorize on the nature and effects of articulation work relative to the take-up and use of information and communications technologies (ICT). Articulation work is “work that enables other work”: that which links people, processes, and technologies within organizations. Articulation work in organizations is both common and too often invisible from a managerial or budgetary perspective. Drawing on data from a study of the introduction and implementation of mobile computing technologies into criminal justice organizations, we highlight two findings: (1) There exist ongoing but unmet articulation needs present in any organization or work system. (2) Articulation is cumulative. We find, that as work becomes more complex (such as adding new work tasks and using new technologies), there is more articulation needed. These findings raise issues with assessing the costs of articulation on individuals, and making arrangements to accommodate explicit and implicit articulation in organizational work, particularly around the take-up and ongoing use of ICT-based systems.     

Copyright and Commerce: The DMCA,Trusted Systems,and the Stabilization of Distribution

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) has been criticized for granting too much power to copyright holders, offering them new technological controls that may harm the public interest. But by considering this exclusively as a copyright issue, we overlook how the DMCA anticipates a technological and commercial infrastructure for regulating not only copying but every facet of the purchase and use of cultural goods. In upholding the law in Universal v. Reimerdes, the courts not only stabilized these market-friendly arrangements in cultural distribution; they extended these arrangements into realms as diverse as encryption research and journalism, with consequences for the very production of knowledge.     

What determines the duration of patent examination in China? An outcome-specific duration analysis of invention patent applications at SIPO

Although China is now the largest patent filing country in the world, research on the duration and outcomes of patent examination remains scarce. In this study, we conduct a replication and extension of Harhoff and Wagner’s (2009) work on the determinants of patent examination duration at the European Patent Office (EPO), using a rich dataset covering the population of about 1.1 million invention patent applications to China’s State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) from 1993 to 2006. By considering all three competing examination outcomes (grant, withdrawal, and refusal) simultaneously, our competing risks analysis replicates many of the results in prior research and confirms that a number of the determinants have differential effects on pendencies for different outcomes. Our analysis also reveals several applicant and application characteristics whose effects on pendencies for specific outcomes differ from prior research. Finally, by incorporating a number of new determinants, we report a set of new findings about their effects on the examination duration for the three outcomes at SIPO.     

Copyright and Commerce: The DMCA, Trusted Systems, and the Stabilization of Distribution

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) has been criticized for granting too much power to copyright holders, offering them new technological controls that may harm the public interest. But by considering this exclusively as a copyright issue, we overlook how the DMCA anticipates a technological and commercial infrastructure for regulating not only copying but every facet of the purchase and use of cultural goods. In upholding the law in Universal v. Reimerdes, the courts not only stabilized these market-friendly arrangements in cultural distribution; they extended these arrangements into realms as diverse as encryption research and journalism, with consequences for the very production of knowledge.     

Selecting an open innovation community as an alliance partner: Looking for healthy communities and ecosystems

Organizations build strategic alliances with other firms with the intent of tapping into partners’ resources and capturing long-term value from these relationships. Such partnerships are typically governed by contractual or equity arrangements with clear mutual obligations. More recently, however, organizations have begun to seek strategic partnerships with open innovation communities, which are novel digitally enabled forms of organizing, and where contractual commitments are not possible. Thus, selecting the right open innovation community as an alliance partner becomes a more complex decision. We follow how the organizational decision makers, in two technology firms that were pioneers of forming strategic alliances with open innovation communities, developed metrics around making such decisions. We build upon Shah and Swaminathan’s (2008) contingency model of alliance partner selection and consider how it applies to the case of partnering with open innovation communities. This framework was useful in to frame our findings, yet our work recognizes and builds upon two key differences: 1) the evaluation metrics used in selecting an open innovation community were more focused on value creation than value capture; and 2) open ecosystem considerations, and not just partner-specific metrics, featured prominently in this type of alliance partner evaluation. We develop the notions of community and ecosystem health to refer to these new metrics.     

Digital Museums and Diverse Cultural Knowledges: Moving Past the Traditional Catalog

Web 2.0 technologies have introduced increasingly participatory practices to creating content, and museums are becoming interested in the potentials of “Museum 2.0” for reaching and engaging with new audiences. As technological advances are opening up the ways in which museums share information about the objects in their collections, the means by which museums create, handle, process, and transmit knowledge has become more transparent. For this to be done effectively, however, some underlying contradictions must be resolved between museum practices, which privilege the account of the “expert,” and distributed social technology practices, whose strengths lie in allowing for many, sometimes contradictory, perspectives. This article presents a theoretical position and framework for the adaptation of Web 2.0 technologies within the traditional work of the museum, in ways that support the generation and representation of knowledge in, by, and for diverse communities. We then expand on this theoretical perspective by discussing several case studies of exploratory work in this area, and close the article by presenting a few tactical, bottom-up initiatives that museums and distributed communities can take to facilitate the diffusion of this new conceptual framework. Though the subject of this article is online museums, the issues are relevant to all online collections, in particular portals, online public access catalogs (OPAC), and content management systems.     

