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Grounded in Media System Dependency theory, this work investigates the impact of new media on political efficacy. It suggests that dependence on online resources affects people’s perceptions about the democratic potential of the Internet. Using structural equation modeling, the study tests the relationship between political attitudes and the perceived utility of the Web. The analysis employs measures that take into consideration the facilitating role of communication technologies. Results indicate that online political efficacy is associated with individual views about the comprehensiveness and credibility of new media. Efficacy is also linked to the perceived ability of online tools to aid the maintenance of ideologically homogenous social networks. The intensity of Internet dependency relations is found to be predicted by the perceived comprehensiveness – but not credibility – of online news.

In this paper, we seek to understand how changes in product architecture affect the innovation performance of firms in a complex product ecosystem. The canonical view in the literature is that changes in the technological dependencies between components, which define a product’s architecture, undermine the innovation efforts of incumbent firms because their product development efforts are built around existing architectures. We extend this prevailing view in arguing that component dependencies and changes in them affect firm innovation efforts via two principal mechanisms. First, component dependencies expand or constrain the choice set of firm component innovation efforts. From the perspective of any one component in a complex product (which we label the focal component), an increase in the flow of design information to the focal component from other (non-focal) components simultaneously increases the constraint on focal component firms in their choice of profitable R&D projects while decreasing the constraint on non-focal component firms. Second, asymmetries in component dependencies can confer disproportionate influence on some component firms in setting and dictating the trajectory of progress in the overall system. Increases in such asymmetric influence allow component firms to expand their innovation output. Using historical patenting data in the personal computer ecosystem, we develop fine-grained measures of interdependence between component technologies and changes in them over time. We find strong support for the empirical implications of our theory.

This paper deals with the organizing of interactive product development. Developing products in interaction between firms may provide benefits in terms of specialization, increased innovation, and possibilities to perform development activities in parallel. However, the differentiation of product development among a number of firms also implies that various dependencies need to be dealt with across firm boundaries. How dependencies may be dealt with across firms is related to how product development is organized. The purpose of the paper is to explore dependencies and how interactive product development may be organized with regard to these dependencies.

The analytical framework is based on the industrial network approach, and deals with the development of products in terms of adaptation and combination of heterogeneous resources. There are dependencies between resources, that is, they are embedded, implying that no resource can be developed in isolation. The characteristics of and dependencies related to four main categories of resources (products, production facilities, business units and business relationships) provide a basis for analyzing the organizing of interactive product development.

Three in-depth case studies are used to explore the organizing of interactive product development with regard to dependencies. The first two cases are based on the development of the electrical system and the seats for Volvo’s large car platform (P2), performed in interaction with Delphi and Lear respectively. The third case is based on the interaction between Scania and Dayco/DFC Tech for the development of various pipes and hoses for a new truck model.

The analysis is focused on what different dependencies the firms considered and dealt with, and how product development was organized with regard to these dependencies. It is concluded that there is a complex and dynamic pattern of dependencies that reaches far beyond the developed product as well as beyond individual business units. To deal with these dependencies, development may be organized in teams where several business units are represented. This enables interaction between different business units’ resource collections, which is important for resource adaptation as well as for innovation. The delimiting and relating functions of the team boundary are elaborated upon and it is argued that also teams may be regarded as actors. It is also concluded that a modular product structure may entail a modular organization with regard to the teams, though, interaction between business units and teams is needed. A strong connection between the technical structure and the organizational structure is identified and it is concluded that policies regarding the technical structure (e.g. concerning “carry-over”) cannot be separated from the management of the organizational structure (e.g. the supplier structure). The organizing of product development is in itself a complex and dynamic task that needs to be subject to interaction between business units.

Understanding of the factors that contribute to policies diverging from neoliberal norms and accounting for situations when social movement activists prevail over the interests of more powerful opponents requires an analytical framework specifying the dimensions of interest. The case of Brazil’s pharmaceutical policies, especially those dealing with HIV/AIDS, is considered.

To understand the space and limits for progressive agency amidst contemporary globalization, previous articulations of dependent development and global capitalism require conceptual space with insights from social movement theory and normative framing.

Control over technology, political alliances, and normative appeals have changed since the concept of dependent development to today’s contemporary neoliberal globalization for understanding cases of progressive agency. Technology is based more on intangible knowledge, activism across the state-society boundary is more likely, and human rights has become the dominant idiom for naming and shaming more powerful opponents.

The analytic framework developed informs our understanding of pharmaceutical autonomy – the ability of a country to provide for the prescription drug needs of its population – in the case of Brazil. Further research of other situations requires the application of the framework to determine its merits.

A focus on technology, alliances, and norms provides a useful starting point for exploring situations of development autonomy that prevails over the interests of corporate power.

The Edmund Edelman Children’s Court is a juvenile dependency courthouse in Los Angeles designed with bright murals, open play spaces, and modified courtrooms to be “child-sensitive” and “family-friendly.” Through a recounting of the political and cultural forces at play building up to its construction, I argue that the decisions to build a “child-sensitive” court confirm the carceral containment of the culpable black adult. This article represents an inquiry into the cultural logic of the court’s construction, revealing the relationship between raced constructions of innocence and guilt. This study draws from five months of fieldwork conducted in the Edelman Children’s Court.

In the coming decades, the aging of European population will continue at a rapid pace. The National Transfer Accounts (NTA) methodology breaks down the income and consumption by age to analyze the impact of population aging on economic sustainability and economy in general. This chapter uses fully comparable results of NTA for 25 European Union countries in 2010 to indicate the potential increase in dependency in the future given the current institutional setting. Next to the conventionally defined demographic dependency ratio, we add (1) the NTA dependency ratio using the age patterns of production and consumption in the market and (2) the National Time Transfer Accounts dependency ratio using age patterns of production and consumption originating from unpaid work that is mostly provided within the households. The authors show that imbalances will originate from the impact of population aging on market part of the economy. Further, some imbalances will also be coming from unpaid work but of much lesser extent.

Under the Demand-Resources framework, more household dependents and higher levels of work–family conflict are demands on workers in high-income countries, yielding negative effects on worker wellbeing. The authors investigate how living in a household characterized by multiple types of dependency – where children and other adults are living with married, working respondents – shapes self-rated health. The authors further investigate whether work–family conflict mediates or moderates the relationship between this multi-faceted dependency and self-rated health, as expected. The authors exploit data from the 2014 General Social Survey and 2015 International Social Survey Program on over 2,000 individuals in Austria, France, Iceland, Switzerland, and the United States – the available countries with indicators appropriate to their research purpose. The authors employ logistic regression techniques to estimate individual self-rated health.

The authors find that living in a multi-faceted dependent household is actually associated with better self-rated health, while work–family conflict has a negative influence on self-rated health. There is also no evidence of strong mediating or moderating effects of work–family conflict on the positive association between living in a multi-faceted dependent household and health. These results suggest that individuals experience similar effects with regard to dependents and work–family conflict, regardless of their country of residence. Policy implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.