High Growth Firms in Scotland

High growth firms (HGFs) are widely thought to be a key force driving economic growth in modern advanced economies (Acs et al, 2008; BERR, 2008; Henrekson and Johansson, 2010). One of the central aims of the current economic strategy of the Scottish Government is to provide responsive and focused enterprise support to increase the number of highly successful, competitive businesses (Scottish Government, 2007). Hence, for the past decade there have been a number of policy initiatives designed to stimulate high growth entrepreneurship in Scotland. Many of these policies have had a strong technology focus. Given the importance these firms have for a region’s economic growth potential and the policy attention they are beginning to receive, it was felt to be important that Scottish Enterprise develops a deeper understanding of these important generators of wealth creation in the Scottish economy. This report examines HGFs in Scotland from both quantitative and qualitative perspectives

EU-China collaboration in design: research in Web-enabled collaborative design supported by the Asia-Link and Asia IT&C projects

The research of Web-enabled collaboration in total design supported by the European Union's Asia Link project [1] and Asia IT&C project is reported in this paper. The two projects both aim at enhancing research collaboration between the EU and China. The Virtual Research Institute (VRI) is described first, which is the platform for the collaboration for the Asia Link project and is established by utilizing the advanced Web techniques; and then, the framework for the collaboration and the Web techniques involved in the research are presented which represent the major research of the Asia IT&C project. The effective collaboration between the project partners and the impacts of the project outcome on the partnership are also discussed

Managing Diversity and Glass Ceiling Initiatives as National Economic Imperatives

Glass Ceiling ReportGlassCeilingBackground5ManagingDiversity.pdf: 11584 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

Institutional legacies in TNCs and their management through training academies: the case of transnational law firms in Italy

This paper highlights the effects of heterogeneous institutional contexts on transnational professional service firms, a relatively understudied issue. Specifically the paper provides empirical analysis of how the specificities of the Italian institutional context affect the activities of English legal professional service firms in Milan. This reveals the intimate connection between varieties of capitalisms, place-specific workplace cultures and practices, and the institution-related challenges transnational professional service firms and all transnational corporations (TNCs) face. The paper also reveals the way institutionally generated differences at the level of work practices are managed in transnational law firms through worldwide training programmes designed to ‘govern’ the practices of workers in different parts of the TNC’s network. This highlights the importance of studying attempts to manage institutional heterogeneity at the level of workplace practices, something often missed in existing meso-scale studies of TNCs’ governance structures. Consequently, detailed empirical archaeologies exploring the direct links between institutions and practices are highlighted as being an important as part of future research analysing the effects of institutions on TNCs

Organisational Memory and Innovation Across Projects: Integrated Service Provision in Engineering Design Firms

This paper provides an exploration of the dynamics of organisational remembering in firms operating through projects. The paper focuses in particular on the deliberate use of experience accumulated in the past in order to sustain innovation in the provision of services. It relies on the notions of boundary objects and brokers to empirically explore how a common memory crossing occupational and organisational boundaries is built. In so doing, it highlights how a boundary object as memory device in a project environment operates at different levels, i.e. personal, project-specific, organisational-specific and occupational specific, and how it takes different formats to perform its roles at each level. Finally, the paper highlights the role of specific communities, beyond that of specific individuals, as boundary brokers.project development, innovation processes, organisational memory, boundary brokers

Human Resource Management and Productivity

In this chapter we examine the relationship between Human Resource Management (HRM) and productivity. HRM includes incentive pay (individual and group) as well as many nonpay aspects of the employment relationship such as matching (hiring and firing) and work organization (e.g. teams, autonomy). We place HRM more generally within the literature on management practices and productivity. We start with some facts on levels and trends of both HRM and productivity and the main economic theories of HRM. We look at some of the determinants of HRM - risk, competition, ownership and regulation. The largest section analyses the impact of HRM on productivity emphasizing issues of methodology, data and results (from micro-econometric studies). We conclude briefly with suggestions of avenues for future frontier work.human resource management, productivity, personnel economics