The Widening and Deepening of Innovation Policy: What Conditions Provide for Effective Governance?

In relation to the gradual and steady introduction of the systemic perspective and of new public management techniques in innovation policy-making during the past decade, many countries in the developed and developing world have been substantially widening and deepening their innovation policies. The introduction of new and more sophisticated policy instruments (deepening) has been accompanied by an expansion of the realm of action for innovation policy (widening). The main argument of this paper is that this remarkable governmental activism and experimentalism raises important analytical questions about the conditions under which innovation policy contributes to an effective governance of the innovation system. Hence, this paper has two main purposes. Firstly, it characterises in an unambiguous way the widening and deepening trends in innovation policy, problematising their possible effects on governance. And, secondly, it develops an analytical toolbox based on a series of theoretical assumptions about the political conditions for effective governance of innovation systems.Innovation Policy; Innovation System; Governmental Activism; Governmental Experimentalism

Movements for global climate Justice: Reconsidering the international arena of climate change

Los desafíos que plantea el cambio climático evidencian una clara desigualdad entre los países más ricos y poderosos que lo producen, y los más pobres y vulnerables que sufren sus riesgos y consecuencias. Así, la llamada “deuda climática” orienta la acción internacional para establecer mecanismos de respuesta ante los impactos derivados de la alteración del clima. Este artículo analiza críticamente la deuda e injusticia climática, forjadas durante más de veinticinco años de negociaciones, para evidenciar que el cambio climático es, además de una cuestión científica o ambiental, una cuestión fundamentalmente social. Además explora cómo, ante la falta de acuerdos para encontrar soluciones, la sociedad civil se ha involucrado cada vez más en el debate climático con propuestas innovadoras. El caso de Urgenda, (Países Bajos), y los procesos iniciados por la organización Our Children Trust (Estados Unidos) son ejemplos representativos. El Acuerdo de París fija un punto de no retorno que desafía la geopolítica del abuso sobre la soberanía de los recursos naturales. Por ello, el estudio de los movimientos para la justicia climática aporta una perspectiva diferente de las negociaciones climáticas, basada, finalmente, en los derechos humanos, la dignidad y la igualdad. Este cambio en París augura cierta esperanza en la realización de la justicia climáticaThe question of climate change is traversed by a clear inequality between the rich and powerful countries, mostly responsible for its production, and the poor vulnerable countries menaced by its most serious risks and consequences, hence the need to deal with the so-called “climate debt”. This has sparked international action for establishing response mechanisms against climate alterations. This article addresses critically the issue of climate debt and climate injustice, forged over more than twenty years of international climate negotiations. Our goal is to show that climate change is a scientific or environmental issue but also, fundamentally, a social issue. The article will describe how, in view of the lack of agreements, civil societies have become increasingly involved in the climate debate through the adoption of innovative solutions. The Urgenda case in the Netherlands and the cases brought to court by the organization Our Children Trust, in the United States, are telling illustrations. The Paris Agreement sets out to counteract the geopolitics of the disrespect for sovereignty over natural resources. Therefore, the study of movements for climate justice provides a different perspective of climate negotiations, based, finally, on human rights, dignity and equality. The change in Paris portends some hope in achieving climate justic

La Comisión Europea como intermediario en las redes de políticas públicas

Recent transformations in the European Union have been putting significant pressure on the management function of the European Commission. Examining its brokerage position in policy networks, this article asks what kind of role does the Commission have in the political interactions in Brussels after the year 2000. Developing a conceptual framework about brokerage roles in EU policy, the article uses a combination of quantitative and qualitative data in an empirical analysis of two extreme cases where the Commission has been embattled the past years. The article argues that previous reports of the Commission’s demise are much exaggerated, because it continues playing a leading role in managing interaction between multiple actors at different levels of governance. The empirical results show that the Commission is a resilient central network broker.Las recientes transformaciones en el seno de la Unión Europea han estado ejerciendo una presión significativa en la función gestora de la Comisión Europea. Examinando su función de intermediación, este artículo se pregunta que clase de papel juega la Comisión en las interacciones políticas en Bruselas después del año 2000. Desarrollando un marco conceptual acerca de los papeles de intermediación en la política de la Unión, este artículo emplea una combinación de datos cualitativos y cuantitativos en un análisis empírico de dos casos extremos en los que la Comisión ha estado enredada en los últimos años. El artículo sostiene que los informes previos al "fallecimiento" de la Comisión fueron muy exagerados, porque ésta continua jugando un papel de liderazgo en la gestión de interacciones entre múltiples actores a distintos niveles de gobernación. Los resultados empíricos muestran que la Comisión es un resistente intermediario central en las redes sociales

Entrepreneurship, Intrapreneurship and Public Policy

Organisations are crucial elements in an innovation system. Yet, their role is so ubiquitous that it is difficult to grasp and to examine from the perspective of public policy. Besides, links between the literature at firm and system levels on the one hand, and public policy and governance studies on the other, are still scarce. The purpose of this paper is to define the conceptual background of innovation policy in relation to the role of organisations in general, and entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship in particular. In so doing, this paper aims at making three contributions. Firstly, it distinguishes between different types of organisations in the innovation system, a crucial topic in understanding innovation dynamics and blurring borders. Secondly, it identifies the organisation-related bottlenecks in the innovation system, and examines the policy instruments to solve them. Thirdly, it discusses the limits of public policy and suggests introducing a wider governance approach

