•Transfer scouts actively participate in the co-construction of new technical knowledge•Intermediation via technical expertise as important micro-level mechanism for KTT•A process-related focused ...ethnography on intermediary work in KTT is new•Transfer scouts face cooperation and competition in the regional transfer system•Transfer scouting develops towards a new profession in the entrepreneurial university
The increasing relevance of scientific knowledge for production and innovation requires new instruments for establishing closer relationships between academia and industry. In order to strengthen such relationships, higher education institutes (HEIs), including universities, have institutionalized intermediary organizations such as technology transfer offices (TTOs). It is only recently that research on these organizations has extended its focus from analyzing their functions and performance to the internal processes and practices of their work. Based on qualitative data derived from a process-related focused ethnography, this paper presents insights into the practices of a group of “transfer scouts”. Their distinctive feature is that they are deployed explicitly on the basis of their own scientific and engineering expertise to intensify the university-industry linkages in an East German region. Apart from mere mediation, these transfer scouts become co-creators of new knowledge and technologies in transfer processes. Their orientation towards science, their thematic specialization, their development of digital transfer instruments, their explicit intention to contribute to regional development, as well as their cross-institutional acting keeps them involved in co-creational and multidirectional knowledge-production and makes them active participants in those processes. For transfer intermediaries, these insights offer an extension of their identity as brokering actors between the academic and the business sectors. Since diverse actors operate in the regional transfer system and confront transfer scouts with tensions between cooperation and competition, negotiation processes can be fiercely contested, met by resistance, and accompanied by conflicts. With regard to complementary practices, as well as in the case of constructive relationships, a durable cooperation between TTOs and transfer scouts promises to generate potentially innovative impulses. But this is less a stable setting than an ongoing process that requires many additional functional competencies and supporting structures to be provided by the organizations. The question arises, whether such complex KTT structures can be successfully institutionalized outside the frame of a fixed term project. Only then is it possible to create realistic expectations towards KTT-intermediaries and establish transfer scouting as an attractive profession in its own right in the entrepreneurial university.
As much as prior research has shed light on the boundary‐spanning processes of global organizations and their (positive) impact on an MNC's performance, whether, when and how past performance ...ultimately shapes an MNC's boundary‐spanning activities remains an open question in management research. To tackle these questions, we examine the behaviour of technology scouts in global organizations who span organizational and national boundaries to tap into novel knowledge and span internal boundaries to present this knowledge to constituents inside the MNC. Drawing on the behavioural theory of the firm, we propose that the intensity of organizational boundary spanning, the likelihood of spanning national boundaries and the way technology scouts span internal boundaries to engage with members inside the organization are sensitive to how the MNC has performed relative to its aspirations. We support our theoretical expositions with insights gained from interviewing senior industry professionals with direct experience in technology scouting in MNCs.
Robert Baden-Powell was Britain's first celebrity.A conflicted character - militarist and pacifist, macho man and drag artist, elitist and socialist - he was one of the 20th century's most ...influential and, latterly, controversial Englishmen, finding fame not once, but twice - and for two very different reasons.Before donning his trademark shorts, the man known for inventing the Scouts is hailed a hero of the Second Boer War, the first military conflict covered in great detail by the media.Reports of his unconventional methods of holding a Boer army at bay, despite being woefully outnumbered, at the South African town of Mafeking, make global headlines and when he returns home to England, hordes of adoring fans pack London's streets, waving flags and declaring him the Hero of Mafeking.The same ingenuity, reconnaissance skills and spectacular eccentricity that win him this military acclaim become the foundations of his second mission, that of saving Victorian boys from poverty and despair, and himself from having to grow up, by teaching them scouting.A youth movement is born which today boasts 54 million members throughout the world.This book examines Baden-Powell's dual personality, or his 'two lives' as he called them, including his difficult childhood with a domineering and unaffectionate mother whom he loved even after she forced him into the army at 19, dashing his dreams of becoming an artist.It looks at his military career and his love of drama and at why protesters wanted to topple his statue on Poole Quay in the pandemic summer of 2020.It also considers a recently-discovered telegraph that adds fuel to the speculation over the nature of his relationship with a fellow-soldier that endured for 30 years - until he married a 22-year-old woman in secret when he was 55.Baden-Powell achieved great prominence, as well as notoriety, in both his military and scouting lives, driven largely by a constant yearning to win his mother's approval.
