A Matter of Location: The Role of Regional Social Capital in Overcoming the Liability of Newness in R&D Acquisition Activities

External knowledge acquisition represents a precondition for firms’ competitive advantage. However, young firms find it particularly difficult to gain access to external sources of knowledge: young firms suffer from a liability of newness by exhibiting significantly lower propensities to invest in external R&D than their older counterparts. We explore the role of geographically bound social capital in moderating this liability. By employing a Nested Logit approach, our findings show that geographically bound social capital moderates the liability of newness related to R&D acquisition, suggesting that the liability exists only in regions associated with low levels of social capital.Research and development; social capital; liability of newness; geography

E-learning at University of the Arts London

This report is a systematic exploration of staff relationships with e-learning. It presents a renewed evidence base from which e-learning provision and related support can be planned particularly in a rapidly changing HE terrain and an institutional context where e-learning and academic structures are emerging from large change programmes. The research is based on 25 interviews with programme directors (PD) evenly distributed across the 4 colleges, with representatives from all discipline groups, and levels of study. The interviewees provided rich insights into attitudes to, practices in and aspirations for e-learning, but in some instances, were also limited by the newness of the PD role. While some PDs had an intimate understanding of their programme areas, others, understandably, given the newness of posts, were in the process of familiarising themselves with the work of their teams

Is There a Place for Islam in the West? Adjudicating the Muslim Headscarf in Europe and the United States

The short essay describes the two judgments (Achbita and Bougnauoi) of the CJEU that addressed the issue of the Islamic veil in the workplace. It explores its newness and implications, in the light of the American experience as well as of the European understanding of the public role of religion

Newness as a winning formula for new political Parties

Previous studies on new political parties have assumed that they either represent new or ignored cleavages or issues, or emerge in order to cleanse an ideology deficiently represented by an existing party. Four highly successful parties analysed in this article manifestly fail to comply with these assumptions. The article proposes a parsimonious two-dimensional typology of new parties refining the one suggested by Lucardie (2000), incorporating a new type of parties based on the project of newness. We show that the four parties analysed fall into the latter category as they fought on the ideological territory of existing parties yet did not attempt to purify an ideology. It is argued that newness has been an appealing project for new and rejuvenating parties everywhere and the experiences from new democracies should be taken seriously also by those working on established democracies

Spirit and Utopia: (German) Idealism as Political Theology

Can we understand (German) idealism as emancipatory today, after the new realist critique? In this paper, I argue that we can do so by identifying a political theology of revolution and utopia at the theoretical heart of German Idealism. First, idealism implies a certain revolutionary event at its foundation. Kant’s Copernicanism is ingrained, methodologically and ontologically, into the idealist system itself. Secondly, this revolutionary origin remains a “non-place” for the idealist system, which thereby receives a utopian character. I define the utopian as the ideal gap, produced by and from within the real, between the non-place of the real as origin and its reduplication as the non-place of knowledge’s closure, as well as the impulse, inherent in idealism, to attempt to close that gap and fully replace the old with the new. Based on this definition, I outline how the utopian functions in Kant, Fichte and Hegel. Furthermore, I suggest that idealism may be seen as a political-theological offshoot of realism, via the objective creation of a revolutionary condition. The origin of the ideal remains in the real, maintaining the utopian gap and the essentially critical character of idealism, both at the level of theory and as social critique

Political Corruption in Contemporary Democracies: Newness, Scale and Varieties

A rise in corruption and in the exposure of corruption in recent decades is observable in contemporary democracies, especially on the European continent. Anti-corruption campaigns on the part of magistrates and others have increased in the past two decades, and as a consequence revelations about corruption have become more widespread. This has not just been at national level, but at the supranational and international levels, e.g. the EU. This article exposes this phenomenon in democratic countries and examines the possible remedies and solution adapted to highly develop societies.developed countries, democracy, corruption, solutions

\u27Those Who Cling in Queer Corners To The Forgotten Tongues and Memories of an Elder Day\u27: J.R.R. Tolkien, Finns and Elves

Abstract Those Who Cling in Queer Corners To The Forgotten Tongues and Memories of an Elder Day\u27 J.R.R. Tolkien, Finns and Elves Dr. Andrew Higgins In this paper I will explore how several historic, literary and mythic associations of the Finnish people with elements of magic, the supernatural and the \u27other\u27 influenced J.R.R. Tolkien in imbuing the character and language of his own Elves with a similar quality of magic and \u27arresting strangeness\u27.I will explore several characterisations of the Finns, the People of Kalevala, Tolkien would have encountered in his early study of the Kalevala, several Old Norse and Anglo-Saxon texts as well as other characterisations drawn from more contemporary treatments of the supernatural elements of the Finns in Victorian and Edwardian sources.I will argue that the greatest influence of this connection can be see in two key elements of Tolkien\u27s mythology: first in Tolkien\u27s use of the Finnish language to create a phonetic sound-sense for his own invented language for the Elves of Qenya/Q(u)enya which would evoke a sense of \u27a forgotten tongue\u27. Secondly, in Tolkien\u27s early attempt to incorporate into his own mythology the character of the artisan Volundr, in his Anglo-Saxon characterization Weland, known to be both a son of a Finnish King and a \u27prince of Elves\u27 and who has survived to be one of the few known characters of the lost English mythology Tolkien was seeking to reimagine and repurpose. My paper will show how the literary constructions and mythic representations of the otherness and supernatural qualities of the Finns played its part in inspiring Tolkien to imbue his own Elves with a similar \u27queer\u27 and \u27strange\u27 quality in both their character, history and language who by the third age of Middle-earth did \u27cling in queer corners\u27 while remembering \u27the memories of an elder day\u27 until they were called back to Valinor