Mobilization effects in national innovation networks

Lead firms are increasingly reorganizing their innovation activities into global innovation networks. Such reorganization has potentially major impact on their existing home-based innovation networks. Based on 31 interviews in four case studies of lead firms in the Danish food industry, the paper analyzes the dynamics of five key features of home-based innovation networks: 1) size of the national networks, 2) type of organization, 3) content of collaboration within the network, 4) concurrent globalization of organizations in the network, and 5) degree of formalization of network interactions. The dynamics are generally differentiated according to the type of lead firm strategy, i.e. knowledge augmenting or knowledge exploiting. The qualitative and exploratory findings point towards some effects on national innovation networks. Hence, the paper concludes by hypothesizing that the globalization of lead firms’ innovation has a mobilization effect on preexisting national innovation networks. The hypothesis says that lead firms’ engagement in global innovation networks can mobilize the organizations that are part of the lead firms’ innovation networks at home. This mobilization effect differs according to the lead firm’s strategy

A Systemic Approach to Innovation Policy

The main question that guides this paper is how governments are focusing (and must focus) on competence building (education and training) when designing and implementing innovation policies. With this approach, the paper aims at filling the gap between the existing literature on competences on the one hand, and the real world of innovation policy-making on the other, typically not speaking to each other. With this purpose in mind, this paper discusses the role of competences and competence-building in the innovation process from a perspective of innovation systems; it examines how governments and public agencies in different countries and different times have actually approached the issue of building, maintaining and using competences in their innovation systems; it examines what are the critical and most important issues at stake from the point of view of innovation policy, looking particularly at the unresolved tensions and systemic unbalances related to competences in the system; and last but not least, it elaborates a set of overall criteria for the selection and design of relevant policy instruments addressing those tensions and unbalances

Evidence from EU28 Member States

Many years after the introduction of the innovation system concept in innovation policy design, it is still not clear whether policy evaluation practices follow a system approach. Building on evaluation and innovation studies, this article develops the concept ‘system oriented innovation policy evaluation’ based on four attributes (coverage, interaction, temporality and sources). The attributes are used as analytical devices for gathering extensive empirical evidence on the actual practices of EU28 member states. The findings show that few countries have developed the most complete type of system oriented evaluation, the one we call “holistic”. Another small group does not have any system oriented evaluation; while most other EU28 countries have some traits of it (“flexible”) or are beginning to develop one (“starter”). The advent of a system approach to evaluation offers the opportunity of comprehensive, contextualized, and evidence-based innovation policy-making. However, there are still serious obstacles as such an approach requires important knowledge and organisational capacities. Overcoming these obstacles would need more decided evaluation capacity-building at the national level

ICT tools for tackling bullying in schools: an analysis and opportunities

[EN] Bullying is defined as the act of repeatedly and intentionally causing harm to another person who feels helpless (i.e., the victim) against the perpetrator or group of perpetrators. These series of acts of physical and/or psychological violence have been reported to cause a negative impact on the victim on several aspects of his/her well-being and daily life. Recently, multidisciplinary research teams have noticed the potential of ICT tools as catalysts for fighting bullying in schools. A range of ICT-based tools such as elearning systems, intelligent tutoring systems, gamified applications, analytics, or even artificial intelligence have been proposed as technological assets against bullying. In this paper, we identify, categorize, and analyse the use of these ICT tools against bullying under a wide range of criteria such as their role (e.g., prevention, mitigation, detection, etc.), the potential investment that is required, the target age of users, and strengths and weaknesses of each tool. Then, we discuss on potential areas of expansion for the use of ICT tools in the fight bullying, and we identify new potential areas of research.This work has been partially funded by the Generalitat Valenciana (GV/2019/012).Alberola Oltra, JM.; Sanchez-Anguix, V.; Soto-González, MD.; Molines Borrás, S.; Monfort Torres, G.; Díaz Novillo, S. (2020). ICT tools for tackling bullying in schools: an analysis and opportunities. IATED. 4662-4667. https://doi.org/10.21125/inted.2020.1289S4662466

Satisfacción laboral, clima cooperativo y rasgos de personalidad

The relationship between organizational climate and job satisfaction has been extensively studied. Current studies assume that a favorable working climate increases employees´ job satisfaction. Recent literature has differentiated types of organizational climate that can explain job satisfaction, such as the organizational climate of justice, organizational climate of entrepreneurship or organizational climate of collaboration. In this study we focus on the latter proposing that a collaborative climate will help employees to be more satisfied. In addition we also propose that issues related with individual personality traits, such as whether the employee is more responsible or more extrovert, will also affect the satisfaction of the workforce. The theory of personal traits helps us to demonstrate that character, besides influencing job satisfaction per se, also moderates the relationship between collaborative work climate and job satisfaction.La relación entre clima laboral y satisfacción laboral ha sido ampliamente estudiada. La investigación que existe hasta el momento asume que un buen clima laboral incrementa la satisfacción laboral de los empleados. Recientemente se diferencia entre distintos tipos de clima laboral, como por ejemplo el clima laboral de justicia, el de riesgo o el de colaboración. En este estudio nos centramos en este último, el clima laboral de colaboración, para explicar la satisfacción laboral de los empleados. Proponemos que un clima laboral de colaboración ayudará a que los empleados estén más satisfechos laboralmente. Además proponemos que cuestiones que tienen que ver con el carácter del individuo como por ejemplo si es más responsable o más extrovertido también influirá en su satisfacción laboral. De hecho, pese a que el carácter ha sido menos estudiado debido a su difícil medición, son cada vez más los estudios que tratan de observar cómo este influye en muchas de las cuestiones que se estudian en relación con la gestión empresarial. En el presente estudio, la teoría de rasgos que diferencia entre cinco tipos de carácter nos ayuda a demostrar que el carácter, además de influir de forma aislada en la satisfacción laboral, también modera la relación entre clima laboral de colaboración y satisfacción laboral