Regulating the negative externalities of enterprise cluster innovations:Lessons from Vietnam

Innovation has been acknowledged as contributing to development, in particularly inclusive innovations that involve and benefit poorer groups in developing countries. However, such innovation may have negative externalities. Most often external regulation is required to reduce these effects. However, it is often not enough, and in many developing countries the required institutional context is not present to enable external regulation. Hence a case may be made for internal regulation of inclusive innovation. Helping to fill the gap in our knowledge on internal regulation of innovation externalities in developing countries, we explore four cases of innovation in informally-organised small producers’ clusters Vietnam. From this we propose a model of internal regulation as a societal process

Quantifying the relationships between linguistic experience, general cognitive skills and linguistic processing skills

Humans differ greatly in their ability to use language. Contemporary psycholinguistic theories assume that individual differences in language skills arise from variability in linguistic experience and in general cognitive skills. While much previous research has tested the involvement of select verbal and non-verbal variables in select domains of linguistic processing, comprehensive characterizations of the relationships among the skills underlying language use are rare. We contribute to such a research program by re-analyzing a publicly available set of data from 112 young adults tested on 35 behavioral tests. The tests assessed nine key constructs reflecting linguistic processing skills, linguistic experience and general cognitive skills. Correlation and hierarchical clustering analyses of the test scores showed that most of the tests assumed to measure the same construct correlated moderately to strongly and largely clustered together. Furthermore, the results suggest important roles of processing speed in comprehension, and of linguistic experience in production

An executable interface specification for industrial embedded system design.

Nowadays, designers resort to abstraction techniques to conquer the complexity of industrial embedded systems during the design process. However, due to the large semantic gap between the abstractions and the implementation, the designers often fails to apply the abstraction techniques. In this paper, an EIS-based (executable interface specification) approach is proposed for the embedded system design.The proposed approach starts with using interface state diagrams to specify system architectures. A set of rules is introduced to transfer these diagrams into an executable model (EIS model) consistently. By making use of simulation/verification techniques, many architectural design errors can be detected in the EIS model at an early design stage. In the end, the EIS model can be systematically transferred into an interpreted implementation or a compiled implementation based on the constraints of the embedded platform. In this way, the inconsistencies between the high-level abstractions and the implementation can largely be reduced

The effects of onset and offset masking on the time course of non-native spoken-word recognition in noise

Using the visual-word paradigm, the present study investigated the effects of word onset and offset masking on the time course of non-native spoken-word recognition in the presence of background noise. In two experiments, Dutch non-native listeners heard English target words, preceded by carrier sentences that were noise-free (Experiment 1) or contained intermittent noise (Experiment 2). Target words were either onset- or offset-masked or not masked at all. Results showed that onset masking delayed target word recognition more than offset masking did, suggesting that – similar to natives – non-native listeners strongly rely on word onset information during word recognition in noise

Unstable Identities: The European Court of Human Rights and the Margin of Appreciation

All legal systems work under a master narrative – the self-conception of most actors of the system itself. A master narrative is a short and simple story and it is the underlying premise upon which any legal system is based. It is a simple story because it paints the system in quick broad brushstrokes and at (most) times is oblivious to the paradoxes within it. Furthermore, a master narrative is important for legitimization purposes because the actors’ legitimacy will depend on their (perceived) conformity with the system’s master narrative. Therefore, legitimacy is self-referential; the yardsticks for a legitimate action are contained within the system’s master narrative, not outside of it. When talking about different international courts it is important to remember that they are embedded within a master narrative that is contextual and contingent and, at different points, more or less contested. This paper explores the question of what happens when the master-narrative is in a period of transition (from a state cantered to a post-national world order) and when the actors’ legitimacy, their interpretative endeavours the very fundamentals are in a state of flux. I use the margin of appreciation discussion as a focal point of describing the conflicting narratives under which the European Court of Human Rights works, narratives in which the different actors (judges, attorneys, NGO activists, government agents) and their consequences in terms of the interpretation of the European Convention on Human Rights

Understanding responsible innovation in small producers’ clusters in Vietnam through Actor Network Theory (ANT)

Innovation is increasingly recognised as an alternative for poverty alleviation in developing countries. However, cases of innovation in small producers’ clusters in Vietnam imply negative externalities that conflict with today’s notions of sustainable and inclusive development. This article analyses how small producers innovate while taking environmental and social considerations into account through an interactive societal process towards a community network, conceptualised as responsible innovation. Existing multi-faceted theoretical insights do not provide sufficient basis to construct and test explanations. We apply a grounded theory involving Actor-Network Theory (ANT) to seek explanations as to why some small producers behave opportunistically while others acknowledge responsibility for the negative externalities. ANT enables us to see the critical details of the network creation process including the agenda of the key actors, push and pull factors, the type of innovation and the informal institutional context

Understanding Responsible Innovation in Small Producers’ Clusters in Vietnam through Actor Network Theory (ANT)

There is increasing evidence that innovation offers perspectives for poverty alleviation in small producers’ contexts in developing countries. However, innovations sometimes imply additional harmful environmental and social consequences, which are not in line with broader poverty alleviation and sustainable development notions. In this paper, we explore the question how small producers in northern Vietnam, as innovators in a cluster context, innovate and take broader societal considerations into account in the innovation process. We found that traditional institutional theories show a number of shortcomings for our analysis into the multifaceted meta-textual societal process towards responsible innovation. Instead, we applied Actor‐Network Theory (ANT) which describes the shaping of the human interaction in detail providing a better understanding why in some networks innovatorsbehave opportunistically while in others they acknowledge responsibility for harmful innovation outcomes. The ANT lens reveals the role of informal institutions in innovations systems and the role of materiality in network development. Lastly, ANT demonstrates how the creation and falling apart of actor networks is essential in the dynamics of a five‐stage model of the responsible innovation societal process. We conclude with factors and conditions steering the societal process and emerging questions concerning power, allowing human and non-human actants into the network, and the issue whether a network in the responsible innovation zone is also desirable in terms of economic competitiveness