Moktar Lamari

Does social capital determine innovation? To what extent?

Abstract This paper deals with two questions: Does social capital determine innovation in manufacturing firms? If it is the case, to what extent? To deal with these questions, we review the literature on innovation in order to see how social capital came to be added to the other forms of capital as an explanatory variable of innovation. In doing so, we have been led to follow the dominating view of the literature on social capital and innovation which claims that social capital cannot be captured through a single indicator, but that it actually takes many different forms that must be accounted for. Therefore, to the traditional explanatory variables of innovation, we have added five forms of structural social capital (business network assets, information network assets, research network assets, participation assets, and relational assets) and one form of cognitive social capital (reciprocal trust). Based on the survey data administered from April to June 2000 to 440 manufacturing firms of diverse industries in a region in the southwest of Montreal, we have found that 68.5% of the firms have developed product or process innovations during the 3 years preceding the survey. Assuming that innovation is not a discrete event but a complex process, we have modeled the decision to innovate as a two-stage decision-making process: in the first stage, the firms deal with the decision about whether to innovate or not whereas, at the second stage, the firms that have decided to innovate must make a decision about the degree of radicalness of the innovation to undertake. In a context where empirical investigations regarding the relations between social capital and innovation are still scanty, this paper makes contributions to the advancement of knowledge in providing new evidence regarding the impact and the extent of social capital on innovation at the two decision-making stages considered in this study. Regarding the decision to innovate or not that firms must initially make, we have provided strong evidence that diverse forms of social capital influence this decision and, more importantly, that marginal increases in social capital, especially in social capital taking the forms of participation assets and relational assets, contribute more than any other explanatory variable to increase the likelihood of innovation of firms. As for the decision to be made at the second stage concerning the magnitude of radicalness to bring in the development of new product or process innovations, this paper contributes to the advancement of knowledge by supplying the strongest evidence that diverse forms of social capital determine the radicalness of innovation, and more importantly, that social capital taking the form of research network assets contributes more than any other explanatory variable to explain the radicalness of innovation. The second variable that exerts the strongest impact on the radicalness of innovation is the number of different advanced technologies employed by firms for production.

The Extent and Determinants of the Utilization of University Research in Government Agencies

This article addresses three questions: To what extent is university research used in government agencies? Are there differences between the policy domains in regard to the extent of use? What determines the use of university research in government agencies? The data analysis is based on a survey of 833 government officials from Canadian government agencies. Comparisons of the magnitude of uptake of university research show large and significant differences across policy domains. The results of the multivariate regression analyses show that the characteristics of research and the focus on the advancement of scholarly knowledge or on users’ needs do not explain the uptake of research. Users’ adaptation of research, users’ acquisition efforts, links between researchers and users, and users’ organizational contexts are good predictors of the uptake of research by government officials.

Climbing the Ladder of Research Utilization Evidence from Social Science Research

In this article, the Knott and Wildavsky stages of knowledge utilization are considered separately and compared with the previous stage to find factors explaining why researchers are able to climb up the ladder of knowledge utilization from the echelon of no transmission to transmission, then to cognition, reference, effort, influence, and application. The results suggest that there are barriers to climbing and that these barriers are primarily located between the stage of no transmission and the stage of transmission. These results carry theoretical and policy implications that are explored in the last part of the article.

Les déterminants de l'effort de lobbying des associations au Canada

This study addresses three questions: to what extent lobbying efforts undertaken by associations vary across different types of associations; what are the different lobbying instruments used by Canadian associations; what factors explain the intensity of the lobbying efforts deployed by the Canadian associations? These questions are dealt with through a sample of 438 associations operating in 12 different policy domains and at three possible levels of government (Canadian, provincial and municipal). The results show that leisure associations deploy less intense efforts in lobbying than public and private goods associations. Likewise, public and private goods associations do not appear to differ significantly with respect to efforts deployed in lobbying. Furthermore, the results show that the lobbying instruments used by associations differ across the different types of associations. Finally, the results indicate that competition between associations, participation in coalitions of associations and the number of policy domains in which associations have intense interests are significantly related to efforts deployed in lobbying by associations in many different policy domains. However, the variables related to the material resources of the associations have been shown to exert no significant impact on the lobbying efforts of Canadian associations.

Coordination of interactions in innovative environments

Studies on innovative environments emphasise the importance of localised interactions as drivers of innovations. However, empirical studies on the coordination of interactions between firms operating in innovative environments are scanty. This paper adapts the Metcalfe coordination scale to identify levels of coordination and their determinants in using data of a recent survey on comprising 800 firms located in a Canadian manufacturing region. In order to see what the determinants of coordination of interactions are we estimated OLS models for four types of innovative environments (pole, technopole, industrial district and cluster). In addition to shedding new light on determinants of coordination in clusters, the results of this paper identify significant explanatory factors of coordination of interactions that should be considered as tools that policy makers could use to facilitate coordination in clusters.

Monitoring and Evaluation of Climate Change Adaptation in Coastal Zones: Overview of the Indicators in Use

Recently, the number of public policies initiated within the framework of CCA has increased in several western countries. On the other hand, the evaluation and measurement of CCA progress remain embryonic and inadequately charted by indicators quantifying the changes and impacts attributable to these policies that engender new stakes and concepts that are difficult to measure and do not always produce a consensus.

