Book reviews

Educational technology research and development -     

Where do alliances come from?: The effects of upper echelons on alliance formation

Alliances with established organizations provide young firms with resources necessary for survival. We build on recent organizational research examining the effect of upper echelons on attracting powerful intermediaries to understand how young biotechnology firms establish alliances with established organizations. Drawing upon the concept of homophily, we test hypotheses regarding the extent to which young firms and partners match along specific homophily dimensions. Our findings from an event-history analysis of 3,200 career histories of managers who took biotechnology firms public between 1979 and 1996 show that alliance formation is related to status homophily and role-based homophily between young and established organizations.     

US faculty patenting: Inside and outside the university

In a sample of 5811 patents with US faculty as inventors, 26% are assigned solely to firms rather than universities as dictated by US university employment policies and Bayh-Dole. We relate assignment to patent characteristics, university policy, and inventor field. Patents assigned to firms (whether established or start-ups with inventor as principal) are less basic than those assigned to universities suggesting firm assigned patents result from faculty consulting. Assignment to inventor-related start-ups is less likely the higher the share of revenue inventors receive from university-licensed patents. Firm assignment also varies by inventor field and whether the university is public or private.     

The development of a methodology for establishing task‐level performance standards for apprentice,journeyman, and master skill levels in the U.S. Navy

The goal of the project examined here was to establish performance standards for Navy aerographer's mate (AG) enlisted sailors at three skill levels. We used an online expert judgment task and consensus workshop methodology to gather information from subject matter experts on minimal proficiency requirements for each task within each skill level. Analysis of these judgments found a high degree of rater agreement on these standards, and resolution of any disagreements was accomplished in a consensus workshop.     

WISC-R verbal and performance abilities of native american students referred for school learning problems

This study was designed to determine if three diagnostic groups of Navajo children differed on intellectual dimensions as measured by the WISC-R. Subjects had been previously diagnosed by state certified professionals and were identified as nonhan dicapped (NH) (N = 113), educationally disadvantaged.(ED) (N = 189), and learning disabled (LD) (N = 150). NH group means on all WISC-R variables were significantly higher than the LD group means. The ED and the LD group means were similar on the verbal measures, but the LD group scores were lower than the ED group scores on performance measures. The NH group demonstrated intellectual abilities and deficits similar to those reported for other primary-grade Navajo children who had not been referred for suspected handicapping conditions.     

Increasing Efficiency: A Process-Oriented Approach

Increasingly, customer satisfaction and business success depends as much on speed and timing as it does on the cost and quality of the goods we produce or the sendees we render. As such, doing things faster is becoming just as important as doing them better and cheaper. Increased efficiency, however, will not be attained simply by imploring employees to work harder or by increasing employee workloads. Increased efficiency can only be accomplished through the systematic analysis and reengineering of our work processes, including the elimination or minimization of all associated non-value adding process steps. DO CA TIM, a seven-step methodology for systematically identifying and eliminating or minimizing non-value adding process steps, is presented. The methodology is appropriate for analyzing and improving the execution of any human task; it is equally applicable to the rendering of services and the production of products.