Arturo Vega

1
HOW MUCH THE ROLE OF THE OTHER? Universities as
Policy-Makers in the Enterprise Innovation Arena

• Arturo Vega
• Mike Chiasson
• David Brown

2
DISCRETION IN THE IMPLEMENTATION OF ENTERPRISE
INNOVATION POLICY

• RESEARCH QUESTIONS
• Are universities making policy in the
  implementation of programmes?
• What are the reasons for the existence of
  discretion?

• THEORETICAL BASIS
• Discretion exists (Lipsky 1980, Long 1999,
  etc.)
• Work requires individual responses based on
  observation and judgement
• Opinions that do not agree with agency policies
  or with a management desire to curtail discretion
• Discretion does not exist (Howe 1991, Langan
  2000, etc.)
• Centralisation of political direction
• Introduction of competition in public services

3
CASE STUDIES
SME Assisted Public Programme Scope of Action Agreed with the Policy Administrators Services Actually Delivered
JVentureCo PP-ELearning Integrated learning via coaching, mentoring, and training in different business subjects, based on e-learning techniques and face-to-face interaction Marketing and web design consultancy
LanguagesCo PP-ICTServe High level knowledge transfer from the academics of the departments of Computing and Communications to ICT SMEs Traditional IS services to generic SMEs
4
CASE STUDIES (cont.)
SME Assisted Review of the Assistance
RecruConstCo Part of the deliverables were not accepted Part of the deliverables were reversed Part of the deliverables seem to be inappropriate Part of the deliverables were already known and used by the SME Part of the deliverables could have been done by the SME itself The services were possibly incomplete The services were for an initiative that was not implemented
SME Assisted E-Business Initiative Major Events Further Outcomes
RecruConstCo A portal based, self-service application for employers and candidates Poor response time, collapse of the session manager software, and high operation costs Decision to not restart the adoption process given the companys new reduced size There were serious legal problems with the service and product providers
5
CONTEXT FOR DISCRETION
6
CONCLUSIONS

• Duality of roles at universities in the
  enterprise innovation policy arena
  policy-implementers as policy-makers
• Discretion is rooted in the political decisions
  at highest levels of government
• We suggest to study policy-making for enterprise
  innovation using the political economy framework,
  especially for SMEs
• The effect of discretion was negative for both
  the public assistance and the SME innovation
  initiative
• We suggest to study the entire context that
  influence programme workers towards objectives
  that are distant from society goals

7
Thank you