Managing Innovation: The Networked Form of University in the XXI Century

In the last decades, universities have deeply changed their role and mission in order to become entrepreneurial institutions able to compete in a global setting. Contemporary processes of globalization, digitization, and networking, have induced new forms of organization, production, and distribution of knowledge. The presence of research-oriented universities can assist geographically proximate firms directly through the provision of educated workers and indirectly by way of myriad externalities. Starting from different approaches, namely the Triple Helix Model and its extensions and the systems theory, the authors shed light on the new networked form of universities. Nowadays, competitiveness relies on a vast and complex entity constituted by many players. The university can develop through an externally-driven growth in which networks of (local and international) relationships enable to gain advantages and reputation.    This becomes particularly evident in the area of media and communications: the news industry and its ecosystem are being disrupted due to dramatic social and technological changes. Universities active in media and journalism education can play a central role not only when it comes to knowledge transfer, bringing together experts from academia and the industry. At the same time, universities try also to create a sustainable future for journalism by offering funding schemes and by incubating new media initiatives for instance in areas such as entrepreneurial journalism. Thus, pursuing the third mission, universities take more and more the role of an industry, transferring both knowledge and technology to infuse existing (media) firms with new life and helping to generate new start-ups

Individual spirit at work and its relationship with employee work attitudes and organisational outcomes : an empirical examination in corporate Thailand

The purpose of this thesis is to conduct empirical research in corporate Thailand in order to (1) validate the Spirit at Work Scale (2) investigate the relationships between individual spirit at work and three employee work attitudinal variables (job satisfaction, organisational identification and psychological well-being) and three organisational outcomes (in-role performance, organisational citizenship behaviours (OCB), and turnover intentions) (3) further examine causal relations among these organisational behaviour variables with a longitudinal design (4) examine three employee work attitudes as mediator variables between individual spirit at work and three organisational outcomes and (5) explore the potential antecedents of organisational conditions that foster employee experienced individual spirit at work. The two pilot studies with 155 UK and 175, 715 Thai samples were conducted for validation testing of the main measure used in this study: Spirit at Work Scale (Kinjerski & Skrypnek, 2006a). The results of the two studies including discriminant validity analyses strongly provided supportive evidence that Spirit at Work Scale (SAWS) is a sound psychometric measure and also a distinct construct from the three work attitude constructs. The final model of SAWS contains a total of twelve items; a three factor structure (meaning in work, sense of community, and spiritual connection) in which the sub-factors loaded on higher order factors and also had very acceptable reliability. In line with these results it was decided to use the second-order of SAWS model for Thai samples in the main study and subsequent analysis. The 715 completed questionnaires were received from the first wave of data collection during July - August 2008 and the second wave was conducted again within the same organisations and 501 completed questionnaires were received during March - April 2009. Data were obtained through 49 organisations which were from three types of organisations within Thailand: public organisations, for-profit organisations, and notfor-profit organisations. Confirmatory factor analysis of all measures used in the study and hypothesised model were tested with structural equation modelling techniques. The results were greatly supportive for the direct structural model and partially supportive for the fully mediated model. Moreover, there were different findings across self report and supervisor rating on performance and OCB models. Additionally, the antecedent conditions that fostered employees experienced individual spirit at work and the implications of these findings for research and practice are discussed.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Entry Mode Degree of Control, Firm Performance and Host Country Institutional Development: A Meta-Analysis

Among studies on performance outcomes of entry mode choices disagreement fueled by ambiguous research findings is apparent as regards whether the best per- formers are those firms that enter foreign countries with high or low entry mode degree of control. To solve this dilemma and test new hypotheses, the relationship between entry mode degree of control and firm performance is examined by meta- analyzing 133 studies (740,114 observations) covering entry mode choices from 1980 to 2010. We find that (a) overall high-control entry modes lead to higher per- formance, and (b) adopting high-control entry modes is particularly important for firms entering developing countries

A way to foster innovation: a venture capital district from Silicon Valley and route 128 to Waterloo Region

University-industry research links, Knowledge and technology transfer, Venture capital, G24, O34,

Multi-criteria decision analysis with goal programming in engineering, management and social sciences: a state-of-the art review

Goal programming (GP) is an important class of multi-criteria decision models widely used to analyze and solve applied problems involving conflicting objectives. Originally introduced in the 1950s by Charnes et al. (Manag Sci 2:138-151, 1955) the popularity and applications of GP has increased immensely due to the mathematical simplicity and modeling elegance. Over the recent decades algorithmic developments and computational improvements have greatly contributed to the diverse applications and several variants of GP models. In this paper we present a state of the art literature review on GP applications in three selected (prominent and popular) areas, namely engineering, management and social sciences