Emerging opportunities: nanoelectronics and engineering research in a South Korean university

The Seoul National University Nanoelectronics Institute (SNI) was established in 1996 by an interdisciplinary team of university researchers working together to develop a practical fabrication method for ‘tera-level’ single-electron semiconductor devices. The technical and organizational experiment of the SNI ended abruptly with the Asian financial crisis of 1997 as LG Semiconductor, SNI's patron, faced difficulties. This paper places this episode within the historical context of the development of science and technology in post-liberation South Korea as it coped with the overwhelming forces of globalization since the late 1970s. As the global high-tech trade war escalated in the 1980s, the South Korean government pursued the ‘technology drive policy,’ which emphasized the importance of directed basic research in university laboratories. The increased public and private support for university research transformed a few elite universities from teaching-oriented to research-focused institutions, especially in engineering and science. The new generation of research-intensive academics spearheaded the new national strategy of leapfrogging into the cutting-edge of global technology for the first time in the nation’s modern history.     

REGIONALIZING “MODE 2”? THE ADOPTION OF CENTRES OF EXCELLENCE IN SWEDISH RESEARCH POLICY

This article contributes to the ongoing debate on the role of university research for innovation and economic growth, a debate highly influenced by concepts such as Mode 2 and regional innovation systems and clusters. A prominent trend in many EU and OECD countries is to direct research funding towards so‐called Centres of Excellence (CoEs) in order to stimulate the industrial output of scientific research. The implementation of the CoE approach is viewed as an attempt to bridge research and innovation policy. By using Sweden as an example and providing an overview and critical discussion concerning Swedish research policy during the period 2001 to 2007 we show that the rhetoric within research policy has changed and become increasingly intertwined with innovation policy. In practice, however, this is not as evident. The study draws on (a) an analysis of policy literature pointing out regulatory and organizational changes concerning the increasing emphasis on linking research to competitive industrial milieus, and (b) a comprehensive database including 110 CoEs, presenting a detailed picture of university‐industry collaboration, cross‐disciplinarity, and prioritized sectors. We fiind that the CoEs account for a relatively small share of government funding, but may however have a strengthening impact on particular research milieus and industries, especially in the life sciences. Additionally, although contemporary policy rhetoric appears to highlight steering funding to geographically‐concentrated milieus, thereby linking leading university research to regional industrial clusters, this has only been manifested in a few cases – notably in the Vinnväxt programme run by Vinnova, the national agency promoting innovation systems.     

Toward a Research and Training Capacity in Disability Policy

This paper describes the research and training infrastructure that is needed if disability policy is to flourish as a viable field of inquiry. Due to its interdisciplinary character, no one discipline or academic field has adopted disability policy as its own, and as a result, has not developed the infrastructure needed to give disability policy the visibility and focus it deserves. This paper explores the reasons for the field's underdevelopment and proposes several developmental steps essential to its future success, Inparticular, the paper proposes (a) an academic home for disability policy, (b) the development of curriculum, (c) graduate and post-doctoral research opportunities, (d) recruitment of students with disabilities, and (e) the establishment of policy research centers. The paper notes achievements already in place, such as a policy journal and the development of professional organizations. Finally, the paper notes the important role of both private and public funding.     

Managing Multidisciplinarity: Lessons from SUBR:IM

Abstract

The complex nature of societal problems has fuelled arguments that such issues can only be addressed by holistic responses which are informed by high-quality policy, practice and techno-scientific research. As a result, research councils are encouraging the development of interdisciplinary research consortia through which the strengths of various scientific and social scientific disciplines can be harnessed to produce coherent, well-informed and cross-disciplinary outputs. Yet the task of managing such projects is problematic. The paper draws on the authors' experiences of managing one such consortium, SUBR:IM (Sustainable Brownfield Regeneration: Integrated Management). We reflect upon the processes and politics of building a broadly-based consortium and argue that, while the benefits of such endeavours can be significant, research councils need to give greater recognition to the barriers that exist to achieving genuine collaboration, such as disciplinary incommensurabilities, centrally imposed constraints and internal resistance. The paper explores these barriers before identifying possible ways forward, including better processes of consortia building, more effective internal structures, focusing on a single case study and recruiting the right mix of academics.     

Feminist geographies: fight and achievement of a place in the Brazilian scientific production

Abstract

This paper examines the development of the field of feminist geographies in Brazil, proposing a reflection upon the different aspects of the policy (personal, institutional and national/international) which are intertwined with the geographical scientific production on gender and sexualities. This research is based on a data survey comprising 17,636 papers published between 1974 and 2015 in 90 scientific journals kept by Brazilian geographical entities at all levels of the ranking established by the government. The study emphasizes that there was an expansion of the gender and sexualities approach after the 2000s, characterized for its production from the peripheral universities, by young researchers and its publication in scientific journals of lower scientific impact, when the formal criteria of evaluation recently set in Brazil are taken into consideration. The gender studies field can be considered consolidated in Brazil, however, the approach of sexualities in the Brazilian geography still requires some work to be finally recognized.     

