Muppets and gazelles: political and methodological biases in entrepreneurship research

Despite an almost universally accepted belief outside academia that entrepreneurial activity is a positive driving force in the economy, the accumulated evidence remains largely inconclusive. This article positions the increased interest in entrepreneurship since the 1980s within its historical context and highlights the significant methodological problems with its analysis. Taking these problems into account it reevaluates the performance of entrepreneurial firms in terms of innovation, job creation, economic growth, productivity growth, and happiness to show how both positive and negative interpretations can emerge. A pattern of increasingly positive interpretation is observed as one moves from analysis to policy. To address this bias, the article suggests the single category “entrepreneurial firms” be broken up along a continuum from the large number of economically marginal, undersized, poor performance enterprises to the small number of high performance “gazelles” that drive most positive impact on the economy. This would allow a more realistic evaluation of the impact of entrepreneurs by avoiding a composition fallacy that assigns the benefits of entrepreneurship to the average firm

The security implications of geoengineering:blame,imposed agreement and the security of critical infrastructure

The prospect of solar geoengineering in response to climate change (on the basis of its supposedly significantly lower cost and/or more rapid impact on global temperature than carbon reduction strategies) raises a number of security concerns that have traditionally been understood within a standard Geo-political framing of security. This relates to unrealistic direct application in inter-State warfare or to a securitization of climate change. However, indirect security implications are potentially significant. Current capability, security threats and international law loopholes suggest the military, rather than scientists would undertake geoengineering, and solar radiation management (SRM) in particular. SRM activity would be covered by Critical National Infrastructure policies, and as such would require a significant level of secondary security infrastructure. Concerns about termination effects, the need to impose international policy agreement 4 (given the ability of 'rogue States' to disrupt SRM and existing difficulties in producing global agreement on climate policy), and a world of extreme weather events, where weather is engineered and hence blameworthy rather than natural, suggest these costs would be large. Evidence on how blame is attributed suggest blame for extreme weather events may be directed towards more technologically advanced nations, (such as the USA) even if they are not engaged in geoengineering. From a security perspective SRM is costly, ungovernable, and raises security concerns of a sufficient magnitude to make it a non-viable policy option

The Impact of Dual Use Controls on UK Science: Results from a Pilot Study

Concerns about the proliferation of biological weapons and the threat posed by bioterrorism have assumed greater political prominence in recent years. In response, governments are actively attempting to frustrate the diffusion of technologies, relevant to the production of biological weapons, to regimes and non-state actors which might develop and use such weapons. Their most recent efforts have involved the introduction of a range of new national measures to control access to materials, knowledge and technologies. Preventing the diffusion of the necessary knowledge and technologies used to develop biological weapons is complicated because the underlying technologies often have legitimate and socially beneficial applications. Any controls to prevent their hostile application can also potentially disrupt legitimate activity, thereby generating social costs. For example, anecdotal evidence suggests that the introduction of biosecurity controls in the US and Germany are adversely affecting scientific research in those countries. Governments therefore need to balance these costs against the security benefits that such controls generate. To do this policy makers need information on the impact of these new ‘biosecurity’ measures. However, this is a new area of policy and few impact assessments have been performed. This pilot project, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council3, developed and validated new methods for assessing the impact that UK government biosecurity policies, introduced to prevent legitimate scientific research from being misused, are having on the practice of science. This short report briefly explains the project and outlines a sample of the initial results.biological weapons, bioterrorism, knowledge, control of proliferation, biosecurity

Schumpeter's theological roots? Harnack and the origins of creative destruction

This short research note highlights the similarity between Schumpeter's theory of creative destruction and the work of his contemporary, the German theologian Adolf von Harnack (1851-1930). The note provides a brief over-view of Harnack's concepts and terminology and highlights their similarity to Schumpeterian ideas about routinisation, charismatic entrepreneurial leadership, and creative destruction. While the evidence is far from conclusive it does suggest that the similarity merits closer attention that could potentially lead to changes to the received understanding of the theory of creative destruction. In particular, it suggests a need to potentially reassess the position of Schumpeter within a wider Weberian tradition

Science and Technology Studies: Exploring the Knowledge Base

Science and Technology Studies (STS) is one of a number of new research fields to emerge over the last four or five decades. This paper attempts to identify its core academic contributions using the references that are most cited by the authors of chapters in a number of authoritative ‘handbooks’. The study then analyses the impact of these contributions by exploring the research fields, journals, and geographical location of the researchers that have cited these core contributions in their own work. Together, these two analyses reveal the various phases in the development of STS and the various aspects of convergence and divergence of the field as the quantitative studies of science and technology gradually separated from the main body of STS. The paper ends with some conclusions about the evolution of STS such as the role of ‘institution builders’ in developing new research fields and the structures required to hold them together.science studies, STS, knowledge base, handbooks, core contributions

Effective ACtion to Strengthen the BTWC Regime: The Impact of Dual Use Controls on UK Science

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By focusing on outputs, rather than people, we misunderstand the real impact of research.

Arguing that science policy remains shaped by enduring ideas of linear knowledge transfer from research to society, Paul Nightingale and Rebecca Vine, propose that research impact in contemporary service economies lies predominantly within the application of human expertise to complex problems. By focusing on researchers, rather than research, they suggest research systems would be better positioned to appreciate the multifaceted ways in which fields of research, such as the social sciences, impact society

How Journal Rankings can suppress Interdisciplinary Research – A Comparison between Innovation Studies and Business & Management

This study provides new quantitative evidence on how journal rankings can disadvantage interdisciplinary research during research evaluations. Using publication data, it compares the degree of interdisciplinarity and the research performance of innovation studies units with business and management schools in the UK. Using various mappings and metrics, this study shows that: (i) innovation studies units are consistently more interdisciplinary than business and management schools; (ii) the top journals in the Association of Business Schools’ rankings span a less diverse set of disciplines than lower ranked journals; (iii) this pattern results in a more favourable performance assessment of the business and management schools, which are more disciplinary-focused. Lastly, it demonstrates how a citation-based analysis challenges the ranking-based assessment. In summary, the investigation illustrates how ostensibly ‘excellence-based’ journal rankings have a systematic bias in favour of mono-disciplinary research. The paper concludes with a discussion of implications of these phenomena, in particular how resulting bias is likely to affect negatively the evaluation and associated financial resourcing of interdisciplinary organisations, and may encourage researchers to be more compliant with disciplinary authority.Interdisciplinary, Evaluation, Ranking, Innovation, Bibliometrics, REF

Response to the Parliamentary Energy and Climate Change Committee inquiry into low carbon network infrastructure

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