Workshop series on the role of institutions in East Asian development: Institutional foundations of innovation and competitiveness in East Asia

The discussion paper summarizes the results of a workshop that focussed on the institutional foundations of innovation and competitiveness in East Asia. The following papers are contained: 'Transitional Institutions, Institutional Complementarities and Economic Performance in China. A "Varieties of Capitalism" Approach', 'The Current State of Research on Networks in China's Business System', 'Recent Changes to Korea's Innovation Governance', 'Standardization and Institutional Complementarities in Japan - Empirical Results from SAP R/3 Implementations in Japanese Automotive Suppliers'. --East Asia,Japan,China,Korea,institutional change,competitiveness,innovation

New realities in foreign affairs: diplomacy in the 21st century

Modern diplomacy is currently experiencing fundamental changes at an unprecedented rate, which affect the very character of diplomacy as we know it. These changes also affect aspects of domestic and international politics that were once of no great concern to diplomacy. Technical develop­ments, mainly digitization, affect how the work of the diplomat is understood; the number of domestic and international actors whose activity implicates (or is a form of) diplomacy is increasing; the public is more sen­sitive to foreign policy issues and seeks to influence diplomacy through social media and other platforms; the way exchange between states, as well as the interchange between government and other domestic actors, pro­gresses is influencing diplomacy’s ability to act legitimately and effectively; and finally, diplomats themselves do not necessarily need the same attri­butes as they previously did. These trends, reflecting general societal devel­opments, need to be absorbed by diplomacy as part of state governance. Ministries of Foreign Affairs, diplomats and governments in general should therefore be proactive in four areas: 1. Diplomats must understand the tension between individual needs and state requirements, and engage with that tension without detriment to the state. 2. Digitization must be employed in such a way that gains in efficiency are not at the expense of efficacy. 3. Forms of mediation should be developed that reconcile the interests of all sides allowing governments to operate as sovereign states, and yet simul­taneously use the influence and potential of other actors. 4. New and more open state activities need to be advanced that respond to the ways in which emotionalized publics who wish to participate in govern­ance express themselves. (author's abstract

Essays on China’s Political Organization and Political Economic Institutions

The present dissertation is a compilation of three individual papers, and an introduction chapter. While the introduction lays out the theoretic backdrop of the project as a whole, the papers represent interventions into three specific dimensions of China’s Party-state order: structural organizational issues, decision-making institutions, and political economic dynamics. These three dimensions are presented as aspects of the same political organizational order, a Party-state order assembled around the hegemony of the Communist Party of China’s (CPC), conceptualized in the introduction using a Gramsci-inspired theory of the state. Employing a historical institutional approach, the three papers engage with specific strands of literatures of China Studies in a conceptual and theoretic manner, while also contributing with empirical findings. They discuss the concept of Fragmented Authoritarianism (FA), the organization and institutionalization of Leading Small Groups, and the social embeddedness of state-owned enterprise (SOE). FA has been an influential concept to explain structural issues of China’s bureaucracy, and with China’s energy administration as example, I review its value as a theoretic notion today, 30 years after its inception. Discussing the growing importance of Leading Small Groups, the second paper addresses some of the institutional “fixes” to decisionmaking and policy coordination, which have evolved in response to structural fault-lines described in the FA paper. The third paper takes the dissertation into the political economic dimension of the Party-state order, providing a case study of how China National Petroleum Corporation, a central, state-owned and CPC led SOE, is organizationally rooted in its local operations, remaining institutionally embedded in local society through its legacy as a socialist work unit (danwei). Using Polanyi’s concept of embeddedness, the paper reveals how SOEs are split into two tiers each tasked with the respective objectives of economic development and political stability, and thus as Party-state organizations are used to flexibly support CPC hegemony

A longitudinal study about Chinese students’ experiences in Germany

This dissertation explores the changing identity and sense of belonging of a group of master’s students from the People’s Republic of China during their stay in Germany. Its main purpose is to understand how the students perceived their attachment to China politically, culturally, and ethnically and how these perceptions gradually changed during their experiences in Germany, where they developed different strategies to negotiate their identity and belonging. The study applied a combination of a longitudinal method and a biographical narrative interview method to track 25 Chinese students’ lived experiences and their change processes from their first semester in Germany until after they graduated, in order to capture critical moments in their transitions. The dissertation provides longitudinal evidence that reveals the complex and multi-layered nature of the changing progress of these students’ identities. It also supports the idea that the students’ transcultural experiences in Germany may have helped them to “unlearn” a normalized concept of “Chineseness,” which was partially imbued by the Patriotic Education Campaign in China from the 1990s, and to go beyond their state-bound national loyalty to postulate a potential transcultural position in today’s world.2022-01-1

Digital 3D reconstruction as a research environment in art and architecture history: uncertainty classification and visualisation

