Technology,Innovation and Economic Policy edited by Peter Hall (Philip Allan,Oxford, 1986) pp viii + 248, ISBN 0-86003-062-8, 0-86003-171-3 Pbk

The introduction of new technologies is associated with a major change of employment in society, from the traditional agricultural and manufacturing sectors, to the service sector. The availability of more and better services will, according to some analysts, generate wealth that will absorb the surplus labour made available from the traditional sectors. We believe this will be at best a short-term phenomenon. In the longer term, many service sector jobs will be taken over by computer-based systems. In addition, for most people employment also provides security, a pattern for their day, social relationships, a place to belong, and the opportunity to be involved in learning. These will be difficult to achieve in the newer jobs, and much more difficult for the jobless or those in short-term employment. It is critical that the meaning of ‘work’ in society be re-examined.

Under a regime in which ‘hard’, technological systems are programmed to treat society as a collection of individuals, we see the need to develop social, political and economic decision-making tools from the ‘soft’ systems viewpoint. These are not predictable from the sum of individual properties; they are properties of the system, and of the system alone. We also discuss analogies between societies and nonequilibrium thermodynamic systems, which we believe can be helpful when looking at questions involving invention of futures.     

NEW PRODUCTION CONCEPTS

Flexibilty within a framework of internal labour markets is now widely seen to be an important factor in the ability of manufacturing firms to respond quickly to changes in market conditions — which is increasingly coming to be the form that competitive advantage takes in advanced industrial economies. An emerging and flourishing literature has identified a number of ‘new production concepts’ being developed in manufacturing industries, that depart from time-honoured Taylorist systems of job fragmentation and skill minimisation. The new concepts, such as ‘flexible specialisation’, ‘human-centred production’, and ‘diversified quality production’, are all in one way or another seeking to characterise a form of ‘functional flexibility’, that both enhances productivity and offers workers themselves a greater sense of involvement with their activity. The new concepts rest on the identification of a critical linkage between work organisation, skill formation and advanced manufacturing technology; they point to a convergence between the previously separate worlds of work and of learning.

In this paper the new production concepts are characterised as elements of an emergent ‘post Fordist’ technoeconomic paradigm. The present period of uncertainty can be construed as a transition between the Fordist paradigm centred on mass production, and its successors. There is nothing predetermined about the shape of these successors: this will be the outcome of a prolonged economic, industrial and political process as much as of a technical process. The choices are identified as falling between a continuation and intensification of Fordism, dubbed Computer-Aided Taylorisation; or a break with Fordism, dubbed Skill-Dependent Innovation. The new production concepts are characterised as instances of the latter approach to manufacturing management and technology. It is through this notion of ‘competing paradigms’ that this paper formulates an approach to the ‘politics’ of technological change.     

政府绩效评估中的“控制权”分配与行动逻辑

政府绩效管理的实质是以绩效合同为中心的设计、实施、验收和激励的整体流程。在开展绩效管理工作中,各方主体所持有的剩余控制权直接影响各方主体的行动逻辑,进而内化成各具特征的制度运行模式。为回答“如何开展绩效管理工作”以及“如何影响绩效管理工作结果”的问题,本研究以A市机关工委、B区组织部、C县地税局的绩效管理工作为例,借助“控制权”理论视角,基于“控制权”在绩效管理制度运行过程中的三个维度,即目标设定权、检查验收权、激励分配权,探讨权力配置与行动逻辑之间的影响关系,形成绩效管理“高度互动型”、“主导支配型”、“系统直控型”三种不同的制度运行模式。并且,权力配置会随着制度运行而发生转变,在影响各参与主体行动逻辑的同时,组织行为也在影响剩余控制权的再次组合分配。     

Regulating global capitalism amid rampant corporate wrongdoing—Reply to “Three frames for innovation policy”

Despite progress in science and technology and the economic prosperity achieved by numerous countries over the past century, contemporary global capitalism has left us with severe grand challenges for the future including rising inequality, global warming, modern slavery, child labor and several other human rights struggles. How can we fix them? For many years, scholars and policy makers alike have believed that economic growth (fueled by innovation) would fix institutional failures and lift people out of human misery. We now know that this story creaks. I would suggest that the current grand challenges are related in a non-trivial way to companies’ wrongful business conduct, especially that of large multinational corporations which have grown to rival governments in size, and have proven to be powerful agents capable of shaping the global governance agenda. I challenge technological determinism and ‘transformative change’ frameworks by arguing that the regulation of global capitalism needs to put powerful private actors at center stage since neglecting them will give rise to yet another generation of dysfunctional development and innovation policies.     

