Digital technology and creative arts career patterns in the UK creative economy

The creative industries have attracted the attention of academics and policy makers for the complexity surrounding their development, supply-chains and models of production. In particular, many have recognised the difficulty in capturing the role that digital technologies play within the creative industries. Digital technologies are embedded in the production and market structures of the creative industries and are also partially distinct and discernible from it. This paper unfolds the role played by digital technologies focusing on a key aspect of its development: human capital. Using student micro-data collected by the Higher Education Statistical Agency (HESA) in the United Kingdom, we investigate the characteristics and location determinants of digital graduates. The paper deals specifically with understanding whether digital skills in the UK are equally embedded across the creative industries, or are concentrated in other sub-sectors. Furthermore, it explores the role that these graduates play in each sub-sector and their financial rewards. Findings suggest that digital technology graduates tend to concentrate in the software and gaming sub-sector of the creative industries but also are likely to be in embedded creative jobs outside of the creative industries. Although they are more likely to be in full-time employment than part-time or self-employment, they also suffer from a higher level of unemployment.

Follow the leaders? An analysis of convergence and innovation of faculty recruiting practices in US business schools

The debate associated with the qualifications of business school faculty has raged since the 1959 release of the Gordon–Howell and Pierson reports, which encouraged business schools in the USA to enhance their legitimacy by increasing their faculties’ doctoral qualifications and scholarly rigor. Today, the legitimacy of specific faculty qualifications remains one of the most discussed topics in management education, attracting the interest of administrators, faculty, and accreditation agencies. Based on new institutional theory and the institutional logics perspective, this paper examines convergence and innovation in business schools through an analysis of faculty hiring criteria. The qualifications examined are academic degree, scholarly publications, teaching experience, and professional experience. Three groups of schools are examined based on type of university, position within a media ranking system, and accreditation by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. Data are gathered using a content analysis of 441 faculty postings from business schools based in the USA over two time periods. Contrary to claims of global convergence, we find most qualifications still vary by group, even in the mature US market. Moreover, innovative hiring is more likely to be found in non-elite schools.

The co-development of technology and new buildings: incorporating building integrated photovoltaics

Current approaches for the reduction of carbon emissions in buildings are often predicated on the integration of renewable technologies into building projects. Building integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) is one of these technologies and brings its own set of challenges and problems with a resulting mutual articulation of this technology and the building. A Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) approach explores how negotiations between informal groups of project actors with shared interests shape the ongoing specification of both BIPV and the building. Six main groups with different interests were found to be involved in the introduction of BIPV (Cost Watchers, Design Aesthetes, Green Guardians, Design Optimizers, Generation Maximizers and Users). Their involvement around three sets of issues (design changes from lack of familiarity with the technology, misunderstandings from unfamiliar interdependencies of trades and the effects of standard firm procedure) is followed. Findings underline how BIPV requires a level of integration that typically spans different work packages and how standard contractual structures inhibit the smooth incorporation of BIPV. Successful implementation is marked by ongoing (re-)design of both the building and the technology as informal fluid groups of project actors with shared interests address the succession of problems which arise in the process of implementation.

Technology sourcing, knowledge management and governance in international inter-organizational innovation networks

This conceptual paper aims to improve our understanding of how internationalised firms use outsourcing and offshoring strategies to manage knowledge and information through the life-cycle of integrated product-service solutions. More precisely, we identify the appropriate theoretical framework for this analysis and investigate through in-depth case studies how UK engineering firms organise, coordinate, and incentivise work that is executed in globally distributed teams. Our research focuses on their UK and India offices to study the organisation and governance of distributed teams. The research has several theoretical dimensions - organization; geography; time and knowledge - that it addresses as boundary challenges.

Strategic positioning and grand strategies for high-technology SMEs

Firm size is found to affect strategic decisions significantly, whereas technology and market stability stimulate product development and innovation.

Interregional migration 'wage premia': the case of creative and science and technology graduates in the UK

We analyze the migration behavior of graduates from UK universities with a focus on the salary benefits they receive from the migration process. We focus on sequential interregional migration and specifically examine the case of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) and Creative subject graduates. Our analysis differs from previous studies in that it accounts explicitly for migrant selectivity through propensity score matching, and it also classifies graduates into different migration behavior categories. Graduates were classified according to their sequential migration behavior first from their pre-university domicile to university and then from university to first job post-graduation. Our results show that ‘repeat migration’, as expected, is associated with the highest wage premium (around 15%). Other migration behaviors are also advantageous although this varies across different types of graduates. Creative graduates, for instance, do not benefit much from migration behaviors other than repeat migration. STEM graduates, on the contrary, benefit from both late migration and staying in the university area to work.

Reverse transfers of innovation and national development: evidence from Brazilian subsidiaries

The search for innovation has become an important motivation for the internationalization of companies in emerging countries. In that context, this study tests the impact that a nation’s development has on whether subsidiaries transfer innovation of products or that of processes. Survey data collected from 73 subsidiaries of Brazilian companies indicate that companies located in developed markets tend to transfer more product-oriented innovations than do those based in emerging countries. Furthermore, the size and age of a subsidiary has an impact on the transfer process. The larger and younger the subsidiary, the more likely a company is to favor the flow of product innovation into its headquarters. The level of national development was not identified as an influence on the flow of process innovation.

Production risk, pesticide use and GM crop technology in South Africa

Technology involving genetic modification of crops has the potential to make a contribution to rural poverty reduction in many developing countries. Thus far, pesticide-producing Bacillus thuringensis (Bt) varieties of cotton have been the main GM crops under cultivation in developing nations. Several studies have evaluated the farm-level performance of Bt varieties in comparison to conventional ones by estimating production technology, and have mostly found Bt technology to be very successful in raising output and/or reducing pesticide input. However, the production risk properties of this technology have not been studied, although they are likely to be important to risk-averse smallholders. This study investigates the output risk aspects of Bt technology by estimating two 'flexible risk' production function models allowing technology to independently affect the mean and higher moments of output. The first is the popular Just-Pope model and the second is a more general 'damage control' flexible risk model. The models are applied to cross-sectional data on South African smallholders, some of whom used Bt varieties. The results show no evidence that a 'risk-reduction' claim can be made for Bt technology. Indeed, there is some evidence to support the notion that the technology increases output risk, implying that simple (expected) profit computations used in past evaluations may overstate true benefits.

Promoting innovation and exceptional performance in the Scottish construction industry

Demonstration Projects are an initiative developed in response to demands presented in the 1998 Egan Report. Scotland has witnessed an attempt to keep the momentum and the so called Demonstration Projects Team at the University of Dundee was introduced in late 2003. The team’s responsibility was to revitalise and restructure Scottish Demonstration Projects. These are now a major initiative within the newly established Scottish Construction Innovation and Excellence Centre, a part of Scottish Construction Forum that is an umbrella organisation funded by the Scottish Executive through Scottish Enterprise Glasgow.