The dissertation addresses the still not solved challenges concerned with the source-based digital 3D reconstruction, visualisation and documentation in the domain of archaeology, art and architecture history. The emerging BIM methodology and the exchange data format IFC are changing the way of collaboration, visualisation and documentation in the planning, construction and facility management process. The introduction and development of the Semantic Web (Web 3.0), spreading the idea of structured, formalised and linked data, offers semantically enriched human- and machine-readable data. In contrast to civil engineering and cultural heritage, academic object-oriented disciplines, like archaeology, art and architecture history, are acting as outside spectators. Since the 1990s, it has been argued that a 3D model is not likely to be considered a scientific reconstruction unless it is grounded on accurate documentation and visualisation. However, these standards are still missing and the validation of the outcomes is not fulfilled. Meanwhile, the digital research data remain ephemeral and continue to fill the growing digital cemeteries. This study focuses, therefore, on the evaluation of the source-based digital 3D reconstructions and, especially, on uncertainty assessment in the case of hypothetical reconstructions of destroyed or never built artefacts according to scientific principles, making the models shareable and reusable by a potentially wide audience. The work initially focuses on terminology and on the definition of a workflow especially related to the classification and visualisation of uncertainty. The workflow is then applied to specific cases of 3D models uploaded to the DFG repository of the AI Mainz. In this way, the available methods of documenting, visualising and communicating uncertainty are analysed. In the end, this process will lead to a validation or a correction of the workflow and the initial assumptions, but also (dealing with different hypotheses) to a better definition of the levels of uncertainty

Voyage of discovery : exploring the collections of the Asian Library at Leiden University

In September 2017, Leiden University opened the Asian Library to house its world renowned and extensive Asian collections. This includes the largest collection on Indonesia worldwide and some of the foremost collections on South and Southeast Asia, China, Japan, and Korea. "Voyage of Discovery" contains more than twenty essays by academics, curators, and authors on their experiences with the Leiden collections. Richly illustrated and showcasing twenty-five treasures from the Asian Library, such as unique manuscripts and rare maps, this book offers a beautiful look inside the Asian Library

National information networks for the advanced developing countries: a study on their functional organisation

Increasing demand in the advanced developing countries for more information more quickly has called into serious question the traditionally fragmented nature of information services by creating a need for greater inter-institutional cooperation. Libraries and information centres have responded to this need by the formation of networks serving limited geographical areas or various special interests. Unless an inclusive network is established on a national scale, expendi tures, facilities and efforts will be unnecessarily duplicated and interconnection will become increasingly difficult as regional and specialised networks develop without a common approach. The time has come in every advanced developing country to create a national information network which would weld together its separate insulated information resources into a nationwide network. The purpose of this study is to identify common information needs and desires responsible for the present information services in the advanced developing countries, and to design a generalised structure of national information networks based on the common factors identified. This study was carried out by postal questionnaire, personal interview and literature review. The countries investigated are: Brazil, Colombia, Hong Kong, Iran, Iraq, Kenya, Korea, Kuwait, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, Taiwan, Turkey, Venezuela and Yugoslavia. The data gathered by questionnaire and interview have been arranged in fifteen country reports to be summarised later by crocos-section characteristics, requirements and constraints. By choosing between the alternative network models and configurations, a generalised structure of national information networks based on the common characteristics of the information needs and desires existing in the advanced developing countries has been presented. The investigator has attempted in this study to view a network as an arrangement of different functional units working together to accomplish the purpose of the whole rather than an integrated set of different specialised networks such as those in agriculture, chemistry, economics, education, etc

The utilization of 3D computer reconstruction visualizations in archaeology

Mgr. Jiří Unger The utilization of 3D computer reconstruction visualizations in archaeology Abstract of dissertation thesis The visual presentation is in the field of archaeology one of the main communication media for conveying information and interpreting it. The recent introduction of digital technologies has brought a whole new dimension to archaeological visualisations. As a result of this development, they become three-dimensional, virtual, multifunctional and interactive. Technological development moreover has not only influenced the way how to retrieve and process the data, but greatly expanded as well the ability to simulate and visualize their different aspects in virtual environment. Since the beginning the virtual archaeology has been taken as direction that would bring new groundbreaking knowledge into the archaeology. However, the current situation is that 3D computer visualizations are just popular conference theme than a standard tool of archaeology as a science, and most works on virtual archaeology still needs to advocate the benefits of 3D visualizations. Therefore, the dissertation thesis try to deal with theoretical issues of preparation, organisation and analysis of input data in the process of creation of 3D reconstruction computer models, then with possible solutions of visualization...Mgr. Jiří Unger Možnosti využití 3D rekonstrukčních počítačových vizualizací pro archeologii Abstrakt disertační práce Pro zprostředkování informací a jejich interpretaci je v archeologii jedním z hlavních sdělovacích nosičů obrazové vyjádření. Nedávné zavedení digitálních technologií navíc vneslo do archeologických vizualizací zcela novou dimenzi. Ty se tak díky tomu staly trojrozměrnými, multifunkčními, virtuálními a interaktivními. Technologický pokrok neovlivnil pouze způsoby jak získávat a zpracovat data, ale značně rozšířil možnosti hledisek jejich zkoumání, kdy jde především o možnost simulovat různé aspekty ve virtuálním prostředí a vizualizovat je. Hned od počátku byla virtuální archeologie brána jako směr, který do archeologie vnese nové přelomové poznatky. Současná situace je ovšem taková, že 3D počítačové vizualizace jsou spíše brány jako oblíbené téma konferencí než jako standartní nástroj a většina prací o virtuální archeologii má stále potřebu obhajovat výhody 3D vizualizací pro obor. Disertační práce se proto zabývá teoretickými otázkami přípravy, organizace a analýzy vstupních dat pro tvorbu 3D rekonstrukčních počítačových modelů, řešením vizualizace nejistoty dat a důvěryhodnosti těchto modelů a výslednou formou jejich výstupů a prezentace včetně využití virtuální a rzšířené reality. Tyto...Ústav pro archeologiiInstitute of ArchaeologyFaculty of ArtsFilozofická fakult