Search results

This chapter aims to enrich knowledge about cluster initiatives acting as intermediaries primarily between members in a cluster or in regional context. This is a practically oriented manuscript written to contribute to refinement of existing policies by proposing recommendations based on recent empirical studies regarding funding, actors’ and activities’ content, as well as cluster initiatives’ assessment. It is proposed that public support should be balanced, targeting new as well as established, well-functioning cluster initiatives. Furthermore, regional authorities should encourage multifaceted collaboration (e.g., Triple Helix), stimulate variation in activities to maximize the benefit of cluster initiatives as well as define and communicate success factors that make it possible to evaluate cluster initiatives from a holistic perspective. These recommendations are primary aimed for regional authorities and reflect a bottom-up perspective where both logic of initiatives’ actions and their development are captured. Yet, even national authorities can make use of the recommendations in this chapter to improve governance of cluster initiatives and to determine further directions of regional policies.

This paper aims to report on a census of high-level sustainability initiatives at all accredited post-secondary institutions in Canada by documenting the institutions that have undertaken sustainability assessments, have signed one or more sustainability declarations, have sustainability offices or officers or have sustainability policies. The aim was to better understand the broad-scale patterns of commitments by post-secondary institutions to these sustainability initiatives by exploring the interrelationships among them, and with geographic and institutional characteristics.

Data were collected on existing high-level sustainability initiatives at Canada’s 220 accredited post-secondary institutions. Patterns in the data were analyzed using exploratory statistical techniques. This paper proposes a sustainability initiative score to help understand the diversity and patterns of sustainability initiative uptake.

Institutions located in larger communities, and in British Columbia and Québec, tended to have higher sustainability initiative scores. Institutions in Saskatchewan and the territories had the lowest sustainability initiative scores. It was found that sustainability office(r)s, assessments and policies co-occurred disproportionately, potentially suggesting positive reinforcement mechanisms. On the other hand, having signed a declaration was not strongly linked to other sustainability initiatives. Terminological preference had shifted from “environment” and “sustainable development” to “sustainability”.

The scope was limited to a discrete set of high-level sustainability initiatives appropriate for a nation-wide census, at a moment in time, and is therefore not exhaustive in subject or temporal extent. This broad-scale comparative analysis compels further study into the relationship between the sustainability policy environment and sustainability practices on the ground, as well as implications for how post-secondary institutions engage with sustainability. The patterns and interrelationships this paper discovered help to structure future critical and comparative in-depth analyses of sustainability policies and practices within post-secondary education.

Almost no extensive, comparative empirical studies of sustainability policy and practice in post-secondary institutions exist. This void is addressed by documenting and analyzing high-level sustainability initiatives across all accredited post-secondary institutions in Canada.

This paper explores how policy-level stakeholders tackle digital inclusion in the context of UK rural communities.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with stakeholders that operate nationally in government departments, government funded organisations and third sector organisations that provided a policy-level perspective on digital inclusion initiative provision across England, Scotland and Wales. Activity theory (AT) was utilised as a theoretical framework, where a variety of factors–tools, rules, community, division of labour and contradictions–were found to have an influence on digital inclusion initiative provision.

Digital inclusion initiative provision in UK rural communities is organised through the multi-stakeholder involvement of national organisations, and collaboration with intermediary organisations to provide digital skills training and support. The process is fraught with difficulties and contradictions, limited knowledge sharing; reduced or poor-quality connectivity; lack of funding; lack of local resources; assumptions that organisations will indeed collaborate and assumptions that intermediary organisations have staff with the necessary skills and confidence to provide digital skills training and support within the rural context.

This study highlights the benefit of using AT as a lens to develop a nuanced understanding of how policy-level stakeholders tackle digital inclusion.

This study can inform policy decisions on digital inclusion initiative provision suitable for rural communities.

The contribution of this paper provides new insights into the understanding of how policy-level stakeholders tackle digital inclusion and the provision of digital inclusion initiatives; it builds on the use of AT to help unpick the complexity of digital inclusion initiative provision as a phenomenon; it reveals contradictions in relation to trust, and the need for knowledge sharing mechanisms to span and align different interpretations of digital inclusion across the policy-level; and reveals an extension of AT demonstrated through the “granularity of the subject” which enables the multi-actor involvement of the stakeholders involved in digital inclusion at policy-level to emerge.

An important part of the Northwest Forest Plan was 1.2 billion dollars of community development assistance made available to northern California, Oregon, and Washington through the Northwest Economic Adjustment Initiative (NEAI). The NEAI developed a complex institutional structure to eliminate regional administrative gridlock and enable workers and families, businesses, communities, and tribes that depended on forest product-based economies to regain or improve their economic and social well-being. As part of an evaluation of NEAI that included 31 community case studies, institutional analysis gauged how the initiativeʼs institutional and organizational structure affected program implementation. This paper examines how the institutional analysis complemented the community case studies, the use of Schneider and Ingramʼs policy design framework as a tool for describing and assessing the initiativeʼs institutional design, and the lessons learned from the overall evaluation.