Science transformed? A comparative analysis of ‘societal relevance’ rhetoric and practices in 14 Canadian Networks of Centres of Excellence

One of the most hotly debated ideas in science studies is the claim that contemporary science is in the midst of a transformation. While ‘transformationalist’ arguments and concepts vary, their core principle is that the norms, values and practices that have enforced the separation of science from society are being challenged by new expectations that scientists pursue closer connections with industry, government and/or civil society, and address research questions of immediate value to non-academic partners. While many major funding agencies have embraced this idea and now pressure scientists to enhance the ‘societal relevance’ of their work, the impact of these changes on scientific practices is still unclear. This paper reports findings from a comparative meso-level analysis of 14 large Canadian research networks funded by an agency with an explicit transformationalist mandate – the Networks of Centres of Excellence (NCE) programme. Documents and web communications from these 14 NCEs, as well as from the central programme administration office, are analysed and compared to key transformationalist concepts, such as Mode 2 science, post-normal science, the triple helix model, academic capitalism and strategic science. We find that transformationalist ideas have a strong rhetorical presence across the 14 NCE projects and the central office, but that a great deal of inconsistency and confusion exists at the level of implementation and assessment of outcomes. Easily quantifiable outputs, such as the commercialization of research findings, are favoured over softer qualitative outcomes, such as public engagement and knowledge sharing. We conclude by arguing that the NCE programme is having an observable impact on the rhetoric of science, but any resulting transformations in practice are incremental rather than radical.     

英国政府促进大学与产业合作的机制与启示

大学与产业进行有效合作是推动知识向现实生产力转化并促成新知识不断产生的重要途径。近年来,英国政府部门针对社会加强公共科研系统知识转移的要求,逐步构建并完善了以英国商业、创新和技能部为主导的,促进大学与产业合作的国家推进体系。研究显示,健全行政管理体系的结构与功能、灵活配置国家财政资源进行分类引导以及加强反馈机制建设等措施有效地支撑了英国大学与产业界合作局面的形成。这些思路与做法,值得我国政府部门在有关大学与产业合作发展中定位功能、布局实施内容、制订工作方案、把握工作成效等相关工作设计时参考借鉴。     

专利技术交易成本的制度经济学分析 /FONT /P

专利技术的特殊性以及制度激励约束的软化,决定了专利技术交易具有较高的成本。新制度经济学的交易成本理论是分析专利技术交易成本的重要工具。专利技术交易成本的控制有赖于政府制度安排、企业制度安排的互补、协同和强化的共同作用。     

喀左县农村青年信用示范户工作助推农业产业发展

喀左县按照省市两级工作领导小组的部署,深入细致研究政策,多方协调统筹安排,多措并举稳步推进,将此项工作作为促进农村青年创业成才、服务农村经济发展的重要抓手。截至今年8月末,全县累计评选农村青年信用示范户519户,发放贷款792万元,支持创业项目涉及种植、养殖、农产品加工、副食品经营、生产资料销售、装饰装修、汽车运输等10多个行业,带动就业1400余人,户均增收1.5万元。农村青年信用示范户工作的开展,不仅有效解决了农村青年创业资金瓶颈问题,而且增加了收入,带动了就业,为农业产业结构调整和社会主义新农村建设提供了有力支持。     

Robustly distributed diagnosis of discrete-event systems and its application to Alipay transaction systems

In most of existing literature, it is assumed that all of the sensors can work normally. However in some situations, several sensors occur abnormal behavior or stuck at faults such that prior diagnosable decisions may not hold. By this regard, we address the problem of robustly distributed failure diagnosis of discrete-event systems with observation losses in this paper. In order to ensure diagnosability, the notion of robustly diagnosability is proposed in the distributed framework. Motivated by earlier works, new communication models and dilation operators are constructed, based on which the robustly distributed diagnosis problem is converted to a distributed diagnosis problem. One algorithm for the verification of robustly distributed diagnosis is proposed. Followed by it, a necessary and sufficient condition for the robustly diagnosability is presented. Finally, a part of Alipay transaction systems as an application is used to illustrate the construction of some automata and the verification algorithm.     

Schumpeterian innovation and entrepreneurs in capitalism: A case study of the U.S. biotechnology industry

This paper uses the theoretical framework developed by Joseph Schumpeter to examine the first ten years of the U.S. biotechnology industry. The role of the entrepreneur, scientist/inventor, manager and capitalist are distinguished. There is a discussion of the obstacles the small firms have had to overcome to create a “New Economic Space” in the marketplace. It is argued that the earlier Schumpeter of The Theory of Economic Development and Business Cycles emphasizing the role of small firms more accurately describes the U.S. biotechnology industry in 1985, than Schumpeter's later work Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy which postulated that the large established firms have preempted the role of small firms in innovation. A discussion of the role of large established firms and the small entrepreneurial firms presents the tensions inherent in the “cooperative” arrangements between these two types of business enterprises. The role of small biotechnology firms in reducing these innovations to practice and in their ability to continue to grow demonstrates that the independent entrepreneur recognized by the early Schumpeter has been very active in the biotechnology industry.     

农村集体经济组织及其成员权和农村社区组织及其成员权——混同的现状、动因及其对农地制度绩效影响的法经济学分析

农村集体经济组织及其成员权和农村社区组织及其成员权虽然在历史渊源、权利内容、变迁趋势等方面有本质的区别,但它们却在实践、立法和理论研究中被混同了。混同的制度安排在"正义"和"效率"两个纬度上产生的负面影响,可以看作是现行农地制度的成本。混同的表面动因是为了农民的利益,节约组织治理和组织管理的交易费用;但深层动因却是国家通过其最底层的代理人——农村社区组织,对农民的土地所有权进行控制,从而获得制度收益。通过综合判断成本和收益两个方面的法经济学分析,可知混同的制度绩效是值得怀疑的。