The Role of Universities in Regional Development: Conceptual Models and Policy Institutions in the UK,Sweden and Austria

The literature on universities’ contributions to regional development is broad and diverse. A precise understanding of how regions may draw advantages from various university activities and the role of public policy institutions in promoting such activities is still missing. The aim of this paper is to provide a framework for analysing universities’ contributions to regional economic and societal development in differing national contexts and the policy institutions that underpin them. To do this, we review four conceptual models: the entrepreneurial university model, the regional innovation system (RIS) model, the mode 2 university model and the engaged university model. The paper demonstrates that these four models emphasize very different activities and outputs by which universities are seen to benefit regional economy and society. It is also shown that these models differ markedly with respect to the policy implications and practice. Analysing some of the public policy imperatives and incentives in the UK, Austria and Sweden, the paper highlights that in the UK, policies encourage all four university models. In contrast, in Sweden and Austria, policy institutions tend to privilege the RIS university model, whilst at the same time, there is some evidence for increasing support of the entrepreneurial university model.     

Academic Perceptions of University-Firm Technology Transfer

Why do some academics engage in technology transfer activities while others do not? What facilitates technology transfer? What inhibits it? This paper attempts to answer these questions from the vantage point of academic researchers. After briefly reviewing some pertinent literature, findings from a survey of academic researchers in the nation's top 100 research universities are presented. An assessment is made of academic researchers' technology transfer activities and of attributes that differentiate researchers who engage in technology transfer from their non-participating colleagues. Conclusions are drawn regarding the barriers and facilitators of university technology transfer to industry.     

Between clinical medicine and the laboratory: medical research funding in France from 1945 to the present

By focusing on funding methods, this paper considers the way in which medical research eventually led to the science-based medicine that is prevalent in France today. This process seems to have taken place in three stages during the second half of the twentieth century. In the 1940s and 1950s, two major events occurred. The first was the creation of a national health insurance fund in France, which opened up new reasons for, and ways of, funding medical research. The second was the development of antibiotics, which triggered a revival of clinical medicine. In the 1960s and 1970s, a proactive government science policy allowed the life sciences and medical research to come together in the wake of a burgeoning new science: molecular biology. Thus, in 1964, the creation of the National Health and Medical Research Institute (Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale or INSERM), destined to "molecularize" medical research, was seen as the fulfillment of the government's ambitious research policy. Today, with medicine irreversibly embedded in scientific and technical rationality, health has become a major issue in modern societies. This paper therefore touches on some of the key features of biomedical research, including the revival of funding systems for clinical research and the development of a system of research grants that was made possible by patient organizations and the creation of new funding agencies.     

Urban concentration and labour market linkages in the Norwegian ICT services sector

Building on research that emphasizes the dependence of services firms on the networks and experiences of individual employees, this paper investigates the urban concentration of information and communication technology services employment in Norway from the perspective of labour market linkages. It finds that urban regions generally provide firms with access to sector-specific expertise. Beyond this, intrinsic region characteristics determine the position of individual firms in national labour markets for expertise: Firms in the dominant university town have strong contact points to academic labour markets, whereas firms in the industrial stronghold of the Western Capital region exploit a broader range of recruitment channels than firms in any of the other urban and non-urban locations. The results illustrate how capability building through recruitment is influenced by local conditions, and imply that the industry will continue to concentrate in the large-city regions where surrounding organizations provide firms with priveliged access to expertise. Implications for research, innovation policy and societal development more generally are drawn.     

Italian state politics and the disruptive factor of volunteer groups

The Cretan crisis and the Greco-Ottoman War meant a revival of philhellenism all over Europe. Especially in Italy the war caused vigorous philhellenic reactions: demonstrations and collections of money for the Greek cause, as well as organization and shipping of groups of volunteers to the Greek war fronts. Scholarly discussion on the Italian involvement in the crisis of 1897 has revolved around two main foci: Italy’s search for a diplomatic role and a national identity between “grandezza” and “raccoglimento” policies or Italian philhellenism as an example of the power of philhellenism in nineteenth-century Europe within the broader international context of Risorgimento philhellenism. In this paper, Italian state politics will be discussed from another perspective, namely the Italian policy towards the Italian volunteer groups fighting for Greece. Published Italian state documents as well as research studies based on further Italian primary sources not having dealt with the specific desideratum, the allies’ angle, also partly the Greek perspective, as revealed through their state archives allow us to extensively reconstruct the different steps taken by the government in Rome in its endeavours to deal efficiently with the uncontrolled dynamics of its national revolutionaries both inside and outside the country. Irregular volunteer groups claimed their right and in part imposed their share to actively participate and influence directly or indirectly national and international policies, aspiring to represent continuity in a powerful revolutionary tradition against the priorities of nation-states. In times of internal crises, and despite their divergent, even contradictory, policies, nation-states of the nineteenth century came together in their objective to defend their exclusive right to shape and pursue national policy according to their priorities against the disruptive factor of national revolutionaries, and to deal efficiently with – or repress – the actions and potential for instigation by volunteer groups both at home and abroad, especially when internal collection was for them the only viable alternative left.     

