Intended Ties with Local Institutions as Factors in Innovation: An Application to Spanish Manufacturing Firms

In this paper we seek to check for a number of interactions between firms and the external environment. We aim to contribute to the discussion on the role of the regional environment in a firm's innovation performance. We test the statistical significance of a number of particular interactions between institutions and firm innovation. In particular, we have hypothesized the association between trade and professional institutions, technological centres, and cooperation arrangements and innovation. In contrast with existing studies, we have provided empirical evidence of the impact of external factors on individual firms.     

Evolution of Innovation Policy in Emilia-Romagna and Valencia: Similar Reality,Similar Results?

This paper examines the evolution of regional innovation policy in Emilia-Romagna and Valencia, two regions with similar economic features that implemented close innovation policies in the 1970s and 1980s. We investigate whether their similarities have led to parallel targets, policy tools and governance developments. We show that innovation policy in both regions suffered from the effects of privatization, budget constraints and changes to manufacturing during the 1990s and we highlight the consequences. Although Emilia-Romagna experienced deeper changes to its innovation policy, privatizations and/or the replacement of public funds promoted commercial approaches and induced market failures in both regions. The worst effects of these policies were the implementation of less-risky innovation projects, the shift towards extra-regional projects and markets, and the favouring of large firms.     

Facilitation in Community Development. Twenty-Five Years of Experience in Rural Territories in Cuenca,Spain

The process of facilitation aims to solve community problems by encouraging the exploitation of skills through different tools implemented by the facilitator. Facilitation has been analysed in the context of advanced and established groups with well-defined objectives, but not at the start of these groups. This article analyses the facilitation process carried out by the Institute of Community Development over 25 years with four work groups in rural areas of Cuenca, Spain. The leadership role taken on by the facilitator is crucial when it comes to identifying and managing the initial efforts required to start the group work. During the facilitation process, training and information tools are essential. It is also important to see a suitable transfer of roles between the facilitator and the stakeholders as they acquire new skills. This transfer is crucial for the continuity of the group and can cause difficulties if it does not happen.     

Modelling Cooperation Mechanisms: Some Conceptual Issues

Several evolutionary mechanisms have been proposed to explain how natural selection leads to cooperation between competing individuals. Social dilemmas modelled with the aid of game theory capture the essence of this problem, and computer simulation is usually the technique used to test and formalise those explanatory mechanisms. However, scarce attention has been paid to what the notion of ‘mechanisms’ means and involves in the literature. Also, the key issue about when a computer simulation provides a good explanation tends to be ignored. In this article, we tackle these two drawbacks in the literature by calling attention to the implications of the notion of ‘social mechanism’ along different conceptual dimensions, such as ontological status, regularity, transparency, intelligibility, and reduction. We also claim that computer simulation, and specially agent-based modelling, provides a plausible explanation to social cooperation only if it satisfies some criteria of empirical adequacy instead of just being capable of generating cooperation in a virtual system. Finally, we relate these issues to five evolutionary mechanisms that explain the evolution of cooperation. We review and briefly describe the literature on these mechanisms, and we explain their most important features, how they are to be considered along the conceptual dimensions used to describe the notion of mechanism, what is the empirical and computational evidence to support them, and which are the shortcomings that each of them has as explanatory hypotheses for the evolution of cooperation.     

COMPLEMENTARITY BETWEEN LOCAL KNOWLEDGE AND INTERNATIONALIZATION IN REGIONAL TECHNOLOGICAL PROGRESS*

ABSTRACT Trade, foreign direct investment, and inter‐regional R&D spillovers facilitate competition, the spread of knowledge, and the adoption of more advanced technologies, which in turn hastens total factor productivity (TFP) growth. The spread of these efficiency gains from internationalization requires a sufficient local knowledge to enable them to be adapted to the domestic productive environment. Thus, higher local knowledge and internationalization will lead to TFP growth, and the greater the complementarity between variables the higher the TFP growth. We test the complementarity hypothesis using Spanish regional data over the period 1980–1995 in which both regional local knowledge and internationalization experienced a notable increase.     

Rapid response ethnographies in turbulent times: Researching mass grave exhumations in contemporary Spain (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

Sometimes a social process under engaged research can swiftly grow out of control, in scale and complexity. Such was the case in my ten‐year‐long study of mass grave exhumations from the Civil War (1936–1939) in contemporary Spain. In such circumstances, I argue for the deployment of a rapid response ethnography, an extreme modality of both public and/or engaged research. This type of instant engagement forces the ethnographer to constantly refashion research designs; recognize and reabsorb emerging social actors and research scenarios; reinvent ethnographic presence; face unanticipated ethical dilemmas; and reimagine how to transfer our acquired knowledge and reflection in (a) multiple non‐academic formats for a myriad of potential publics and (b), in time frames more attuned to the rhythms of fast‐moving public debates and technological transformations in communications. More importantly, rapid response ethnography takes place whenever there is swift and strong public demand for academic analysis within a broader process of social, political and media controversy. In turn, rapid response research is necessarily committed to the transformation of the social and political conditions under study.     

Correction: Native Providence: Memory,Community, and Survivance in the Northeast

Historical Archaeology -