Practical versus moral identities in identity management

Over the past decade Identity Management has become a central theme in information technology, policy, and administration in the public and private sectors. In these contexts the term ‘Identity Management’ is used primarily to refer to ways and methods of dealing with registration and authorization issues regarding persons in organizational and service-oriented domains. Especially due to the growing range of choices and options for, and the enhanced autonomy and rights of, employees, citizens, and customers, there is a growing demand for systems that enable the regulation of rights, duties, responsibilities, entitlements and access of innumerable people simultaneously. ‘Identity Management’ or ‘Identity Management Systems’ have become important headings under which such systems are designed and implemented. But there is another meaning of the term ‘identity management’, which is clearly related and which has gained currency. This second construal refers to the need to manage our moral identities and our identity related information. This paper explores the relation between the management of our (moral) identities and ‘Identity Management’ as conceptualized in IT discourse.     

Global Landscapes: A Speculative Assessment of Emerging Organizational Structures within the International Wine Industry

Abstract

As a rapidly evolving sector the international wine industry represents an interesting subject for analysis. Over the past two centuries the industry has experienced a number of major innovations and direction changes. The organizational shifts involved in these changes have been profound. From a monopolization of wine culture through the nineteenth and much of the twentieth century by Europeans, to the emergence of New World operators and their democratic influence, the international wine industry now stands at the edge of another major paradigm shift. This paper traces the industry’s historical changes and speculates on the implications of such issues as global production, distribution, technology transfer, branding and the escalation of mergers and alliances. It argues that with the increasing global tendency of the industry, ‘New’ and ‘Old World’ distinctions may blur and disappear. Furthermore, as the wine landscape continues to evolve, we may well see a new set of rules, where the emergence of localized branding, an enhanced role for small to medium enterprises and the decline of national industries results in an irrevocable reconfiguration of the industry.     

Going dark: anonymising technology in cyberspace

Anonymising technologies are cyber-tools that protect people from online surveillance, hiding who they are, what information they have stored and what websites they are looking at. Whether it is anonymising online activity through ‘TOR’ and its onion routing, 256-bit encryption on communications sent or smart phone auto-deletes, the user’s identity and activity is protected from the watchful eyes of the intelligence community. This represents a clear challenge to intelligence actors as it prevents them access to information that many would argue plays a vital part in locating and preventing threats from being realised. Moreover, such technology offers more than ordinary information protections as it erects ‘warrant-proof’ spaces, technological black boxes that no matter what some authority might deem as being legitimately searchable is protected to the extent that there are very limited or non-existent means of forcing oneself in. However, it will be argued here that not only is using such anonymising technology and its extra layer of protection people’s right, but that it is ethically mandatory. That is, due to the en masse surveillance—from both governments and corporations—coupled with people’s limited awareness and ability to comprehend such data collections, anonymising technology should be built into the fabric of cyberspace to provide a minimal set of protections over people’s information, and in doing so force the intelligence community to develop more targeted forms of data collection.     

基于公共物品供给视角下政府与市场的角色认识——以广东产业转移承接地的基础设施建设为背景

公共物品的供给问题一直受到学者们的极大关注,除了传统的政府供给形式外,私人供给涉足公共物品领域的范围也越来越广.广东产业转移中承接地的基础设施不足,减低了企业转移的激情,早期基础设施建设的供给问题对产业转移进程有重要影响,应引起一定的关注.把早期基础设施的供给纳入公共物品供给领域,从市场失灵和政府失灵两个角度分析各自单独供给时存在的缺陷,并引入了一个基础设施的公共物品的供给模式--以政府为主体而引入市场机制,这种方式可以提高基础设施供给的效率.     