Giving guns as Christmas presents has been one of the ways in which boys and young men have traditionally been recruited into American gun culture. This paper explores how advertising in Boys’ Life ...magazine, among other data sources, has represented this special Christmas giving in terms of suitable types and brands of guns, appropriate shooting activities, family gifting tableaux and rituals, fantasy consumption, and masculinity theory. Over the period studied, from the turn of the twentieth century until the early twenty-first, this socialization through gift-giving has been remarkably consistent and provides insight into the durability of American gun culture.
•Former campers identified lasting outcomes of camp and important program elements.•There was a core of outcomes and program elements across camps types.•Some camp types afforded different outcomes ...via different program elements.
Summer camps are a setting well-suited for social-emotional learning. Increasing evidence supports this claim, yet little research has investigated the similarities and differences in the lasting outcomes of attending camp based on camp types characterized by different programmatic foci and the populations served. In this study, we sought to determine if there were similarities and differences in the outcomes and the program elements responsible for lasting outcomes based on camp type. Using a mixed-methods approach, 744 former campers from four camp types (medically-focused, faith-based, all-girls, and camps serving youth from low-income backgrounds) and a comparison group (referent panel) reported on the outcomes they learned at camp that they identify as important to their daily lives. Profile analysis results suggested both common and different outcomes across camp types. Qualitative data largely supported the quantitative results and provided details to help explain similarities and differences based on camp type. This study provides evidence of the developmental outcomes afforded by camp that last past attendance and the program elements important to outcome development regardless of camp type.
Soccer coaches and scouts typically assess in-game soccer performance to predict players’ future performance. However, there is hardly any research on the reliability and predictive validity of ...coaches’ and scouts’ performance assessments, or on strategies they can use to optimize their predictions. In the current study, we examined whether robust principles from psychological research on selection – namely structured information collection and mechanical combination of predictor information through a decision-rule – improve soccer coaches’ and scouts’ performance assessments. A total of n = 96 soccer coaches and scouts participated in an elaborate within-subjects experiment. Participants watched soccer players’ performance on video, rated their performance in both a structured and unstructured manner, and combined their ratings in a holistic and mechanical way. We examined the inter-rater reliability of the ratings and assessed the predictive validity by relating the ratings to players’ future market values. Contrary to our expectations, we did not find that ratings based on structured assessment paired with mechanical combination of the ratings showed higher inter-rater reliability and predictive validity. In contrast, unstructured-holistic ratings yielded the highest reliability and predictive validity, although differences were marginal. Overall, reliability was poor and predictive validities small-to-moderate, regardless of the approach used to rate players’ performance. The findings provide insights into the difficulty of predicting future performance in soccer.
•A novel experiment with a relatively large number of soccer coaches and scouts.•Different approaches for assessing in-game soccer performance are compared.•Structured assessment and mechanical combination did not improve reliability.•Structured assessment and mechanical combination did not improve predictive validity.•Coaches and scouts extracted valid information from assessing in-game performance.
In a context in which Western children’s leisure time has become increasingly adult-managed, Girl Scouts of the United States of America seeks to distinguish itself from other extracurriculars with a ...“girl-led” program. However, based on participant observation and interviews with Girl Scout volunteers, I find that Girl Scouts is more parent-led than girl-led as concerted cultivation and intensive parenting moves into an organizational setting. Specifically, parents work together to promote the accumulation of cultural and social capital though collective concerted cultivation, which ultimately limits the autonomy of children and reproduces childhood inequality even in an organizational setting.
