How do we objectively measure scientific activities? What proportion of economic activities should a society devote to research and development? How can public-sector and private-sector research best be directed to achieve social goals? Governments and researchers from industrial countries have been measuring science and technology for more than eighty years. This book provides the first comprehensive account of the attempts to measure science and technology activities in Western countries...

This timely book explores technological innovation as a concept, dissecting its emergence, development and use. Benoît Godin offers an exciting new historiography of the subject, arguing that the study of innovation originates not from scholars but from practitioners of innovation.Godin looks to engineers, managers, consultants and policymakers as the instigators of our current understanding of technological innovation. Offering a conceptual history of the subject, Part I considers...

This timely book provides an intellectual and conceptual history of a key representation of innovation: technological innovation. Tracing the history of the discourses of scholars, practitioners and policy-makers, and exploring how and why innovation became defined as technological, Benoît Godin studies the emergence of the term, its meaning, and its transformation and use over time.Part I of this unique book offers a genealogy of technological innovation from technological unemplo...

Innovation is everywhere. In the world of goods (technology), but also in the world of words: innovation is discussed in the scientific and technical literature, but also in the social sciences and humanities. Innovation is also a central idea in the popular imaginary, in the media and in public policy. Innovation has become the emblem of the modern society and a panacea for resolving many problems.Today, innovation is spontaneously understood as technological innovation because of...

Benoît Godin is a Professor at the Institut national de la recherche scientifique, Montreal.Models abound in science, technology, and society (STS) studies and in science, technology, and innovation (STI) studies. They are continually being invented, with one author developing many versions of the same model over time. At the same time, models are regularly criticized. Such is the case with the most influential model in STS-STI: the linear model of innovation....

The word 'governance' is ubiquitous. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund make loans conditional on 'good governance'. Climate change and avian flu appear as issues of 'global governance'. The European Union issues a White Paper on 'Governance'. The U.S. Forest Service calls for 'collaborative governance'. What accounts for the pervasive use of the term 'governance' and to what does it refer? It has a bewildering set of answers. The word 'governance' is used in a variety of c...

If there is one sector of society that should be cultivating deep thought in itself and others, it is academia. Yet the corporatisation of the contemporary university has sped up the clock, demanding increased speed and efficiency from faculty regardless of the consequences for education and scholarship.In The Slow Professor, Maggie Berg and Barbara K. Seeber discuss how adopting the principles of the Slow movement in academic life can counter this erosion of humanistic ed...

How public affairs are run depends upon the degree of authority and control central government decides to relinquish to regional and local governments, and the extent to which it favors citizen involvement in the governing process. Public administrators do not operate in a vacuum. The context within which decision-making takes place greatly influences public administrators approach to public issues. Consequently, what government decides to do and how it decides to carry it out affects the ...

Long a fruitful area of scrutiny for students of organizations, the study of institutions is undergoing a renaissance in contemporary social science. This volume offers, for the first time, both often-cited foundation works and the latest writings of scholars associated with the "institutional" approach to organization analysis.In their introduction, the editors discuss points of convergence and disagreement with institutionally oriented research in economics and political science,...

A provocative look at the troubled present state of American higher education and a passionately argued and learned manifesto for its future.In Crisis on Campus, Mark C. Taylor—chair of the Department of Religion at Columbia University and a former professor at Williams College—expands on and refines the ideas presented in his widely read and hugely controversial 2009 New York Times op-ed. His suggestions for the ivory tower are both thought-provoking and rigorous...

Creating a clear, analytical framework, this comprehensive exploration of the relationship between institutional theory and the study of organizations continues to reflect the richness and diversity of institutional thought—viewed both historically and as a contemporary, ongoing field of study. Drawing on the insights of cultural and organizational sociologists, institutional economists, social and cognitive psychologists, political scientists, and management theorists, the book reviews an...

"A comprehensive and highly readable review of the conceptual underpinnings of economic geography. Students and professional scholars alike will find it extremely useful both as a reference manual and as an authoritative guide to the numerous theoretical debates that characterize the field."- Allen J. Scott, University of California"Guides readers skilfully through the rapidly changing field of economic geography... The key concepts used to structur...