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The healthcare sector faces severe problems due to increasing costs, decreasing workforce and an increasing share of elderly people. Innovation is proposed as the main cure. However, there are several barriers that prevent new ideas from becoming innovations. In this chapter we focus on the biomedical engineering sector and the barriers to commercialisation that are present for applied research projects within this sector. We describe and categorise the barriers and discuss their implications and how they could be overcome. This study has a longitudinal approach and is based on data collected annually through half-structured interviews for approximately 40 research and development projects at four universities, two hospitals and one municipality healthcare centre, across eastern and central Sweden. Our results found a broad range of barriers to commercialisation, which have been categorised as follows: (1) Barriers coupled to the healthcare sector per se, for example security regulations, procedures for governmental procurement and the industry structure. (2) Barriers related to the market structure, for example public procurement matters and the fact that hospitals commonly look for holistic solutions rather than pieces and gadgets that solve isolated parts of problems. (3) Barriers related to entrepreneurship attitudes among researchers. The findings contribute to research on the ability to create innovation in a highly prioritised sector.

The purpose of this research is to analyze the volume of full‐text coverage for 50 marketing‐focused and marketing‐related serial sources in the Ebsco Business Source Premier (BSP) and ProQuest ABI/INFORM Global (ABI) databases, focusing on the significant differences in the full‐text availability of 21 journals which are common in the two databases.

The target serials were the ones rated –in response to a large scale, very well‐designed and implemented research project (Hult et al.)– by more than 600 marketing specialists, working at the marketing departments of universities around the world (the Hult050 set).

The test searches found that BSP had full‐text coverage for 29, and ABI for 34 sources. BSP had 70,740 and ABI had 63,405 full‐text items. However, the detailed analysis at the individual source level of the Hult‐50 set revealed anomalies in the reported volume of full‐text coverage for several top tier marketing journals in ABI, such as single year and even decade‐long gaps and inflated hit counts.

The paper provides empirical evidence for anomalies, which should be considered in comparing the real volume and value of full‐text availability when making licensing decisions.

The increasing availability of digital editions of journals, and/or the incorporation of the full‐text versions of their papers in the largest aggregator databases, have been the highlights in the coming of age of digital libraries from many perspectives, ranging from collection development to preservation, from ready reference services to creating digital carrels. Full‐text availability of research papers through several digital resources is not merely a great convenience for distributing knowledge, but also an indirect indicator of the acknowledgement of the popularity and importance of journals and other serial publications (such as conference proceedings) in many disciplines where such sources are the primary venues for scholarly and professional publishing. One of the purposes of the author's current research project was to find out how well three business databases reflect the popularity and familiarity of peer ranking and rating through 50 top rated marketing‐focused and marketing‐related periodicals in the full‐text coverage of those journals. This paper seeks to present some results.

The target journals were selected from the list of 50 marketing‐focused and marketing‐related journals ranked by nearly 630 faculty members from marketing departments of US and international universities in an outstanding large scale survey and research project by Hult et al. The presence and time‐span of coverage of 50 journals and conference proceedings was analysed in three of the largest (partially) full‐text business databases.

The research found that many highly rated and ranked journals in the sample were absent or very modestly present in the full‐text subset even in the largest and most widely licensed three business databases tested.

The research adds a new dimension to evaluating databases by the specific criteria of full text availability of journals and other serial publications.

This paper aims to examine the potential of applying the concept of the Learning Organization to the understanding of, and potentially the assessment of, an organization's supply chain collaboration capability. Collaborative supply chain management (SCM) literature was transposed against that of the literature of the Learning Organization to investigate overlapping themes to explore benefits of applying the framework of the Learning Organization to SCM.

The author conducted an in-depth review of the collaborative SCM and Learning Organization literature. This allowed for a comparative analysis of the literature and identification of the extent of common themes. Themes were identified, future research questions were posed and implications were delineated.

Findings indicate multiple themes in common between collaborative SCM and the Learning Organization. This serves as support for the suggestion to approach SCM with the framework of the Learning Organization to encourage those principles to drive behavior. This will be critical for gaining a competitive advantage in the supply chain.

This study is limited to conceptual analysis only. Findings suggest that empirical research should be conducted to investigate and quantify advantages of this approach/perspective.

Implications are that SCM should include the practices of the Learning Organization to ensure that the supply chain is oriented toward learning and continuous growth.

It indicates the value of the Learning Organization perspective in SCM and introduces the term “learning chain” to exemplify the approach.

This chapter complements the one that appeared as “History of the AIB Fellows: 1975–2008” in Volume 14 of this series (International Business Scholarship: AIB Fellows on the First 50 Years and Beyond, Jean J. Boddewyn, Editor). It traces what happened under the deanship of Alan Rugman (2011–2014) who took many initiatives reported here while his death in July 2014 generated trenchant, funny, and loving comments from more than half of the AIB Fellows. The lives and contributions of many other major international business scholars who passed away from 2008 to 2014 are also evoked here: Endel Kolde, Lee Nehrt, Howard Perlmutter, Stefan Robock, John Ryans, Vern Terpstra, and Daniel Van Den Bulcke.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

This paper aims to further research on leadership and knowledge management through formal knowledge strategies in knowledge-intensive organizations (KIOs), and analyse knowledge management challenges and approaches within KIOs, especially tacit knowledge.

This paper is based on conceptual and literature research.

Managing knowledge as an organizational asset involves how knowledge is obtained, stored and organized, and accessed and shared when needed. This is crucial for KIOs. Knowledge that is not captured, understood and transferred, throughout the organization, is useless. This requires the integration of systems and processes with people and leadership. Tacit knowledge generation and transfer is especially important in KIOs. In particular, the success of KIOs depends crucially on management’s ability to give leadership in a way that supports knowledge-intensive teamwork. The global nature of internal and external knowledge networks adds to the leadership challenge. This can be made more complex by cultural differences, intellectual property protection (formal and informal) and talent scarcity.

Further research is needed to identify the types of KIO and to better understand sound common knowledge management and related leadership principles across all types of KIO and those that are more context-dependent on the type of KIO and/or its business and cultural context. More research is needed on policy making organizations, in-company policy-making research and development and creative industries.

The paper takes forward research on leading knowledge management in KIOs and introduces 14 challenging new papers in this specific field of research.

This chapter analyzes the concept of the Center of Government (CoG) and its relevance for the public administration agenda in Latin America. It identifies five key functions of the CoG: strategic management, policy coordination, performance monitoring and improvement, political management, and communications and accountability, and it assesses the region's performance for each of them, citing concrete experiences. The CoG is still an emerging topic for scholars and practitioners in Latin America. Despite the fact that CoGs in Latin America formally recognize most if not all of its five key functions, the region shows a relatively weak performance in practice. Nonetheless, recent innovative experiences show an increased interest in governments to strengthen the CoG and suggest paths that may lead to improved performance.

The CoG may be a relatively new topic in public administration research, but it is not a new phenomenon. It refers to functions that have been performed, and to structures that have existed, for several decades in many countries, including Latin American ones. However, a number of factors have led to an increased relevance of CoG institutions in recent years. The first section of this chapter will attempt to define the concept of “Center of Government”; to enumerate the CoG's main political and technical functions; to describe the typical structures that perform these functions; and to indicate why these institutions play a critical role in current times. Then, Section 2 will discuss how CoG institutions in Latin American countries have been performing their core functions, identifying regional trends and country-level configurations. The political economy of CoG strengthening will also be covered. Section 3 concludes.