Knowledge Flows Through Social Networks in a Cluster Interfirm versus University-Industry Contacts

Knowledge spillovers from a university to the local industry play an important role in clusters, but we know little about these spillovers. This paper examines empirically the extent of university-industry informal contacts. Furthermore, it analyses the characteristics of an engineer that acquire knowledge from informal contacts with university researchers. The university-industry contacts are compared with results for interfirm contacts. The research shows that the interfirm informal contacts are more numerous than university informal contacts. Likewise, knowledge is more frequently acquired from other firms than through university-industry contacts. Engineers that have participated in formal projects with university researchers and engineers that are educated at the university have a higher likelihood of acquiring knowledge from informal contacts with university researchers.Knowledge flows; informal contacts

Sources of Regional Resilience in the Danish ICT Sector

In this paper the use of the term “resilience” is discussed and a definition for use in quantitative studies of industrial evolution is suggested. Resilience is the ability of an industry in a region to exploit the possibilities arising from external events and adapt to thrive under new selection environments. An econometric analysis is undertaken to uncover the effects of the change in selection environment that the ICT industry faced from the burst of the ICT bubble in the year 2000. It is shown that some characteristics of regional industry structure are associated with growth over the whole period while other characteristics have varying effects pre and post burst. Special attention is given to the responsiveness of growth to the evolution of sales of ICT goods and services in Denmark and it is found that the industry structures that restrain growth also are the ones, which make the regional industry better able to exploit changes in sales at the national level.Resilience; Business cycle; ICT sector; Regional growth

Multichannel Management in the Public Sector - A Literature Review

acceptedVersio

Beyond Technological Diversification: The Impact of Employee Diversity on Innovation

This paper investigates the effect of employee diversity in terms of gender, age, ethnicity and education on the firm’s likelihood of introducing an innovation. The analysis draws on data from a recent innovation survey. This data is merged with a linked employer-employee dataset that allow us to identify the employee composition of each firm. We test the hypothesis that employee diversity is associated with better innovative performance. The econometric analysis reveals positive, negative and non-significant effects of the different employee characteristics on the likelihood of introducing an innovation.Diversity, Innovation, Education, Gender, Cultural Backgrund

How to Succeed with Multichannel Management::A Case Study of Cross-Organizational Collaboration Surrounding a Mandatory Self-Service Application for Danish Single Parents

Citizens' use of e-government channels is considered key to achieving savings from the digitization of the public sector. Channel choice studies have found that citizens use multiple channels in a service encounter and e-government channels supplement, rather than replace traditional channels. This interplay between traditional and e-government channels remains to be explained. There is also a lack of empirical knowledge of how government organizations can apply findings from user studies and migrate citizens online while simultaneously reducing traffic through traditional channels. Therefore the authors present a detailed longitudinal case study of how public authorities collaborated to create a multichannel strategy for a mandatory online self-service application for single parents. After the strategy was carried out there was an increase in the use of the application and a substantial reduction in calls. The authors offer contributions to the channel choice literature and recommendations on multichannel management to practitioners.</p