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Journal Name: Prometheus, Volume 20, Number 1, 2002
Papers
Are We Eating our Seed Corn?: Basic Research in the US Corporate Sector
By Roli Varma
ABSTRACT
Since the mid-1980s, industrial research in the United States has gone through major organizational changes. Funding for centralized corporate research laboratories in the high technology industry, which leads in research, has shifted from corporate sources to business divisions. Research has been either transferred into individual business units or organized along product lines for well-known markets. As a result, support has shifted to low-risk, mission-oriented, and short-term research, and an extensive involvement of business elements in research activities. Basic research projects seem to be completely gone from centralized corporate research laboratories. In the long run, the shift away from the untargeted inquiry ban be problematic to the company, as well as to the country.
Keywords:
autonomy, basic research, business-driven research, outsourcing research, restructuring of centralized corporate R&D laboratories.
Accelerating Technology: The Pace of Transmission Systems
By A.Michael Noll
ABSTRACT
The growths in capacity of various generations of transmission technology were studied. The results show that the growth rates for different transmission technologies are themselves increasing, which means that the pace of transmission technology is accelerating. What is somewhat surprising is that long-distance rates are not decreasing more steeply. What is not surprising is the bandwidth glut in backbone networks. However, the increasing availability of transmission capacity in the bandwidth-rich world of the future could herald a return to circuit switching for data telecommunication.
Keywords:
bandwidth, growth in capacity, telecommunications, technological change, transmission technology.
Patterns of Telecommuting Engagement and Frequency: A Cluster Analysis of Telecenter Users
By Patricia L. Mokhtarian & Ravikumar Meenakshisundaram
ABSTRACT
Cluster analysis of sign-in log data for 115 users of California telecenters was conducted to identify patterns of telecommuting engagement and frequency over a six-month window. Three engagement clusters were identified: Persisters, Decliners, and Dabblers. Four frequency clusters were identified, classified as Low, Medium, High, and Erratic. Nearly half of the Persisters belonged to the Low Frequency cluster, highlighting the need to count not just telecommuters, but telecommuting occasions. Variables significantly associated with cluster membership were identified. Consistent with other research, management-related issues seem to play a substantial role in affecting both the engagement in, and frequency of, telecommuting.
Keywords:
telecommuting, teleworking, telework centers, cluster analysis
Acceptance and Leadership – Hegemonies of E-Commerce Policy Perspectives
By Brian J. Corbitt & Theerasak Thanasankit
ABSTRACT
This paper presents an analysis of the e-Commerce policies developed and implemented in the USA, Canada, Australia, Victoria, Finland, Norway, the UK, Ireland, the EU (by the OECD), Singapore, Japan, Malaysia, Thailand and Hong Kong (Special Administrative Region). The paper shows that e-Commerce policy adopted is generally trying t achieve two fundamental aims:
1. to minimize regulatory environments for e-Commerce; and
2. to ease logistical problems in doing e-Commerce – i.e. in paying electronically, in delivery of goods and in customs, tariffs and duties.
These strategies are designed to create an environment where e-Commerce is adopted by business and government in these countries to achieve 'best practice', to become 'modern', to gain 'efficiencies', because 'it is the way to go', because 'we must have it, because everybody has it', and because they 'perceive the benefits of it'. In essence it is used to gain hegemony in the economic competitiveness of the geopolitical environment created by the Internet. This paper argues that differentiating types of policy is related to ideology and hegemony in the various countries.
Keywords:
e-Commerce policy, policy analysis, hegemony, policy typology
Perspectives on the Scientific Systems of the Post-Soviet States: A Pessimistic View
By Igor Egorov
ABSTRACT:
This paper deals with the research and development/science and technology situation in the post-Soviet states. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, these countries have chosen different ways to transform their S&T systems but all have so far failed to reach positive results in this process. Key features and problems of science in the main post-Soviet states, Russia and Ukraine, are the focus of this analysis. The condition is that further decline in S&T in these countries seems inevitable in the near future.
Keywords:
research and development, science and technology, post-Soviet states, transformation, perspectives of future developments.
(This journal is available online: http://www.tandf.co.uk/online.html)
Posted with permission from the publisher.
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