This article analyzes the economic policy reform experience of three less developed countries (LDCs) during the 1980s -- Costa Rica, Ghana and Jamaica -- in three policy areas, exchange rate, trade, and agriculture. A political management model that shows how strong but skillful political leadership is as critical to policy reform success as is economic content is used for the analysis. The model proposes that government officials have to make policy reforms politically feasible if the reforms are to succeed. The assumption is that successful decision makers will take three kinds of political initiatives: (1) appeal to national sentiments, (2) seek the collaboration of affected interest groups, and (3) manage external actors. The article provides evidence that the economic perfomance of three countries correlated with the degree of political initiative taken. Costa Rican policy elites demonstrated the highest level of 1initiative. Ghana ranked second in political management, and Jamaica ranked third. The success of some LDCs also provides instructive experience for the Clinton Administration as it moves forward with a variety of policy reforms.

In the context of fears that the European information and communication technology (ICT) sector may be facing a period of crisis, this paper seeks to examine the changing role of national‐level policy initiatives to enhance the competitiveness of European ICT producers.

The article is based upon a study of 176 national programs that are aimed specifically or in substantial part at ICT producer goods. This supply‐side focus provides a counterpoint to studies that concentrate on demand stimulation and aggregation measures, which generally make up a much larger share of national policy programs. A comparative analytical framework is used that takes account of the different composition and structure of the ICT industries in the EU member states.

The key findings are that technology development programs continue to dominate but that the emphasis is shifting from ICT producer goods as such to the application and coordination of ICT products and services across a wide range of industry contexts. This process takes different directions depending upon national political and administrative structures and historical national attitudes to industry policy.

The article gives evidence about sector specific strategies for supporting the competitiveness of the ICT sector and forms the basis for the identification of best practice examples.

Establishing timely national product design standards is an important cooperative activity capable of capturing economic benefits from having the national product design standard adopted for global commerce. The purpose of this paper is to undertake an exploratory analysis of five global economic powers' – Canada, Germany, Japan, the UK, and the USA – national standards strategy (NSS), comparing them for commonality in institutional standards setting policy approaches, i.e. there should be a general “convergence” in specific NSS policy initiatives among similar, economically developed countries.

The five national standards strategies are evaluated for distinctive policy initiatives, with common policy initiatives combined, resulting in 18 distinctive policy initiatives found among the surveyed population. Each national standard strategy is then compared to the 18 policy initiatives, with commonality recorded.

Contrary to any preconception that economies considered comparable in economic development would tend to converge around similar NSS policy initiatives, the evidence reveals there is less harmonization (the results show convergence is overwhelmingly in the moderate/low categories – 14 policy initiatives, or 77.8 percent), with initial evidence indicating that the degree of public or private institutional involvement in technology standards setting may affect the types of policy initiatives included in a NSS.

The paper is exploratory in nature, with only five nation‐states in the survey.

The paper provides insight into: the strength of a country's NSS versus a competitor nation; and public and private sector development of the national innovation system.

The paper offers an exploratory evaluation of harmonization of NSS across countries and its significance to the national innovation system and global competitiveness.

This article reviews and analyzes the goals and approaches espoused in the George W. Bush administration’s proposed Strengthening America’s Communities Initiative (SACI). Drawing on a variety of materials describing the rationale, purpose, assumptions, goals, and components of the newest policy approach to community and economic development, this paper tries to critically examine the initiative using a capacity-building framework and some of the historical antecedents of Federal grant programs for community development - including some defunct programs - to inform current discussion about the proposal. Two conclusions of this analysis are that this proposal has much more in common with previous administrations’ proposals for development over the last several decades than its advocates are suggesting and that this policy, like most, is a study in paradoxes and compromises.

The problem addressed is how policies to promote sustainable development may be implemented in market practice. The purpose of this paper is to present a conceptual framework on which further research on sustainable market practice can be based.

Literature and conceptual analysis as regards sustainable development and policies to promote sustainable markets. Frameworks from theorizing about markets and about institutions.

The context of policy initiatives aiming at sustainable development is characterized by substantial heterogeneity and is inherently conflictual and multidimensional. Stakeholders, NGOs, governments as well as market actors are involved in policy processes. A market practice perspective is suggested. Specific issues for research are how policy practice interacts with market practice and how sustainable markets actually perform sustainable development over time and space.

Implications for how policy actors and market actors might act to bridge the gap by awareness of market shaping process in market practice.

Contribution to holistic understanding of links between policies, market practice and sustainable development.