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Whereas incumbents often struggle to respond to disruptive innovations, start-up companies frequently face difficulties in establishing them within existing ecosystems. Phased acquisitions, that is, trajectories where an incumbent initially takes an equity stake in a start-up and subsequently acquires it, have been suggested as viable strategy to address these challenges. Whereas prior research has focused on the macro-level governance of such phased acquisitions, the authors explore the micro-level governance, examining how the existence of and changes in particular coordination and control mechanisms can shape the phased acquisition and its performance implications. Based on a longitudinal process study of a phased acquisition in which one start-up and one incumbent jointly developed and commercialized a disruptive technology, the authors develop a process model that (1) illuminates the existence of micro-level governance shifts and their impact on the decision to transition from equity alliance to acquisition, (2) identifies specific triggers of micro-level governance shifts, and (3) emphasizes the existence of counterintuitive micro-level governance spillovers across alliance and acquisition.

This paper presents the second-generation estimates for the Italian engineering industry in 1911, a year documented both by the customary demographic census, and the first industrial census. The first part of this paper uses the census data to estimate the industry’s value added, sector by sector; the second further disaggregates each sector by activity, and estimates the value added, employment, physical product, and metal consumption of each one. A third, concluding section dwells on the dependence of cross-section estimates on time-series evidence. Three appendices detail the specific algorithms that generate the present estimates; a fourth, a useful sample of firm-specific data.

We examine the concept of ‘organisational fields’, a notion employed frequently, but at times with inconsistency, to describe supra-industrial conglomerations of organisations with a mutual interest. We find this concept analytically useful in today’s world of rapid technological change and of organisations searching for business across industry boundaries. With our study of smart-city development in Japan, we provide an alternative theory to the predominant socio-cognitive explanations of how organisational fields emerge. Based on our empirical case, the drivers for the early development of an organisational field are concrete organisational actions to assemble the tangible objects of the new field.

This study investigates the role of functional area-specific managerial schemas on the attempt of strategic renewal at a large medical devices developer and manufacturer during a period of high environmental dynamism. Using data from a 16-month field study on managerial work related to the strategy process, I examine how functional area managers attempted to (re)configure organizational capabilities in response to various environmental challenges. While I did not find any disagreement between functional area managers related to what those challenges were, I did find fundamental disagreements related to what capabilities the organization can muster as a response. More specifically, disagreements surfaced in relation to how these capabilities should be assembled, and ultimately acted as triggers for the contestation of existing shared frames between functional area managers. These findings add to a growing body of evidence suggesting that there exist large differences between how managers within an organization interpret what the organization is capable of, and more specifically link these differences to the organization’s ability to adapt to environmental changes by showing how they impact the assembly of new capabilities deemed necessary for a successful response.

This paper explores the domain of the symbolic imaginary to comprehend the mechanisms and effects of neoliberal deregulation (anomie) and reckless capital accumulation within and external to the US imperial core with special emphasis on the war on terror, the figure of the suicide bomber, and the internal manifestations of social liquidation in the appearance of the rampage shooter. The concept of the piacular developed by Durkheim is expanded to demonstrate the contrast between the “variable” or human forms of terror with “constant” or mechanized form of the piacular as it appears in the form of the unmanned aerial vehicle or drone. The apparently disconnected image of the drone flying around up there somewhere in the clouds is intimately connected with seemingly unrelated phenomenon of mass murdering martyrs and fanatics down here on the ground. Lastly, the prospects for an anti-drone movement are touched upon and suggested as a fulcrum point from which to “touch” the synthetic point where terror, rampage, and revenge unify.

Unique to this paper is the development of a dialectical, formal, conceptual “geometry” rooted in Durkheim’s classic analysis of suicide for disclosing the hidden analogs obtaining in the relationship between suicide bombings and rampage shootings and their conceptual fusion in the form of the unmanned aerial vehicle or drone.

Capitalism linked to global defense and security operations produces its own terrifying nemeses as both causes and effects. Rather than something that has to be defeated, terror is an enemy that cannot be defeated but neither can it prevail against an empire. Likewise, the rampage shooter is not merely an individual in need of psychiatric care but a product of domestic policies that sacrifice everything for security and war. These two figures are “mirror opposites” or speculative doubles of one another, which when we attempt to comprehend the image of the seemingly unrelated drone machine what were find is the unexpected synthesis of the twin logics of terror and rampage at work in the sky.

If people hope to live in a society ruled democratically rather than imperial subjects they must know where to apply moral and political leverage. Suicidal bombers and lone shooters are definite problems, but focusing on the defects of individuals diverts the critical gaze from the larger problem of foreign policy, domestic austerity, and, perhaps, the war on the drone represents a unique opening within the aggregate system to push back against the abstract, imperial system of global and domestic hegemony.

This paper represents a new and unique synthesis of Durkheimian and interpretive sociologies with various strands of critical social theory providing new optics for the analysis of international terrorism, domestic mass murders, and the use of unmanned aerial vehicles in the wars on terror.

The Technium initiative started in 2001 with an initial Business and Innovation Centre established in the Swansea docklands area. Early success of this first Technium building led to the concept being rapidly proliferated into a pan-Wales network of primarily sector-focussed centres. Although the Welsh Government withdrew its support for the Technium network initiative in 2010, the individual centres continued under a range of ownerships and the historic initiative of continued interest, particularly with respect to regional policy.

A vibrant policy and practice debate subsequently emerged together with strident media comment. Lack of coherence between Technium Centres and weaknesses in monitoring systems meant this debate has been poorly informed. This case study helps address the evidence deficit within this debate by revisiting the initial Technium Swansea initiative and its subsequent development.

The case study provides an insight into what can realistically be expected of such initiatives in the short, medium and long terms, with realistic time-horizons for ‘success’ and the role of learning for knowledge-based development in similar initiatives and regions.

The ROV ground control simulator (Fig. 1) used in this multi-sensory research consists of two workstations: pilot and SO. At the left workstation, the pilot controls ROV flight (via stick-and-throttle inputs as well as invoking auto-holds), manages subsystems, and handles external communications. From the right workstation, the SO is responsible for locating and identifying points of interest on the ground by controlling cameras mounted on the ROV. Each station has an upper and a head-level 17″ color CRT display, as well as two 10″ head-down color displays. The upper CRT of both stations displays a ‘God's Eye’ area map (fixed, north up) with overlaid symbology identifying current ROV location, flight waypoints, and current sensor footprint. The head-level CRT (i.e., “camera display”) displays simulated video imagery from cameras mounted on the ROV. Head-up display (HUD) symbology is overlaid on the pilot's camera display and sensor specific data are overlaid on the SO's camera display. The head-down displays present subsystem and communication information as well as command menus. The simulation is hosted on four dual-Pentium PCs. The control sticks are from Measurement Systems Inc. and the throttle assemblies were manufactured in-house.

The recent reform in Norway on the gender composition of boards of directors in public firms, requiring boards to have at least 40 per cent of each gender, inevitably raises general questions concerning state regulation of property rights. What are the normative limits to state intervention? And more practically: how far could and should such interventions go? The question may be approached from several angles. The line followed here is to look into recent history in two Scandinavian countries – the most state-friendly of all existing democracies – to explore the differences between political interventions which have gained a high degree of legitimacy and those that failed or were never put into practice. In the discussion, both economic efficiency and normative concerns are evoked. Successful reforms introducing employee representatives into health and security committees, as well as to the boards of enterprises, are contrasted to the failed cases of quasi-nationalization of commercial banks in Norway and the wage-earner funds in Sweden. These results throw light on possible democratic justification and political viability of the gender quota reform.