Reconceptualizing major policy change in the advocacy coalition framework: a discourse network analysis of German pension politics

How does major policy change come about? This article identifies and rectifies weaknesses in the conceptualization of innovative policy change in the Advocacy Coalition Framework. In a case study of policy belief change preceding an innovative reform in the German subsystem of old-age security, important new aspects of major policy change are carved out. In particular, the analysis traces a transition from one single hegemonic advocacy coalition to another stable coalition, with a transition phase between the two equilibria. The transition phase is characterized (i) by a bipolarization of policy beliefs in the subsystem and (ii) by state actors with shifting coalition memberships due to policy learning across coalitions or due to executive turnover. Apparently, there are subsystems with specific characteristics (presumably redistributive rather than regulative subsystems) in which one hegemonic coalition is the default, or the "normal state." In these subsystems, polarization and shifting coalition memberships seem to interact to produce coalition turnover and major policy change. The case study is based on discourse network analysis, a combination of qualitative content analysis and social network analysis, which provides an intertemporal measurement of advocacy coalition realignment at the level of policy beliefs in a subsystem

Transitions: An Institutionalist Perspective

A transition to a new technological regime is complete (and stable) when accompanied with a co-stabilization between the mode of regulation and the regime of accumulation. Key to understanding the dynamics of transitions are the factors, including institutions, that “regulate” and stabilize the regime of accumulation over time. However, the available frameworks for institutional analysis employ arbitrary and narrow definition of institutions, focus mainly on the policy domain, and do not pay sufficient attention to the evolutionary characteristics of change as manifested in emergence of numerous institutions that underlie transitions. This paper consists of three parts. The first part critically reviews and synthesizes some of the main approaches for conducting institutional analysis. The second part rearticulates the concept of “transitions”, or technological regime shifts, from a systems perspective to make a case for investigating transitions as multi-level, multi-scale, and multi-system phenomena best understood in their institutional contexts. The third part proposes a framework for examining institutional change and demonstrates how this framework may be used to identify the key factors and conditions whose convergence might result in transitions in a given subsystem. Examples are drawn from the Dutch waste management subsystem to demonstrate how this framework should be operationalized.economics of technology ;

Discourse network analysis: policy debates as dynamic networks

Political discourse is the verbal interaction between political actors. Political actors make normative claims about policies conditional on each other. This renders discourse a dynamic network phenomenon. Accordingly, the structure and dynamics of policy debates can be analyzed with a combination of content analysis and dynamic network analysis. After annotating statements of actors in text sources, networks can be created from these structured data, such as congruence or conflict networks at the actor or concept level, affiliation networks of actors and concept stances, and longitudinal versions of these networks. The resulting network data reveal important properties of a debate, such as the structure of advocacy coalitions or discourse coalitions, polarization and consensus formation, and underlying endogenous processes like popularity, reciprocity, or social balance. The added value of discourse network analysis over survey-based policy network research is that policy processes can be analyzed from a longitudinal perspective. Inferential techniques for understanding the micro-level processes governing political discourse are being developed

Evaluating cost taxonomies for information systems management

The consideration of costs, benefits and risks underpin many Information System (IS) evaluation decisions. Yet, vendors and project-champions alike tend to identify and focus much of their effort on the benefits achievable from the adoption of new technology, as it is often not in the interest of key stakeholders to spend too much time considering the wider cost and risk implications of enterprise-wide technology adoptions. In identifying a void in the literature, the authors of the paper present a critical analysis of IS-cost taxonomies. In doing so, the authors establish that such cost taxonomies tend to be esoteric and difficult to operationalize, as they lack specifics in detail. Therefore, in developing a deeper understanding of IS-related costs, the authors position the need to identify, control and reduce IS-related costs within the information systems evaluation domain, through culminating and then synthesizing the literature into a frame of reference that supports the evaluation of information systems through a deeper understanding of IS-cost taxonomies. The paper then concludes by emphasizing that the total costs associated with IS-adoption can only be determined after having considered the multi-faceted dimensions of information system investments

“Good” Governance and Policy Analysis: What of Institutions?