中国人对“李约瑟难题”的关注

本文对于"李约瑟难题"从学者关注的层次、时间以及关注者身份方面进行了分析,作者认为对该难题的关注有一个从解题到解构重心上的转移;之后作者从4个方面对中国人关注"李约瑟难题"的原因进行了探讨,认为随着对"李约瑟难题"关注重心的转移,对该难题的关注也将逐渐淡化或转移。     

Committee standards battles in the era of convergence: Implications for smart systems

By now, there have been many standards battles fought within the same industry or by multiple industries in the market-based standardization. In these battles, incompatible standards compete to win market dominance. While there is some research on standards battles found within a single committee, competitions in the committee-based standardization between standards from different committees or SDOs are underexplored. This paper categorizes the types of standards battles by the mode of standardization and the heterogeneity of actors. A new type referred to as ‘committee standards battles for converging systems’ is introduced and the dynamics of such battles is explored with two cases. The battle between the electric vehicle charging and the smart meter communication standard and the battle between two different vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication standards are analyzed. The failure in achieving compatibility between different committee standards on the same frequency bands results in communication interference that adversely affects the operation of smart systems. Social incompatibilities between actors and alliances from a mix of industries with vested interests towards a particular standard complicate the battling scene. The findings provide implications in terms of heterogeneity, actors, and government role in standards battles.     

Entrepreneurial ecosystems and regional persistence of high growth firms: A ‘broken clock’ critique

The Entrepreneurial Ecosystems (EE) approach makes specific predictions regarding how EE inputs are converted into high-growth firms (HGFs) as an output. A simulation model draws out our hypothesis of regional persistence in HGF shares. Based on intuitions that EEs are persistent, we investigate whether regional HGF shares are persistent, using census data for 2 European countries taken separately (Croatia for 2004–2019, and Slovenia for 2007–2019). Overall, there is no clear persistence in regional HGF shares – regions with large HGF shares in one period are not necessarily likely to have large HGF shares in the following period. This is a puzzle for EE theory. In fact, there seems to be more persistence in industry-level HGF shares than for regional HGF shares. We formulate a ‘broken clock’ critique – just as a broken clock is correct twice a day, EE recommendations may sometimes be correct, but are fundamentally flawed as long as time-changing outputs (HGF shares) are predicted using time-invariant variables (such as local universities, institutions, investments in R&D and infrastructure).     

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.     

Research and data-sharing policy in Sweden – neoliberal courses,forces and discourses*

ABSTRACT

The discourse of openness has proved to be a very powerful instrument for promoting new research policies and the (neoliberal) reforms of higher education in all so-called ‘advanced economies’. It has triggered positive democracy-, transparency-, and accountability-related associations when used in the context of politics, fair resource distribution when used in the sphere of public service, and free access to information and knowledge when used in the field of science and higher education. At the same time, international research shows that university autonomy is increasingly being attacked, reduced, and marginalized by the same policies. Power instances outside academia impose new criteria, such as ‘accountability,’ ‘performance,’ ‘quality assurance,’ and ‘good practice.’ They also impose ideas about what good research is, which scientific method is to be prioritized, and what good data are. The process of the de-professionalization, polarization, and proletarianization of the academic profession is increasingly affecting academia. However, none of this has much in common with the open-access discourse. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how this discussion applies to Sweden. Courses, forces, and discourses of the national research infrastructure development policy in general, and qualitative data preservation policy in particular, are described and deliberated.     

中国小流域径流对气候变化的敏感性分析

全球变暖导致的水文水资源问题越来越突出。为了预测气候变化对径流水资源的影响,本文利用全国469个小流域20多年年平均降水量、年平均气温和年平均径流量数据,细分不同的气候情景,分析径流变化对气候变化的响应程度。结果表明：一般来说,径流与降水变化趋势一致,与气温变化趋势相反,但是在局部地区由于温度的升高增加的降水超过蒸发的影响,径流随着气温升高反而增加;干旱地区径流对气温比对降水的响应更加显著,而在湿润地区径流对降水比对气温的响应更加显著;其中年平均气温11℃－15℃、年降水量400 mm---800 mm的华北地区,年均径流深对年均降水量的响应最敏感,而年平均气温低于5℃、年降水量低于400 mm的内蒙古高原西部及新疆北部的天山和阿尔泰山迎风坡低山地带,年均径流深对降水的响应最小;年均降水量200 mm ---400 mm、年平均气温6℃---10℃的内蒙古高原东部,气温对径流的影响最明显,而年平均气温16℃---25℃,年平均降水量800 mm---1600 mm的长江中下游地区、西南的大部分地区以及华东华南的大部分地区,径流对气温的响应相对不显著。     

How can we know a self-driving car is safe?

