Assessing the Impact of Federal Funding to Swiss Universities: A New Performance Audit Concept

Opportunities and risks must undergo careful assessments in order to survive in the world of globalization. This applies not only to the private but also to the public sector, including governmental, political and educational institutions. New control mechanisms must be developed and implemented to measure and monitor the performance of political programs. These tools primarily employ evaluation techniques and performance indicators. The need for such instruments is most acute in political programs and processes where large sums of money are involved, where little information is available about the recipients of monetary contributions and where significant public emotional involvement is apparent, such as in education, social security or public health issues

Is Formula-Based Equity Funding Enough? A Configurational Analysis of School Achievement in Victoria, Australia

The Australian state of Victoria uses its funding formula to correct for schools' community educational advantage, size, and location; the index of community educational advantage has been the strongest predictor of achievement historically. We use Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) to examine the configurations of school and funding factors necessary and sufficient for high and low achievement, and find no consistently necessary profile but one consistently sufficient configuration for high achievement and four for low achievement. While community educational advantage is not an insurmountable dictate of school achievement, there is no consistent pathway to failure for high-advantage schools or to success for low-advantage schools. These results highlight the utility of examining school achievement through the lens of complex and configurational causality

Finanzierung der wissenschaftlichen Weiterbildung im Zusammenhang mit berufsbegleitenden Masterprogrammen aus der Universität Zürich

Im Rahmen einer Studie hat der Lehrstuhl für Performance Management unter der Leitung von Frau Prof. Dr. Andrea Schenker-Wicki untersucht, in welcher Form die Mitarbeiterinnen und Mitarbeiter von Unternehmungen in der Weiterbildung unterstützt werden. Befragt wurden Absolventinnen und Absolventen verschiedener Weiterbildungsstudiengänge an der Universität Zürich

Key drivers for enhancing innovation performance of innovation networks

This research article provides empirical insights on the key drivers for successful internal and external innovation network management. The hypotheses are tested empirically using survey data collected from stock-listed companies in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. The data include the complete responses from 141 R&D managers for the period from 2004 to 2008. Our results show that cross-functional teamwork in R&D projects has been increasingly implemented as part of the internal network strategy. Interestingly, we found no significant effect of intensive cross-functional employee cooperation on the firms' innovation performance. According to our result, key driver for internal innovation network management is a fault-tolerant innovation culture, as it is positively related to product innovation performance. Regarding external innovation network management, the use of Web 2.0 and social networking technologies is a key driver for high product innovation performance. In addition, the results reveal the endurance of external innovation networks as a key driver for the existence of radical innovations. Innovation networks that are older than five years have a substantial positive influence on product innovation performance and on the existence of radical innovations

Cooperating with external partners: The importance of diversity for innovation performance

Innovations are rarely generated in complete isolation. Due to the inherent uncertainty, the manifold underlying knowledge base and high financial investments, firms seek to integrate external partners for the generation of new products and processes. However there is an ongoing debate whether firms, which develop their innovations in close cooperation with external partners, such as suppliers, customers and governmental research institutions, can benefit with respect to innovation performance in contrast to firms which cooperate less. This paper aims at investigating how diversity in cooperation partners effects the firms' output innovation performance in terms of generated sales with innovative products. To address this question the authors analyze a large-scale sample of microdata from Swiss firms derived from four waves (1999, 2002, 2005, and 2008) of the Swiss innovation survey data according to the European Community Innovation Survey, applying a panel data analysis. The findings suggest, that firms with a higher diversity in cooperation partners could benefit in generating new product innovations

How managers can deal with complex issues: a semi-quantitative analysis method of causal loop diagrams based on matrices

The increasing complexity of the modern world creates both higher risks and new interdependencies in the socioeconomic environment. To cope with these challenges powerful new tools must be applied to find sustainable solutions. System dynamics is a field that offers potential assistance in dealing with complex issues. However, managers and politicians often lack the knowledge and necessary skills to apply quantitative methods in their decision-making process. In contrast, qualitative approaches are easily understood and handled but have limited capacities for analysis. To address this gap, we have developed a bundle of tools tailored for managers and politicians facing complex problems. These tools enable executives to recognize effective levers and assess potential consequences of specific interventions in a highly interconnected system. The approach detailed here equips decision makers with a powerful method to develop, test, and communicate strategies to find long-term sustainable solutions for complex issues in business and society

Input Additionality and Innovation Output Effects of R&D Subsidies

Policy makers have an increasing interest in designing appropriate public R&D policy programs to stimulate national innovativeness and competitiveness. First, this study investigates the effects of public R&D subsidies on firms’ R&D investments accounting for the collaboration pattern of the subsidized firms. Second, this representative analysis further puts light on the effectiveness of the publicly induced R&D investment, and examines if the policy-induced investments translate into higher innovation performance, thereby disentangling between radical and incremental innovation. The treatment effects analysis uses firm level data from five waves (1999, 2002, 2005, 2008, and 2011) of the Swiss innovation survey. The findings show that on average the receipt of an R&D subsidy translate into higher firm R&D investments. While the results do not exhibit any additional systemic positive support for collaboration in the presence of a subsidy, the publicly induced R&D investment mainly foster radical innovation output