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1 – 10 of 215The purpose of this paper is to examine the question: What shall we measure? and offers preliminary answers. Data for innovation management and policy must be valid, reliable…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the question: What shall we measure? and offers preliminary answers. Data for innovation management and policy must be valid, reliable, relevant and actionable.
Design and approach
The paper examines trends within finance, environment and institutions and society, all with regard to innovation and technology. It examines how these trends interact with each other and with measurement of innovation and socio-technical change.
Findings
In the future, measurement for innovation policy must occur in markedly different ways – and on quite different scales – than is currently the practice. The paper concludes with a future-oriented list of items to be measured, with preliminary guidelines on how to organize to measure them.
Research limitations/implications
Foresight researchers must put new emphasis on measurement.
Practical implications
Local and national statistical agencies will have to measure new indicators and organize differently to measure them.
Social implications
Voters may be eager to embrace principles and goals, though they fail to find excitement in the more tedious issues of measurement. It is incumbent on us to pay more attention to measurement, to resist governments’ and lobbyists’ efforts to introduce special-interest bias into public statistics, and to carry the story to the public of the importance of measurement. Much of the policy change that is now needed is needed because of past and current harmful human behaviors. Nicholas Sarkozy (Press 2011) concisely stated the rationale for this paper: “We will not change our behavior unless we change the ways we measure”.
Originality/value
This concept paper goes beyond other indexes and proposals to identify new phenomena that must be measured. In contrast to other works which are oriented to measurement-push (toward policy), the present paper makes bold assertions about the trends needing to be addressed by policy, then proposes measurement based on policy-pull. It argues against premature worldwide statistical standards, and for Popperian “multiple engineering experiments”.The USA must “get back into the future business” – President Bill Clinton, at the Milken Institute Global Conference 2012.
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Shannon G. Taylor and Arthur G. Bedeian
The purpose of this paper is to refute allegations from various sources that, as a pitcher for the Phillips Exeter Academy baseball team, Frederick W. Taylor cheated by using an…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to refute allegations from various sources that, as a pitcher for the Phillips Exeter Academy baseball team, Frederick W. Taylor cheated by using an illegal overhand delivery.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing on archival research, including a recently discovered letter by his son, Robert, this paper dispels the “myth” surrounding Taylor's alleged cheating as a member of the Phillips Exeter Academy baseball team.
Findings
This research suggests that the “myth” of Fred's purported cheating may be traced to a January 1934 Esquire Magazine article by American Novelist John R. Dos Passos.
Originality/value
As a consequence, of the information only a son could have provided, this paper sets the record straight concerning Taylor's alleged cheating, and in doing so, demonstrate how a reliance on “myth” rather than “fact” stands in the way of capturing the elusive past.
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Many scholarly disciplines are currently engaged in a turn to affect, paying close attention to emotion, feeling and sensation. The purpose of this paper is to locate affect in…
Abstract
Purpose
Many scholarly disciplines are currently engaged in a turn to affect, paying close attention to emotion, feeling and sensation. The purpose of this paper is to locate affect in relation to masculinity, time and space.
Design/methodology/approach
It suggests that historically, in a range of settings, men have been connected to one another and to women, and these affective linkages tells much about the relational quality and texture of historically experienced masculinities.
Findings
Spatial settings, in turn, facilitate, hinder and modify expressions and experiences of affect and social connectedness. This paper will bring space and time into conversation with affect, using two examples from late nineteenth-century New Zealand.
Originality/value
If masculinities scholars often focus on what divides men from women and men from each other, the paper might think about how affect connects people.
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This paper aims to investigate the merit of Fred Taylor's claim that he did not conceive the notion of time study on his own. He insisted that he acquired it while a student at…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to investigate the merit of Fred Taylor's claim that he did not conceive the notion of time study on his own. He insisted that he acquired it while a student at Phillips Exeter Academy and identified the particular individual to whom, he claimed, he owed his earliest exposure to time study – George A. “Bull” Wentworth.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing on archival material, including a recently discovered letter by Taylor, this paper substantiates Taylor's claims regarding his association with Wentworth. By corroborating existing and new evidence of the Wentworth‐Taylor link, it probes into the nature and the scope of the influence of the “Old Bull” of Exeter on the father of scientific management.
Findings
Taylor did not conceive of time study on his own but acquired it early in his life via traceable socialization influences, many of which came from Wentworth. Such influences were both substantive and lasting: the residue of Wentworth's methodology is distinct in Taylor's early and later time study work. Taken together, both internal and external consistency of the evidence has led me to assert that it is plausible that Wentworth had a traceable and lasting socialization impact on Frederick Taylor.
Originality/value
This paper is a rare inquiry into the part of Taylor's life history that precedes his pioneering of the industrial, managerial, and economic applications of time study. It grounds the matter of Taylor's conceiving the time study idea into the context of his early‐in‐life socialization – an important subject left largely unexplored by Taylor's biographers and the historians of the scientific management movement.
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WE WERE LISTENING, some time ago, to a television debate on old age. Mostly the speakers seemed convinced that it was something to look forward to, that a senior citizen (as they…
Abstract
WE WERE LISTENING, some time ago, to a television debate on old age. Mostly the speakers seemed convinced that it was something to look forward to, that a senior citizen (as they call them nowadays) is a sort of privileged person, able to spend his time on hobbies or take repeated holidays in glamorous far‐away places.
Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Term. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are…
Abstract
Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Term. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.
HAS BRITAIN really lost its sense of purpose? Has it no noticeable industrial policy?
THAT WAS A BRAVE and surprising report that Prof. Elie Kedourie sent in to the Centre for Policy Studies, the more so because the professor is himself working at London University.
NEXT TO banking, we are informed, Business Consultancy is the most favoured profession for graduates in the United States and it is likely, as in so much else, that here in…
Abstract
NEXT TO banking, we are informed, Business Consultancy is the most favoured profession for graduates in the United States and it is likely, as in so much else, that here in Britain the same trend will be followed. It follows, as the famous query in a one‐time quiz member put it, that ‘it all depends on what you mean by Business Consultancy’.
EVERY OTHER MONTH the Institute of Directors writes to a representative section of its membership, 200 in all. They are asked their opinion of the economy in general and how the…