자연주의적 탐구조사(Naturalistic Inquiry)

‘The Production of Space’, in: Frans Jacobi, Imagine, Space Poetry, Copenhagen, 1996, unpaginated.

The Production of Space

The four Visegrad states — Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia (until 1993 Czechoslovakia) and Hungary — form a compact area between Germany and Austria in the west and the states of the former USSR in the east. They are bounded by the Baltic in the north and the Danube river in the south. They are cut by the Sudeten and Carpathian mountain ranges, which divide Poland off from the other states. Poland is an extension of the North European plain and like the latter is drained by rivers that flow from south to north west — the Oder, the Vlatava and the Elbe, the Vistula and the Bug. The Danube is the great exception, flowing from its source eastward, turning through two 90-degree turns to end up in the Black Sea, forming the barrier and often the political frontier between central Europe and the Balkans. Hungary to the east of the Danube is also an open plain. The region is historically and culturally part of western Europe, but its eastern Marches now represents a vital strategic zone between Germany and the core of the European Union to the west and the Russian zone to the east.

Economy and Society

Models that depict innovation as a smooth, well-behaved linear process badly misspecify the nature and direction of the causal factors at work. Innovation is complex, uncertain, somewhat disorderly, and subject to changes of many sorts. Innovation is also difficult to measure and demands close coordination of adequate technical knowledge and excellent market judgment in order to satisfy economic, technological, and other types of constraints—all simultaneously. The process of innovation must be viewed as a series of changes in a complete system not only of hardware, but also of market environment, production facilities and knowledge, and the social contexts of the innovation organization.

An Overview of Innovation

What makes organizations so similar? We contend that the engine of rationalization and bureaucratization has moved from the competitive marketplace to the state and the professions. Once a set of organizations emerges as a field, a paradox arises: rational actors make their organizations increasingly similar as they try to change them. We describe three isomorphic processes-coercive, mimetic, and normative—leading to this outcome. We then specify hypotheses about the impact of resource centralization and dependency, goal ambiguity and technical uncertainty, and professionalization and structuration on isomorphic change. Finally, we suggest implications for theories of organizations and social change.

The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields (Chinese Translation)

In this paper we examine and elaborate on the central elements of sustainable development and governance, considering their interrelations as they have emerged from the core themes in sustainable development discourses over the past decade and a half. We argue that sustainability is best viewed as a socially instituted process of adaptive change in which innovation is a necessary element. We discuss four key elements of governance for sustainability, which are integrated into the concept of transition management. The result is a conceptual framework for policy-making and action-taking aimed at progress towards sustainability.

Governance for sustainable development: moving from theory to practice

If we start from the premise that institutions are socially constructed (Berger and Luckmann 1966) and that economic activity is socially instituted (Polanyi 1957) and a situated process (Granovetter 1992), we may argue that economic phenomena are, in one form or another, also institutional phenomena. The intertwined relationship between institutions and human (including economic) activity has captured the imaginations of economists, political scientists, and sociologists since the late nineteenth century. In economics, attempts to adopt the "scientific method" were challenged unsuccessfully by economists of the German historical school led by Gustav Schmoller in the early 1900s. Drawing on the ideas of Immanuel Kant and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, the group asserted that simplistic assumptions about the "rational man" and economic equilibria were unfounded and the quest for a set of universal laws for economics fruitless. Following the lead of their German contemporaries some American institutionalists, notably Thorstein Veblen, were also suspicious of abstract universal principles, interested in solving practical problems, and aware of the role of events and historical contingencies (Scott 2001). Early institutionalists pointed to pervasive market power and to indeterminacy even under perfect competition; the role of social institutions in shaping individual preferences (and hence the importance of institutions as the subject of economic analysis); the usefulness of pragmatic and psychologically realistic models of economic moti-

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Economic Activity and Institutions: Taking Stock

Environmental innovation is encouraged by many factors, including government regulation
and subsidies, business opportunities for clean production, and the adoption by
firms of an environmental ethic in response to public pressure By the late 1980s environmental
management had become an integral part of the corporate strategy of many
firms in developed countries, diffusing increasingly also in developing countries This
brought into focus the potential economic benefits of environmental innovation from
reduced material inputs and a shift away from end-of-pipe treatment solutions to preventive
solutions' However, despite the economic value of environmental innovation for
industry and its potential societal benefits, there are only a few internationally comparable
indicators2 on the prevalence of environmental innovation, the factors that influence
it and its economic effects This shortage hampers the ability to design policies to encourage
economically efficient environmental innovation and to track progress towards enviromnental
goals
The pollution abatement costs and expenditures (PACE) data are one example of the
limitations of current indicators PACE data on capital equipment spending by firms to
reduce pollution have been collected on an annual basis in the United States, France and
Germany and on an irregular basis in the Netherlands, the UK and Canada (Olewiler,
1994) The PACE estimates however, do not include investment in research and development
(R&D) or other inventive activities, and are more likely to reflect end-of-pipe investments
than investments in clean technology The European Community Innovation
Survey and similar surveys conducted in Australia and Canada are similarly lacking
Although these surveys include a few questions of relevance to environmental innovation,
such as whether the firm's innovations have resulted in the reduction of per unit
material and/or energy use, these questions only scratch the surface of environmental
• Issues

Indicators for environmental innovation: what and how to measure

:This paper focuses on the notion of “industrial clusters” as a descriptor to discuss innovation in less-developed or industrializing economies. A critical review of the literature on industrial clusters is used to identify the key determinants of clusters. A frame of analysis is presented to examine the institutional factors that underpin cluster performance. The analysis of two case studies shows that whether or not a cluster becomes an integrated part of an economic system and contributes to economic growth depends on the type of cluster (sectoral location), geography (physical location), the institutional landscape that structures how the actors organize themselves (the mode of governance), the external (macroeconomic) environment, and whether or not the combination of all these factors is conducive to learning.

Innovation and Economic Activity: An Institutional Analysis of the Role of Clusters in Industrializing Economies

Development and growth are products of the interplay and interaction among heterogeneous actors operating in specific institutional settings. There is a much alluded-to, but under-investigated, link between economic growth, innovation systems, and institutions. There is widespread agreement among most economists on the positive reinforcing link between innovation and growth. However, the importance of institutions as catalysts in this link has not been adequately examined. The concept of innovation systems has the potential to fill this gap. But these studies have not conducted in-depth institutional analyses or focussed on institutional transformation processes, thereby failing to link growth theory to the substantive institutional tradition in economics. In this paper we draw attention to the main shortcomings of orthodox and heterodox growth theories, some of which have been addressed by the more descriptive literature on innovation systems. Critical overviews of the literatures on growth and innovation systems are used as a foundation to propose a new perspective on the role of institutions and a framework for conducting institutional analysis using a multi-dimensional typology of institutions. The framework is then applied to cases of Taiwan and South Korea to highlight the instrumental role played by institutions in facilitating and curtailing economic development and growth.

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Saeed Parto

Papers

Governance for sustainable development: moving from theory to practice

Economic Activity and Institutions: Taking Stock

Indicators for environmental innovation: what and how to measure

Innovation and Economic Activity: An Institutional Analysis of the Role of Clusters in Industrializing Economies

Economic growth, innovation systems, and institutional change: “A Trilogy in Five Parts”