European Research Area

About: European Research Area is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 680 publications have been published within this topic receiving 7223 citations.

Proximity and the use of public science by innovative European firms

Abstract: We use the results of the policies, appropriation and competitiveness in Europe (PACE) 1993 survey of Europe's largest firms to explore the effect of proximity on knowledge flows from affiliated firms, suppliers, customers, joint ventures, competitors and public research organisations to innovative firms. The focus is on the last. First, we find that public science is among the most important sources of technical knowledge for the innovative activities of Europe's largest industrial firms. Then, after comparing the PACE results with the Community Innovation Survey II (1997) and the Carnegie Mellon Survey (1994), we use the unique information from the PACE survey on the geographic location of knowledge sources and the methods used to access them to develop an econometric analysis of proximity and location. The importance of proximity for sourcing knowledge from public research increases with the quality and output of domestic public research organisations and the importance given to public science by the respondents. It declines with an increase in the firm's R&D expenditure, activity in the North American market and the importance to the firm of codified basic research results. Surprisingly, firms that find informal contacts to be an important method for acquiring public research results are more likely to find proximity less important, even though proximity allows firms to access tacit knowledge. This effect is primarily limited to European countries, suggesting the development of a ‘European Research Area’.

Internationalisation, Mobility and Metrics: A New Form of Indirect Discrimination?

Abstract: This paper discusses the relationship between internationalisation, mobility, quality and equality in the context of recent developments in research policy in the European Research Area (ERA). Although these developments are specifically concerned with the growth of research capacity at European level, the issues raised have much broader relevance to those concerned with research policy and highly skilled mobility. The paper draws on a wealth of recent research examining the relationship between mobility and career progression with particular reference to a recently completed empirical study of doctoral mobility in the social sciences (Ackers et al. Doctoral Mobility in the Social Sciences. Report to the NORFACE ERA-Network, 2007). The paper is structured as follows. The first section introduces recent policy developments including the European Charter for Researchers and Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers and the European Commission’s Green Paper on the ERA. The discussion focuses on concerns around the definition of ‘mobility’ and the tendency (in both policy circles and academic research) to conflate different forms of mobility and to equate these with notions of excellence or quality. Scientific mobility is shaped as much by ‘push’ factors (limited opportunity) as it is by the ‘draw’ of excellence. Scientists are exercising a degree of ‘choice’ within a specific and individualised framework of constraints. The following sections consider some of the ‘professional’ and ‘personal’ factors shaping scientific mobility and the influence that these have on the relationship between mobility, internationalisation and excellence. The paper concludes that mobility is not an outcome in its own right and must not be treated as such (as an implicit indicator of internationalisation). To do so contributes to differential opportunity in scientific labour markets reducing both efficiency and equality.

Unveiling the texture of a European Research Area: emergence of oligarchic networks under EU Framework Programmes

Abstract: The paper provides a contribution to the recent debate about targets and effectiveness of network policies at the EU level, by presenting an analysis of the R&D network that has emerged over Framework Programmes. Social network analysis is employed to describe structural properties and dynamics of the emerging network, which appears to be dense and pervasive, branching around a large "oligarchic core", whose centrality and connectivity strengthened over programmes. The paper discusses the degree to which this network structure may respond to EU broad policy objectives and its implications for recent programmes aimed at shaping a European Research Area. Attention is placed on the late focus by European institutions on networking centres of excellence. Since future initiatives are to build on the existing fabric, we argue that understanding how networks formed and evolved following previous stimuli is of great relevance for implementing and assessing the impact of the newly defined network approach.

Education, Globalisation and the Future of the Knowledge Economy

Abstract: The dominant view today is of a global knowledge-based economy, driven by the application of new technologies, accelerating the shift to high-skilled, high-waged European economies. This view is reflected in the expansion of higher education and the key role of higher education in national and European economic policy. The Lisbon agenda seeks to make the European Union "the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world, capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion". Not only is education believed to hold the key to international competitiveness but to the foundations of social justice and social cohesion. This article outlines the underlying assumptions of this mantra, which in many respects has changed little since the 1960s when human capital theory gained increasing prominence in education and economic policy (Halsey, 1961). It examines the prospects for the creation of high-skills economies throughout Europe in light of new realities of the global economy. This analysis is based on interviews with senior managers and executives in leading transnational companies and government policy makers in seven countries including China and India. In conclusion, the authors outline a series of issues as a contribution toward a new agenda for education and the knowledge economy within the European Research Area. Following this essay are two responses: (1) "Expanding the Higher Education System and Building World-Class Universities: China's Response to Globalization and the Knowledge Economy." (Wang Yingje); and (2) "Education, Globalisation and the Future of the Knowledge Economy: Three Comments" (Stephan Vincent-Lancrin). (Contains 1 figure, 1 table, and 25 notes.)