Self-driving cars promise solutions to some of the hazards of human driving but there are important questions about the safety of these new technologies. This paper takes a qualitative social science approach to the question ‘how safe is safe enough?’ Drawing on 50 interviews with people developing and researching self-driving cars, I describe two dominant narratives of safety. The first, safety-in-numbers, sees safety as a self-evident property of the technology and offers metrics in an attempt to reassure the public. The second approach, safety-by-design, starts with the challenge of safety assurance and sees the technology as intrinsically problematic. The first approach is concerned only with performance—what a self-driving system does. The second is also concerned with why systems do what they do and how they should be tested. Using insights from workshops with members of the public, I introduce a further concern that will define trustworthy self-driving cars: the intended and perceived purposes of a system. Engineers’ safety assurances will have their credibility tested in public. ‘How safe is safe enough?’ prompts further questions: ‘safe enough for what?’ and ‘safe enough for whom?’

     

Regulatory Reform and the Promise of New Telecommunications Infrastructure in New Jersey

The information superhighway is depicted as important to maintaining national competitiveness in a global economy. The concept is particularly evident in the state of New Jersey and its legislatively supported plan, Opportunity New Jersey, to deploy advanced telecommunications technologies to all homes and businesses in just 20 yr. This case study of the decision-making process behind the passage of the New Jersey legislation illustrates how telecommunications companies have worked to couple their desire for less regulation with the desire of state officials for economic development, by promising to upgrade the infrastructure of the public network. With the upgrade promise comes a hoped-for economic development payoff in education, through distance learning, in health care, through telemedicine, and especially in new jobs, by attracting information-intensive businesses, like finance and insurance, to relocate in their service areas. The lack of clear connection between infrastructure investments and economic development means that the twenty-first century will come before strategies such as this are proven.     

自然资源物权立法的逻辑基础——资源与物的比较分析

主要建立在土地资源上的物权理论扩大适用于多样态的自然资源时, 资源的公共属性与私人排他支配的制度特征, 两者间的矛盾就变得紧张。自然资源开发利用的市场路径要求顺应资源兼有公共利益与私人利益双重特性, 拓展传统私法利益内涵, 将自然资源纳入物权法“物”之概念的范畴。通过对风能资源实践活动的考察, 资源公益符合法益的正当性要求, 在具备了效用、稀缺, 建立了自然资源市场体系后, 物权立法能够实现“物”之概念对资源独特性的制度回应。自然资源物权立法理论探讨的起点即不是有体物还是无体物的争论, 也不是以物之名还是以财产之名的质疑。借鉴英美法系从权利角度(某种法律关系)理解和把握财产的立法技术, 各类有形的或无形的、单体的或集合的自然资源均有成为物权客体的可能。     

The pre-industrial energy crisis and resource scarcity as a source of transition

The historical British ‘timber famine’ of the 18th century is re-examined in the light of contemporary concerns about transitions in energy use. The alternatives of scarcity-induced and opportunity-led transition are considered in relation to the economics of sustainable fuel timber production for industrial uses. The paper finds that the production of timber was an economically sustainable use of land and that observations of timber shortages may have therefore either been claims made by interests favouring the use of coal or the consequence of abandonment of fuel timber cultivation in favour of coal use. The longer-term sustainability of domestic UK sources for industrial timber fuel timber is shown to be problematic. The consequences of the alternative views of the ‘timber famine’ for contemporary policies attempting to promote transition to low carbon or sustainable energy use are examined. In particular, if the present is an echo of the past, opportunity rather than crisis may be the more powerful lever of change.     

Regulatory Reform and the Promise of New Telecommunications Infrastructure in New Jersey

The information superhighway is depicted as important to maintaining national competitiveness in a global economy. The concept is particularly evident in the state of New Jersey and its legislatively supported plan, Opportunity New Jersey, to deploy advanced telecommunications technologies to all homes and businesses in just 20 yr. This case study of the decision-making process behind the passage of the New Jersey legislation illustrates how telecommunications companies have worked to couple their desire for less regulation with the desire of state officials for economic development, by promising to upgrade the infrastructure of the public network. With the upgrade promise comes a hoped-for economic development payoff in education, through distance learning, in health care, through telemedicine, and especially in new jobs, by attracting information-intensive businesses, like finance and insurance, to relocate in their service areas. The lack of clear connection between infrastructure investments and economic development means that the twenty-first century will come before strategies such as this are proven.