Scientists' collaboration in the social sciences field: Investigating the determinants of scholarly collaboration in the Canadian context 2001–2008

In the era of knowledge-based economies, knowledge production and transfer have emerged as a crucial component of innovation and human capital development. Science activities are globalizing and research partnerships will become increasingly imperative. Hence a considerable trend in research collaboration has been noted in the literature. Over the last few years, collaboration among scientists has been on the rise [1] and the different ways in which this collaboration takes place have been the subject of many conceptual [2] and empirical studies [3]. Furthermore, the analysis of the relationship between research inputs (grants, infrastructure spending, training of researchers, etc.) and research outputs (collaboration, productivity, citation, impact, etc.) has also been the subject of several explanatory studies, mostly done in OECD countries, whether in France [4], the United States [5], Italy [6], New Zealand [7], the United Kingdom [8], Australia [14], or the European Union [9].

Factors Influencing Research Performance in Higher Education: An Empirical Investigation

Johann Jacob - Evaluation Project Manager. E-mail: johann.jacob@enap.caMoktar Lamari - Director. E-mail: moktar.lamari@enap.caCentre d’expertise et de recherche en evaluation de programmes (CREXE), Ecole nationale d’administration publique, Universite du Quebec, CanadaAddress: 555, boulevard Charest Est, Quebec (Quebec) G1K 9E5 Universities play an increasingly significant role in producing new knowledge. The relationship between research inputs (grants, infrastructure spending, training of researchers) and research outputs (number of publications, citation, impact) emerges, therefore, as a strategic issue for public decision-making on funding in support of innovation and the development of competencies. Despite the abundance of empirical works on the question of researcher productivity, there is a paucity of studies dealing with this issue in the context of higher eductaion.This paper seeks to identify the factors that explain research productivity in higher education, using as a case study, the universities in Quebec-Canada. The main hypothesis is that productivity in scientific research is significantly influenced by the volume and origin of the funding sources mobilized to support scientific research performance. We analyzed data on 194 researchers for the period of 2001-2008. Individual publications in referred journals (number of publications, fractioned publications, citations, impacts) were used as indicators for research productivity. Factor analysis and linear regression served as tools for evaluation.Our findings imply that the volume of funding is not as influential as supposed. We revealed that age and language (Francophone versus Anglophone) of university instruction, and, in addition, the origin of funding do affect researcher productivity. Generally speaking, young researchers, as well as those affiliated with Anglophone or/and large universities tend to produce more publications. The gender of researcher does not seem to significantly influence the productivity variables.The results of our analysis should motivate program evaluators who assess the benefits of public funding andintervention to support academic research. It is essential thatevaluators do not only see these benefits in terms of number of publications produced, but also through the prism of publication quality (citations and outcomes generated) as well as individual and organizational attributes. In this way, those designing interventions to support research will benefit from the fully-fledged information necessary to improve program effectiveness.

Climate Change Adaptation in Coastal East Arctic Ecosystems: Complexity and Challenges of Monitoring and Evaluation

The fifth IPCC assessment confirms the fast rate of climate change in the Polar Regions and indicates that Arctic communities are facing great challenges in adapting. Several initiatives have recently been introduced to stimulate the implementation of adaptation measures, but most documented experiments exclude formal monitoring and evaluation (M&E) activities. Our paper focuses on two questions: How does the lack of robust monitoring and evaluation influence adaptation limits in the region? What are the current insights emerging about this topic and what do these limits mean for local communities? Our paper is based on a scoping review of relevant official documentation and data gathered in the field through interviews during the summer of 2015. Our data are also derived from recently published statistical data, reports and articles. Our findings suggest that Arctic communities and institutions are not able to produce sufficient rigorous and regularly updated monitoring data, mainly because of the lack of resources required for systematic and rigorous data collection and analysis. Individual incentives, weak institutions and a complicated policy context also limit M&E activities. This lack of resources is associated with other different limitations mainly related to the complexity of measuring climate change adaptation progress in these vulnerable social and ethnological ecosystems. Indeed, in addition to attribution and counterfactual challenges, opposing approaches in the conceptualization of indicators and dissonances in the perception of risks and vulnerabilities complicate assessing climate change adaptation impacts.

Obesity and student retention among teenagers. Correlational analyses in high schools in Quebec (Canada).

Can we establish a relationship between obesity and student retention? Several studies confirm that the adoption of certain lifestyles such as physical activity and healthy eating are closely linked to student success. Healthier children perform better in school and in life, and conversely, those who do better in school are also healthier. As part of a larger research project, a correlational survey was conducted in winter 2013 among 248 young people aged 14–19 in the Outaouais region (Quebec, Canada) on the impact of government policies and other measures to adopt healthy lifestyles. We especially analyzed the links between obesity prevention and parental involvement on the school performance and academic achievement of these young people. Our survey was used to measure attitude, perception and behavior variables, using a Likert scale. Our results suggest that, despite efforts by public programs, parents and teachers, one-third of the teenagers do not have access to awareness campaigns on the benefits of a healthy lifestyle. Almost one-fifth of the teenagers are not sufficiently supported by their parents in the adoption of healthy lifestyles. Furthermore, this research shows strong correlations between parental involvement and both student retention and acquisition of healthy habits in their children.