Modes of governance of new service development for mobile networks: A life cycle perspective

This paper focuses on governance modes for service development of mobile telephone networks (GSM, Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), GPRS, UMTS). ‘Services’ refer to services containing information. The paper shows that the phase of the life cycle of the network and the service affects the choice of governance mode of new service development projects. Governance modes include internal development by the telecom operator, several forms of collaboration between telecom operator and service firm, and only providing a network by the telecom operator to the service firm, which then develops and provides its services (external). In this paper a model is developed for the governance mode of service development in different phases of the life cycles of the mobile network and service, based on the degrees of uncertainty and urgency involved in the network and service development processes. Four cases are presented of service development projects for mobile telecom networks. These cases indicate that the number of redesigns and the level of communication costs in collaboration projects indeed depend on the degree of urgency and uncertainty involved in these projects, which are in turn affected by the life cycle of the network and service.     

The Digital Divide as a Complex and Dynamic Phenomenon

The purpose of this article is to propose a fruitful analytical framework for data supposedly related to the concept of the so-called "digital divide." The extent and the nature of this divide depend on the kind of access defined. Considering the possession of hardware, growing divides among different categories of income, employment, education, age, and ethnicity can be proved to have existed in the 1980s and 1990s according to official American and Dutch statistics. If only by effects of saturation, these gaps will more or less close. However, it is shown that differential access of skills and usage is likely to increase. The growth of a usage gap is projected. Multivariate analyses of Dutch official statistics reveal the striking effect of age and gender as compared to education. The usage gap is related to the evolution of the information and network society. Finally, policy perspectives are discussed.     

A Cost-Benefit Analysis of a Collections Inventory Project: A Statistical Analysis of Inventory Data from a Medium-sized Academic Library

Using an electronic shelf-reading system a cost-benefit analysis was conducted of an inventory/shelf-reading project in a medium-sized academic library. Analyses include time spent, cataloging discrepancies, books found with active statuses, mis-shelving rate and distance, and subsequent use of found books. Correctly re-shelving “missing” materials was found to be more cost-effective and service oriented than repurchase.     

Cold hard cash: commercialization,politics, and amateurism in United States track and field

This article explores the decline of amateurism in the sport of track-and-field between the years 1968 and 1982. In doing so, it pays particular attention to Cold War politics as well as the role played by shoe companies such as Nike, in facilitating that transformation.     

Mobilizing innovation for sustainability transitions: A comment on transformative innovation policy

The topics addressed in this paper concern the (much-needed) transition to sustainability and what role (innovation) policy can play in speeding up such changes. In their Discussion Paper Schot and Steinmueller (2018) argue that the existing theorizing and knowledge bases within the field of innovation studies are “unfit” for this task and that a totally new approach is required. This paper takes issue with this claim. Policy advice, it is argued, needs to be anchored in the accumulated research on the issue at hand, in this case, innovation. The paper therefore starts by distilling some important insights on innovation from the accumulated research on this topic and, with this in mind, considers various policy approaches that have been suggested for influencing innovation and sustainability transitions. Finally, the lessons for the development and implementation of transformative innovation policy are considered. It is concluded that the existing theorizing and knowledge base in innovation studies may be of great relevance when designing policies for dealing with climate change and sustainability transitions.     

Writing proficiency level and writing development of low-achieving adolescents: the roles of linguistic knowledge,fluency, and metacognitive knowledge

In a longitudinal design, 51 low-achieving adolescents’ development in writing proficiency from Grades 7 to 9 was measured. There were 25 native-Dutch and 26 language-minority students. In addition, the roles of (1) linguistic knowledge, (2) metacognitive knowledge, and (3) linguistic fluency in predicting both the level and development of writing proficiency were assessed. Low-achieving students improved in writing proficiency, the language-minority students more so than the native-Dutch students. Regarding the level of writing proficiency, individual differences between low achieving adolescents could be accounted for by receptive vocabulary, grammatical knowledge, and speed of sentence verification, suggesting that these are important components in low-achieving adolescents’ writing. Regarding development in writing proficiency, grammatical knowledge predicted variation between low-achieving students. Explanations and educational implications of these findings are discussed.     

Early childhood education and care (ECEC) assistants in Europe: Pathways towards continuous professional development (CPD) and qualification

There is broad consensus amongst researchers and international organisations that the quality of early childhood education and care (ECEC), which means the wellbeing of children and families, depends on well-educated and competent staff. This remains a challenge in Europe, since part of the workforce is also represented by low-qualified ECEC assistants in many EU countries. In the CoRe study (2011), assistants are defined as ‘invisible workers’, meaning that their presence is usually not taken into account in policy documents and that they have far fewer possibilities of qualification and professional development than core practitioners. Building on the findings of the CoRe study, a recent NESET II report reviewed the profiles of ECEC assistants in 15 European countries and their professionalisation opportunities. This article describes the report's findings, with a focus on the roles of assistants and on how to create coherent pathways towards their qualification and continuous professional development (CPD) opportunities. The latter is shown through the examples of three case studies carried out in Denmark, France and Slovenia. Recommendations for policy makers are included in the conclusions. The framework of the article is the ‘competent system’: as pointed out in the CoRe study, individual competences alone are not sufficient to create quality. A ‘competent system’ is needed which includes collaboration between individuals, teams and institutions and has competent governance at policy level. This means working within a holistic ‘educare’ approach that is able to value the educative role of caring and the caring role of education.     

A social network perspective on the management of product development programs

Creativity is essential to the performance of product development programs (PDPs). Most PDPs are designed around teams that jointly work together according to the product decomposition into components, the design and development procedure, and the methods of the final integration. Since the creative product development task requires the teams to combine and integrate input from multiple other teams, the team's structure of interaction is an important determinant of their creativity. In research and practice, however, little is known about the social networks of the teams and their creativity within PDPs. In this study we investigate different structural aspects of social networks of such teams and their creativity within two multinational PDPs. The main results of our investigation imply that many direct network contacts around a weekly intensity stimulate the creativity of teams of PDPs, whereas very open networks with a high information variety minimizes the team's creativity.