What hampers innovation? Revealed barriers versus deterring barriers

Innovating firms are likely to face several challenges and experience different types of barriers. In this paper we argue that it is necessary to distinguish between two kinds of barriers to innovation. The first corresponds to what we describe as revealed barriers and reflects the degree of difficulty of the innovation process and the learning experience consequent on the firm engaging in innovation activity. The second type of impediment, which we label deterring barriers, encompasses the obstacles that prevent firms from committing to innovation. We use data from the 4th UK Community Innovation Survey (CIS4) to investigate the relationship between firms’ engagement in innovation and their assessment of the barriers to innovation. We show that the relationship is curvilinear in the case of costs and market barriers. These results have important implications for innovation policy and innovation management.     

政策和实践的困境(上)

教育政策和实践总是处在困境之中,这是困扰政策制定者和实践者的问题.本文着力从教育政策和实践所面临的困境、如何处理困境的角度,重新审视政策和实践两者的关系,并从政策目标、政策工具和实践中的能力三方面对其展开论述,以期在冲突的基础上促进教育政策和实践间的融合.     

Nation branding in contemporary Taiwan: a grassroots perspective

ABSTRACT

This paper, based on textual analysis and interviews, offers a complementary perspective of scholarly studies of nation branding which focus on the state and corporate elites involved in such undertakings. It places grassroots initiatives in branding Taiwan through tourist souvenirs and other video and graphic materials against the larger background of cultural policies and official branding campaigns, and shows grassroots actors’ complex entanglement with official institutions, policies and discourses despite declared scepticism towards the latter and a low degree of direct collaboration. It compares official and grassroots messages and argues that the latter are more coherent; capture a local specificity and encourage a tourist gaze centred around the ‘human touch’ theme; distance themselves from China, the significant ‘other’ of Taiwanese nationalism; and markedly highlight an epistemological and representational strategy based on individual, sensorial experience, which may constitute a response to biased and untrustworthy state national narratives of the martial law era.     

Web knowledge sharing and its effect on innovation: an empirical investigation in SMEs

This paper extends previous studies on knowledge management by analysing factors affecting Web Knowledge Sharing (WKS) in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). In addition, the impact of WKS on organizational innovation and the moderating effect of IT skills on this relation are analysed. Grounded in the technology-organization-environment (TOE) theory and the resource-based view (RBV), this paper develops an integrative research model, which analyses these relations using structural equation modelling on a data set of 535 Spanish SMEs. Results suggest that technological and organizational factors – IT expertise and commitment-based human resources practices – positively influence WKS, while the contrary is found for environmental factors (customer power). In addition, results show that WKS contributes positively to organizational innovation, though support for the moderating effect of IT skills in this relation is not found. The main conclusions of this research can be valuable to SMEs that use or intend to use Internet technologies for knowledge management.     

The relationship between resistance to change and Romanian teachers’ attitude towards continuing education: the moderating role of conscientiousness

Previous research highlights that personal factors are more important than contextual factors in explaining teachers’ behaviours in relation to learning participation. The present study explores the relationship between two personal factors (dispositional resistance to change and teachers’ attitude towards continuing education) and the moderating role of conscientiousness on this relationship. The data have been gathered from 142 teachers from the field of special and public education, using three questionnaires: Revised Adult Attitudes Towards Continuing Education Scale, Resistance to Change Scale and IPIP-50. The main results show that, firstly, conscientiousness has a moderating role on the relationship between dispositional resistance to change and enjoyment of learning, and secondly, teachers in special education consider their continuing education as being more important than teachers in the regular system. Knowing this, we can predict and increase teachers’ participation in continuing education and can improve training design.     

‘SENitizing’ migrant children in inclusive settings: exploring the impact of the Salamanca Statement thinking in Italy and the United States

ABSTRACT

This paper emphasizes the aporetic nature of the Salamanca Statement on Special Needs Education (UNESCO, 1994), adopting a cross-cultural perspective. It draws on an intersectional perspective on inclusion (Connor, Ferri & Annamma, 2016; Artiles & Kozleski, 2016 Artiles, A. J., and E. B. Kozleski. 2016. “Inclusive Education’s Promises and Trajectories: Critical Notes About Future Research on a Vulnerable Idea.” Education Policy Analysis Archives 24 (43): 1–29. [Google Scholar]; Erevelles, 2014) to argue that although inclusion has been defined by such an international declaration as a transformative project to ensure access to quality education for all students, national inclusive policies are still focused on a pathological construction of student difference, slowly incorporating children from different linguistic and ethnic backgrounds. The focus on Italy and the United States is a response to examine the discourses and practices of inclusion in two countries that have been impacted by the Salamanca Statement thinking. To substantiate our argument concerned with the limitations embedded in the Salamanca Statement, data from two empirical studies conducted in Rome and in Upstate New York will be presented. The studies show how inclusion leads to overrepresentation of migrant students in Special Educational Needs. We conclude that the Salamanca Statement has been transferred into a tool to strengthen normality against difference, and that it should focus on interrupting micro-exclusions for groups sitting at the intersections of race, ability and other identity markers.