Technology Transfer and Public Policy

This article uses events occurring between 1989 and 1994 at the University of California (UC) as a case study to illustrate the consequences to the university of the collision between two powerful public policy agendas for the university: (a) that it maintain its traditional independence, carrying out its roles of teaching and research untainted by the lures and demands of the marketplace, and (b) that it become more active in economic development activities, including the development and sale of its intellectual property and the establishment of companies to exploit university research. The unsuccessful attempts over these five years by the UC to establish a separate nonprofit foundation to manage its considerable portfolio of intellectual property and to form a for-profit company to fund development and start-up efforts have been plagued with controversy. UC's story offers parallels with the experiences of other universities and illustrates an emerging pattern in the responses of higher education to the new pressures on them to be more economically relevant. The lessons from the UC case are valuable for other universities and for policymakers involved in technology transfer activities.     

Public health,cooperatives, local regulation,and the development of modern milk policy: the Chicago milkshed, 1900–1940

Agricultural policy in the United States is often structured around conflicts and relationships within particular production regions. These regional solutions may evolve into national policies. This paper explores a historical example of this, the development of fluid milk policy and the fluid milk economy in the Chicago milkshed between 1900 and the New Deal. This example is particularly interesting because it was part of the rise of the post-World War II modern food system. Both urban and rural groups were important in this development. Urban groups took a particular interest in milk production and regulation due to its importance as a nutritious but highly perishable staple. Rural groups responded to urban attempts to control production practices by organizing cooperatives. Negotiations and strikes resulted in an agreement in 1929 that was positive for farmers, the Chicago Department of Health, and other major entities in the milkshed. It attempted to place regulatory barriers around the milkshed. However, it soon failed due to improvements in transportation technology and new distribution systems that allowed for cheaper retail prices. The group then proposed a marketing plan to the USDA, which became the ancestor of the federal milk marketing order program. This story sheds light on the manner in which local interest groups and internal politics within the U.S. Department of Agriculture combined to shape New Deal agricultural legislation.     

Positive Returns and Equilibrium: Simultaneous Feedback Between Public Opinion and Social Policy

This paper pushes forward political research from across disciplines seeking to understand the linkages between public opinion and social policy in democracies. It considers the thermostatic and the increasing returns perspectives as pointing toward a potentially stable set of effects running between opinion and policy. Both theoretical perspectives argue that opinion and policy are reciprocally causal, feeding back on one another. This is a general argument found in opinion‐policy literatures. However, much empirical research claims to model “feedback” effects when actually using separate unidirectional models of opinion and policy. Only a small body of research addresses opinion‐policy endogeneity directly. In this paper I consider an opinion‐policy system with simultaneous feedback and without lags. I argue that there is a theoretical equilibrium in the relationship of opinion and policy underlying the otherwise cyclical processes that link them. Given that available cross‐national data are cross‐sectional and provide limited degrees of freedom, an ideal theoretical model must be somewhat constrained in order to arrive at empirically meaningful results. In this challenging and exploratory undertaking I hope to open up the possibility of a general system of effects between public opinion and social policy and how to model them in future research. I focus on social welfare policy as it is highly salient to public interests and a costly area of government budgets, making it an area of contentious policymaking. Social policy is also a major part of the thermostatic model of opinion and policy, which was recently extended to the cross‐national comparative context (Wlezien & Soroka, 2012) providing a critical predecessor to this paper because identification of equilibrium between public opinion and social policy in any given society is greatly enhanced through comparison with other societies. This counterfactual approach helps to identify opinion‐policy patterns that may not change much within societies, but can be seen as taking on discrete trajectories between societies.     