Policy formation is only one the three main components in the continuum of policy formation – policy implementation – policy evaluation – policy formation. To fully understand why policy outcomes often fall significantly short of policy intentions we need to examine the structuring factors, i.e., the institutions of governance, that shape the policy process. This paper focuses on the interplay between the policy process, governance, and institutions to articulate a framework for conducting institutionally sensitive policy analysis. A comparative study of the waste subsystems in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom reveals that each subsystem is the product of its “own” institutional landscape, and not directly and immediately subject to the whims of policy making at the EU scale of governance. Although there are signs of “Europeanization” in both cases, national problems, policies, and politics as manifest through the full spectrum of formal and informal institutions continue to play a major role in facilitating and curtailing change in each of the two waste subsystems. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of institutionally sensitive policy analysis for the current discourse on governance for sustainable development at the European scale.Economics ;

Organizing for Service Innovation: Best-Practice or Configurations?

In this paper we contrast the notions of best-practice and configurations contingent on environmental conditions. The analysis draws upon our study of 38 UK and 70 US service firms which includes an assessment of the organization, processes, tools and systems used, and how these factors influence variation in the development and delivery of new services. The best-practice framework is found to be predictive of performance improvement in samples in both the UK and USA, but the model better fits the USA than UK data. We analyze the UK data to identify alternative configurations. Four system configurations are identified: project-based; mass customization; cellular; and organic-technical. Each has a different combination of organization, processes, tools and systems which offer different performance advantages. The results provide an opportunity for updating the typologies of operations and adapting them to include services, and begin to challenge the notion of any universal 'best practice' management or organization of new product or service development.service industry, performance improvement, best-practice, alternative system configurations

Strategic management of intellectual capital of the enterprise in the framework of informatization of the economy

In the course of the research, one has determined the scientific and theoretical approaches, related to the identification of the directions and tools needed to improve strategic management; one also provided the main directions of the intellectual capital formation and development within the enterprise, which include the state of the capital at the present stage and the requirements to it from the future knowledge economy: the introduction of human capital into the assets of the enterprise, the promotion of the creative activity of the employees of the enterprise by using factors of human and social capital activation, as well as the establishment of an accounting system and evaluation of intangible assets. We have highlighted a range of specific principles of the intellectual capital management at the enterprise: the establishment of a partnership between all participants of the production process within the enterprise, namely, its owners, managers, and employees; the determination of criteria for assessing the contribution of every employee into the final result of the enterprise activity; the arrangement of an integrated network of the workers’ mass participation to identify the potential reserves, improve the production efficiency, and the product quality; the development of measures upon the principles’ implementation; and the primary task orientation of management on the future competition. One formulated the scientific and methodological foundations regarding the development of measures, aimed to improve the management of the intellectual capital of an enterprise, which include a sequence, the procedure of determination, the justification, the evaluation of the appropriateness of particular measures, the involvement of a wide range of workers in their development via the methods of interrogation and questionin

The rising powers and globalization : structural change to the global system between 1965 and 2005

This article critically assesses the increasingly prevalent claims of rapidly changing global power relations under influence of the ‘rising powers’ and ‘globalization.’ Our main contention is that current analyses of countries’ degree of global power (especially for the BRICS) has been dominated by the control over resources approach that, although it gauges power potential, it insufficiently accounts for how this potential is converted into actual global might. By drawing on a unique and extensive dataset comprised of a wide array of political, economic, and military networks for a vast number of countries between 1965 and 2005, we aim to 1) reassess alleged changes in the structure of the world-system since 1965 and 2) analyze whether or not these changes can be attributed to globalization. We pay attention to the trajectories of the BRICS and to the possibly divergent structural evolutions of the political and economic dimensions that constitute the system. Our results show that despite a certain degree of power convergence between countries at the sub-top of the system, divergence continues to take place between the most and least powerful, and stratification is reproduced. Globalization is further shown to exacerbate this trend, though its effect differs on the political and economic dimensions of the system. Though the traditional ‘core powers’ might have to share their power with newcomer China in the future, this hardly heralds a new age in which the global system of power relations are converging to the extent that stratification is being undermined

Technological Change and Institutions: A Case Study

The arena of mobile telecommunication in Europe has undergone a technological transition from analogue (first generation) to digital (second generation) technologies. While this transition is immediately attributable to shifts in demand and supply patterns, closer examination reveals that there are numerous other intervening factors that have facilitated this transition. This paper utilizes a conceptual framework for institutional analysis developed in earlier work to identify and discuss some of these factors. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications from this study for an institutional perspective on technological change.economics of technology ;