Decentralisatie: maatwerk of uniformiteit? Het Wmo-beleid van Nederlandse gemeenten

A main motive for policy decentralization is the belief that municipalities are better able to customize public policy to local circumstances, and to realize made-to-measure service provision. In this respect, the introduction of the Social Support Act (Wmo) is an interesting example. With the lack of ‘vertical’ accountability obligations to the national government, the Wmo is governmentally innovative. Whether the decentralization results in customized forms of social support is a fascinating one because a detailed reading of the Wmo and its implementation displays possible incentives as well as barriers to made-to-measure service provision. The empirical exploration in this article uses data from the 2007-2009 evaluation of the Wmo conducted by the Netherlands Institute for Social Research (SCP). The evaluation shows that municipalities involve diverse stakeholders in formulating Wmo policy, and that their involvement seems to lead to customized service provision. At the same time, municipalities follow nationwide models, and information provided by the central government seems to have a major impact on local social care policy. The article concludes with an outlook on future directions in local debates on social care and the recommendation to give time for major decentralization trajectories such as the Wmo

Network embeddedness in exploration and exploitation joint R&D projects: a structural approach

This paper analyses how network embeddedness affects exploration and exploitation R&D project performance. By developing joint projects, partners and projects are linked to one another and form a network that generates social capital. We examine how the location, which determines the access to information and knowledge within a network of relationships, affects the performance of projects. We consider this question in the setup of exploration and exploitation projects, using a database built from an EU Framework. We find that each of the structural´ embeddedness dimensions (degree, betweenness and eigenvector centrality) have a different impact on the exploration and exploitation project performance. Our empirical analysis extends to project management literature, and social capital theory, by including the effect that the acquisition of external knowledge has on the performance of the project

Drivers for international innovation activities in developed and emerging countries

This paper aims to shed light on firm specific drivers that lead firms to internationalise their innovation activities. The paper draws a comprehensive picture of driving forces by including firm capabilities, characteristics of the firm’s competitive environment and the influence of innovation obstacles in the home country. In particular, the role of the potential driving forces is tested on the probability to carry out different innovative activities abroad (R&D, design/conception of new products, manufacturing of innovative products and implementation of new processes). In a second step these driving forces are used to observe their impact on the decision to locate innovation activities in various countries and regions (China, Eastern Europe, Western Europe and North America) as well as in groups of countries with similar levels of knowledge (country clubs). The analysis is based on the Mannheim Innovation Panel survey which represents the German CIS (Community Innovation Survey) contribution. Two survey waves are combined and result in a sample of about 1400 firms. The results show that the decision to perform innovation activities abroad is mainly driven by organisational capabilities such as absorptive capacities, international experience and existing technological competences of the respective firm. Innovation barriers at the German home base such as lack of labour and high innovation costs foster the set up of later-stage innovation activities abroad while the lack of demand demonstrates a barrier to the internationalisation decision for the development and manufacturing of new products. Location decisions receive the strongest influencing effects from the international experience of the firm. Firms which innovate in developing countries seem to require a more extensive level of international experience by international R&D cooperation