Knowledge-based development dynamics in less favoured regions: insights from Australian and Icelandic university towns

Knowledge-based development (KBD) is a widely practiced policy and is signified as an effective development approach particularly for the metropolitan city-region context. Even though, increasing recognition of this policy resulted in some initiatives in less favoured regions – such as regional university towns – its appropriateness for this context has not been investigated adequately. This paper explores the concept thoroughly in regional university town settings from the lens of the triple-helix model – a critical element for success in KBD. The study aims to broaden our understanding on the challenges of implementing a successful triple-helix model in regional university towns by providing evidence from different country contexts – Australia and Iceland. The methodology of the comparative case investigation incorporates policy and stakeholder perception analyses. Results reveal the journey of the investigated cases, their limited accomplishments and failure factors. Findings shed light on the developmental challenges of regional university towns by highlighting critical issues relating to suitability, appropriate implementation and effectiveness of the KBD policy.     

NATIONAL INDUSTRIAL POLICY AND ECONOMICALLY DISTRESSED COMMUNITIES

Industrial policy refers to deliberate government actions to affect the growth or decline of firms or industries for the sake of aggregate national prosperity and international competitiveness. This paper presents empirical evidence that policies designed to promote these objectives would be targeted differently from those designed to promote development of economically-distressed regions and communities. Facing multiple objectives, it is difficult for the public sector to pursue industrial growth directly as effectively as can private entrepreneurs. However, government aid to economically-distressed locales and dislocated workers and firms may indirectly support national industrial policy goals.     

Intermediaries in Regional Innovation Systems: High-Technology Enterprise Survey from Northern Finland

Intermediaries play an important role in national as well as in regional innovation systems, especially in innovation policy. In linking organizations within an innovation system, intermediaries are focusing on technology transfer, commercialization of ideas and funding. This research focuses on the role of intermediaries in high-technology product development in northern Finland. Based on a survey of 168 high-technology enterprises, funding services are regarded as the most important activity of intermediaries. Our results show that finance matters: a key actor within the Finnish innovation system in terms of direct funding and indirect collaborative resourcing, the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation (TEKES), is considered the most important public sector organization in private sector product development. The survey also reveals that growth-driven companies with emphases on product innovation and high levels of investment in research and development for increasing their annual turnover benefit the most from intermediaries.     

Can national cultural policy approaches be used for sub‐national comparisons? An analysis of the Québec and Ontario experiences in Canada

There has been relatively little comparative research undertaken on sub‐national cultural policy. This article aims to contribute to the development of sub‐national comparative studies by assessing the utility of national cultural policy approaches for comparative research at the sub‐national level in Canada. Drawing on studies of national cultural policy, the authors develop three main approaches to cultural policy and administration – the French, British and hybrid approaches – and explore their applicability to the origin and evolution of cultural policy and administration in the Canadian provinces of Québec and Ontario. This exploratory research suggests there is room for optimism in drawing on national‐level experiences to undertake sub‐national comparative cultural policy research, particularly for comparisons over broad time periods. The study also suggests that it will be important in subsequent research to further elaborate the models for present‐day comparative analysis and to refine and adapt them to reflect specificities at the provincial level of analysis.     

陕西省县域综合发展水平空间分异及对策研究

以陕西省83个县域为研究单元,采用BP神经网络模型、GIS技术以及ID分异指数等对陕西省县域综合发展水平,空间分异格局做了定量化评价与测度。结果表明:县域综合评价水平在数值上呈现强者偏强,弱者偏弱,中等、中低水平相对集中分布;空间上呈南-北方向递增,东-西方向"U型"的总体分布;陕北、关中、陕南三大地域县域综合发展水平空间分异明显。研究认为加强三大地域间的分工与合作、推行差异化的县域发展战略是陕西省全面实现县域社会经济可持续发展的必由选择。     

Engagement,estrangement or divorce? The new universities and their communities in the 1960s

The new universities of the 1960s were innovatory, in their curricula, architecture, independence and academic ambitions. They also marked a different relationship between universities and their localities. For a century, new universities had been predicated on local demand, whereas the 1960s universities were conceived of as national institutions meeting a national demand. This new approach to university–civic connections was sudden, novel and contributed to a sense of remoteness attached to the new universities. This paper examines how the different policy was formulated, predominantly by the UGC, and considers some examples of how the policy played out in practice.     

Protection,survival and growth: an analysis of international policy documents

This paper reports findings from the analysis of three international policy documents produced by a department of the UK Government, a leading British cultural organisation and a national arts development agency. The analysis takes an unorthodox stance, proposing that the international strategies are rationales for the self-protection, survival and growth of the government department, agency and museum, as opposed to the operational action plans that they first appear or are assumed to be. As such, they bear little relationship to formal policy and should be viewed as organisational stratagems. This research raises a number of questions about the nature, purpose and impact of policy and its making. Calling for a rethinking of key concepts within the field, this article returns to the fundamentals by asking what we mean by cultural policy and how we conceptualise and study it empirically.