The sudden rise of the sharing economy has sparked an intense public debate about its definition, its effects and its future regulation. Here, I attempt to provide analytical guidance by defining the ...sharing economy as the practice that consumers grant each other temporary access to their under-utilized physical assets. Using this definition, the rise of the sharing economy can be understood as occurring at the intersection of three salient economic trends: peer-to-peer exchange, access over ownership and circular business models. I shortly discuss some of the environmental impacts of online sharing platforms and then articulate three possible futures of the sharing economy: a capitalist future cumulating in monopolistic super-platforms allowing for seamless services, a state-led future that shifts taxation from labour to capital and redistributes the gains of sharing from winners to losers, and a citizen-led future based on cooperatively owned platforms under democratic control. The nature and size of the social and environmental impacts are expected to differ greatly in each of the three scenarios.
This article is part of the themed issue ‘Material demand reduction’.
Proximity, knowledge base and the innovation process: towards an integrated framework. Regional Studies. The proximity concept refers to types of inter-organizational relationships that are expected ...to facilitate interactive learning and collaborative innovation. Different forms of proximity include geographical, cognitive, social, institutional and organizational proximity. This paper argues that the relative importance of each proximity dimension depends on the type of knowledge being produced. It distinguishes between analytical, synthetic and symbolic knowledge, the intensity of which in turn varies with research, development and marketing stages of new product development. The case study of Unilever's Becel diet margarine serves as a first example of such an integrated framework.
Towards a theory of regional diversification: combining insights from Evolutionary Economic Geography and Transition Studies. Regional Studies. This paper develops a theoretical framework of regional ...diversification by combining insights from Evolutionary Economic Geography and Transition Studies. It argues that a theory of regional diversification should not only build on the current understanding of related diversification but also account for processes of unrelated diversification by looking at the role of agency in processes of institutional entrepreneurship, and at enabling and constraining factors at various spatial scales. This paper proposes a typology of four regional diversification trajectories by cross-tabulating related versus unrelated diversification with niche creation versus regime adoption, and it develops a number of propositions.
Proximity among scientists in social, cognitive, and physical dimensions promotes the sharing of tacit knowledge. Tacit knowledge helps scientists to understand the credibility of papers they read ...and to use the results in subsequent research. Hence, given the proximity among scientists in social, cognitive, and physical dimensions, one can predict patterns of diffusion in science. However, for controversial knowledge claims to become replicated, one expects the proximity between scientists itself to change as like-minded scientists relocate and create new coalitions. Proximity can thus be used as a unifying concept for the study of scientific knowledge diffusion as well as for the analysis of mobility of scientists.
The concept of a dominant design has taken on a quasi-paradigmatic status in analyses of the link between technological and industrial dynamics. A review of the empirical literature reveals a variety ...of interpretations about some aspects of the phenomenon such as its underlying causal mechanisms and its level of analysis. To stimulate further progress in empirical research on dominant designs, we advocate a standardization of terminology by conceptualizing products as complex artifacts that evolve in the form of a nested hierarchy of technology cycles. Such a nested complex system perspective provides both unambiguous definitions of dominant designs (stable core components that can be stable interfaces) and inclusion of multiple levels of analysis (system, subsystems, components). We introduce the concept of an operational principle and offer a systematic definition of core and peripheral subsystems based on the concept of pleiotropy. We also discuss how the proposed terminological standardization can stimulate cumulative research on dominant designs.
Complexity theory has become influential in recent models in social science. In the context of innovations and new technologies, most applications have focused on technology adoption and technology ...diffusion, whereas the topic of the innovation process has received less attention. This paper discusses three families of complexity models of technological innovation: fitness landscape models, network models and percolation models. The models are capable of analysing complex interaction structures (between components of technologies, between agents engaged in collective invention) while avoiding 'over-parameterisation'. The paper ends with discussing the methodological challenges and critiques regarding the application of complexity theory that remain.
Researchers holding multiple affiliations can play an important bridging role between organizations, fostering knowledge transfer and research collaboration. We propose a methodology to identify ...authors with multiple affiliations co-hosted by two organizations for a prolonged period of time, which distinguishes them from authors who change jobs or only hold short appointments. We apply this methodology to all authors and organizations residing in the Netherlands and find 626 organizations with at least one co-affiliated researcher. We perform a regression analysis of the inter-organizational network spanned by all co-affiliated researchers, and find strong negative effects of travel time. We also find that researchers who hold multiple affiliations, often cross the institutional boundaries between university, industry, government, healthcare and public research organizations. In particular, university-affiliated researchers tend to be most active in bridging to organizations in other institutional spheres. We end with some reflections for future studies and implications for science policy.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
This study analyses the changing effect of physical distance and territorial borders (regional, national, language) on the intensity of research collaboration across European regions. Using data on ...all co-publications between 313 regions in 33 European countries for the period 2000–2007, we find that the bias to collaborate with physically proximate partners did not decrease, while the bias towards collaboration within territorial borders did decrease over time. Our results show that the ongoing process of European integration is removing territorial borders, but does not render collaboration less sensitive to physical distance. Given this general trend, there is considerable heterogeneity between regions and countries in their propensity to collaborate which we attribute to differences in size, quality and accessibility. The findings and conclusions are framed within the context of European research policies.
Open access (OA) publishing has created new academic and economic niches in contemporary science. OA journals offer numerous publication outlets with varying editorial philosophies and business ...models. This article analyzes the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) (
= 12,127) to identify characteristics of OA academic journals related to the adoption of article processing charge (APC)-based business models, as well as the price points of journals that charge APCs. Journal impact factor (JIF), language, publisher mission, DOAJ Seal, economic and geographic regions of publishers, peer review duration, and journal discipline are all significantly related to the adoption and pricing of journal APCs. Even after accounting for other journal characteristics (prestige, discipline, publisher country), journals published by for-profit publishers charge the highest APCs. Journals with status endowments (JIF, DOAJ Seal) and articles written in English, published in wealthier regions, and in medical or science-based disciplines are also relatively costlier. The OA publishing market reveals insights into forces that create economic and academic value in contemporary science. Political and institutional inequalities manifest in the varying niches occupied by different OA journals and publishers.
Rather than viewing online platforms as digital marketplaces, we analyze platforms as corporations and platform participants as a workforce. Online platforms perform very similar functions as any ...other corporation, but in different ways (applying terms and conditions as a legal framework and data, reviews, and algorithms for decentralized control) and mostly in different contexts (informal labor markets, sharing communities, social media) than traditional corporations did hitherto. The corporation perspective helps us to understand the transformative power of platforms, while at the same time shedding light on the historical continuation of the corporation as a basic institution in society. We argue that platforms' transformative capacity lies in their continuous development of new institutions that they impose on their workforce and their clientele, codified in terms and conditions. It is the re-coding capacity that provides platforms the ability to continuously adapt the course of institutionalization in largely autonomous manners.
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