Service Innovation: the state of the art and a proposal of a research agenda

The service sector has acquired a growing importance in every country economy, which has stimulated research in the field of service innovation, a new field in management studies. This text aimed to state a research agenda upon service innovation, based on an articulated discussion of the results of several articles that compose the state of the art of this concept. 73 empirical articles were analyzed, 33% of them exploring the innovation strategies and technology; 18% of the articles describe research on economic performance and enterprise productivity; 16% are related to antecedents and determinants of innovation; another 16% about network capacity development, alliances and collaboration among organizations; 9% of the articles explore service quality, innovation taxonomy, flexible systems and regional systems of innovation; and another 8% are related to themes such as intensive knowledge, research and development. The researches were concentrated in the Engineering & Technology and Hospitality Industries, which accounted for 31% and 24% of the texts, respectively. The remaining 45% of the articles referred to sectors such as Telecommunications, Health, Retail, Financial & Insurance and Public Services. The main gaps identified in these texts refer to the difficulties on measuring service innovation, besides the small number of researches on the public sector. At the end, a research agenda in the subject is presented, including the development of a scale for orientating the innovation and identifying the determining factors of the innovation in the public environment.

Self-Organizing Mechanisms for Task Allocation in a Knowledge-Based Economy

A prevalent claim is that we are in knowledge economy. When we talk about knowledge economy, we generally mean the concept of “Knowledge-based economy” indicating the use of knowledge and technologies to produce economic benefits. Hence knowledge is both tool and raw material (people’s skill) for producing some kind of product or service. In this kind of environment economic organization is undergoing several changes. For example authority relations are less important, legal and ownership-based definitions of the boundaries of the firm are becoming irrelevant and there are only few constraints on the set of coordination mechanisms. Hence what characterises a knowledge economy is the growing importance of human capital in productive processes (Foss, 2005) and the increasing knowledge intensity of jobs (Hodgson, 1999). Economic processes are also highly intertwined with social processes: they are likely to be informal and reciprocal rather than formal and negotiated. Another important point is also the problem of the division of labor: as economic activity becomes mainly intellectual and requires the integration of specific and idiosyncratic skills, the task of dividing the job and assigning it to the most appropriate individuals becomes arduous, a “supervisory problem” (Hogdson, 1999) emerges and traditional hierarchical control may result increasingly ineffective. Not only specificity of know how makes it awkward to monitor the execution of tasks, more importantly, top-down integration of skills may be difficult because ‘the nominal supervisors will not know the best way of doing the job – or even the precise purpose of the specialist job itself – and the worker will know better’ (Hogdson,1999). We, therefore, expect that the organization of the economic activity of specialists should be, at least partially, self-organized. The aim of this thesis is to bridge studies from computer science and in particular from Peer-to-Peer Networks (P2P) to organization theories. We think that the P2P paradigm well fits with organization problems related to all those situation in which a central authority is not possible. We believe that P2P Networks show a number of characteristics similar to firms working in a knowledge-based economy and hence that the methodology used for studying P2P Networks can be applied to organization studies. Three are the main characteristics we think P2P have in common with firms involved in knowledge economy: - Decentralization: in a pure P2P system every peer is an equal participant, there is no central authority governing the actions of the single peers; - Cost of ownership: P2P computing implies shared ownership reducing the cost of owing the systems and the content, and the cost of maintaining them; - Self-Organization: it refers to the process in a system leading to the emergence of global order within the system without the presence of another system dictating this order. These characteristics are present also in the kind of firm that we try to address and that’ why we have shifted the techniques we adopted for studies in computer science (Marcozzi et al., 2005; Hales et al., 2007 [39]) to management science.

Caregivers' Social Capital and Satisfaction with their Children's Service Providers

The authors examine children's access to and caregiver's satisfaction with organizations that provide leisure time activities for children on Saturdays. The authors argue that access and satisfaction are a function of familie's financial, cultural and social capital. Using data on 1,036 households in the Phoenix metropolitan area in 2003-04, the authors found that families' financial and cultural capital affected whether or not children participate din activities organized by organizations, but family ties to the organization directly (e.g., either worked there, volunteered, donated) resulted in caregivers being more satisfied with the services. The authors also found that the benefits of network closure (caregivers knowing the parents of other children on site) were greater the riskier the activities of the child (e.g., sports or cheerleading). Contrary to the authors expectations, having family or friends in the area did not affect caregiver's satisfaction with the child's provider.

Internet Service Providers Liability in Spain

The article focuses on the current situation of Spanish case law on ISP liability. It starts by presenting the more salient peculiarities of the Spanish transposition of the safe harbours laid down in the E-Commerce Directive. These peculiarities relate to the knowledge requirement of the hosting safe harbour, and to the safe harbour for information location tools. The article then provides an overview of the cases decided so far with regard to each of the safe harbours. Very few cases have dealt with the mere conduit and the caching safe harbours, though the latter was discussed in an interesting case involving Google’s cache. Most cases relate to hosting and linking safe harbours. With regard to hosting, the article focuses particularly on the two judgments handed down by the Supreme Court that hold an open interpretation of actual knowledge, an issue where courts had so far been split. Cases involving the linking safe harbour have mainly dealt with websites offering P2P download links. Accordingly, the article explores the legal actions brought against these sites, which for the moment have been unsuccessful. The new legislative initiative to fight against digital piracy – the Sustainable Economy Bill – is also analyzed. After the conclusion, the article provides an Annex listing the cases that have dealt with ISP liability in Spain since the safe harbours scheme was transposed into Spanish law.

The Digital Economy Act in the dock: a proportionate ruling

The UK’s Digital Economy Act 2010 contains measures to enforce copyright on the Internet, specifically a two-tiered form of a graduated response.The Act was challenged in the High Court by two of the UK’s biggest Internet Service Providers (ISP), who obtained a Judicial Review of the copyright enforce- ment provisions. This paper is an overview of the case, based on the hearing of March 2011 and the ensuing judgement. It focuses on the two most hotly contested grounds for the challenge, namely an al- leged failure to notify the European Commission under the Technical Standards Directive, and the pro- portionality or otherwise of the contested provisions. It observes how the judgement accepted the defence argumentation of the government and the copyright owners as interested parties, and how the ISPs appeared to be put on the back foot.

Passenger car fuel economy, EPA and road : a report to the Congress in response to the National Energy Conservation Policy Act of 1978, public law 95-619, title IV, part 1, section 404 /

"September 1980"--Cover.

Angola's agricultural economy in brief /

Cover title.

Mozambique's agricultural economy in brief /

Cover title.

The United States and the world economy : financial capital.

"A CSFA seminar"--P. 3.

The U.S. wheat economy in an international setting : an econometric investigation /

"March 1981"--P. [i]

The effects of aggregate unemployment insurance benefits in the U.S. on the operation of a local economy.

"Prepared by Ronald L. Oaxaca ... and Carol A. Taylor."

Algeria's agricultural economy in brief /

"Supersedes ERS-Foreign 131, Algeria's agricultural economy in brief, July 1965."

Report to the President of the United States on productivity growth : a better life for America : together with the reports of the preparatory conferences on capital investment, human resources, government organization and operation and the role of government in the economy, private sector initiatives.

Spine title: White House Conference on Productivity report.

U.S. wages and unit labor costs in a world economy /

"November 9, 1984; HD 4802 U.S. B."

Influence of a major highway improvement upon the economy of Dunn and St. Croix Counties.

pt. 1. The local Economy Before Major Highway Improvements.