Institutional thickness and institutional effectiveness: developing regional indices for policy and practice in Australia

Beer, Andrew; Lester, Laurence

doi:10.1080/21681376.2015.1013150

Cited by 30 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…Both social and political aspects resonate in the term "social innovation". It originates from academic discourse rather than from everyday language [1], but the actual relationship between social innovation initiatives on one hand and political frameworks and policies on the other has not been sufficiently investigated so far, particularly not for rural areas where institutional thickness is likely to be less than in urban environments [2]. Social innovation and its drivers have been studied in rural areas far less than in urban environments or in the context of urbanization [3], but there is consensus on the need to support the design and implementation of social innovations as a response to existing complex problems rural communities are facing [4,5].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Innovation, Societal Change, and the Role of Policies

Lukesch

Ludvig

Slee³

et al. 2020

Sustainability

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Political frameworks and policies have a strong influence on the institutional ecosystem and on governance patterns, which in turn shape the operational space of civil society initiatives. This article aims to explore the social and institutional conditions and policy initiatives that foster or hinder social innovation and the pathways leading from social innovation to institutional change through to actual impacts on policies and political frameworks, in order to understand how policymakers can encourage and enable social innovation. The article builds on an extensive empirical background to develop a heuristic model to facilitate decision making for a policy environment propitious for the emergence of social innovation. The resulting model sets up a triadic configuration of (i) a committed core of key actors, (ii) the benevolent shadow of hierarchy represented by public actors, and (iii) multifunctional and malleable intermediary support structures for a successful development of social innovation initiatives. The model is discussed and validated by reference to three in-depth case studies from differing institutional settings. We conclude that policy should recognize that social innovation will achieve most when the triadic relationships between the state, intermediary organizations, and local actors are working together synergistically.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Innovation, Societal Change, and the Role of Policies

Lukesch

Ludvig

Slee³

et al. 2020

Sustainability

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“…Despite these notable barriers, considerable progress has been made of late in terms of measuring institutions and their impact at subnational level in different parts of the world (e.g., Beer & Lester, 2015, for Australia; Rodríguez‐Pose & Zhang, 2019, 2020 and Wang, 2019, for China), but particularly in Europe. The Quality of Government Institute of the University of Gothenburg has made the largest contribution in this respect.…”

Section: The ‘Problem’mentioning

confidence: 99%

Institutions and the fortunes of territories

Rodríguez‐Pose

2020

Regional Science Policy & Practice

104

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Regions and cities face unceasing pressures to adapt in response to processes of globalization, changes in industrial production, and new patterns of migration and trade. At the same time, the dominant development policies are proving less than capable of providing answers to these challenges. Strategies based on a mix of physical and human capital and technology have not succeeded in dealing with growing territorial inequality and its treacherous economic, social and political consequences. There is thus an urgent need to understand why territorial divergence occurs and why there is what seems to be a growing decline in the returns of public intervention targeting economic development. In the search for answers, scholars have turned to the examination of institutions. But despite progress in our grasp of how institutions affect development, crucial knowledge gaps remain. This paper reviews recent progress in our understanding of the role of institutions for development, unveils the most important gaps, and proposes a series of avenues to improve how a better understanding of how institutions shape regional and urban development can lead to more efficient development policies.

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“…Much research in institutional economics, such as the work on national innovation systems (Lundvall, ), and varieties of capitalism (Hall & Soskice, ; Hall & Thelen, ), shows that the emergence and evolution of certain industries in space depend on the configuration of the national institutional framework (Grillitsch & Rekers, ). Economic geographers, on the other hand, have developed a considerable body of work looking at the impact of local and regional institutions on regional development (e.g., Amin & Thrift, ; Storper, ; Tödtling & Trippl, ; Farole et al, ; Rodríguez‐Pose, ; Zukauskaite et al, ), including foci on regional innovation systems (Asheim & Coenen, ; Cooke et al, ; Isaksen et al, ), regional clusters (Maskell & Malmberg, ; Saxenian, ), and regional competitiveness (Beer & Lester, ). Previous work has highlighted that institutions condition, enable, and constrain the economic vitality and innovation capacity of regional economies, providing legal frameworks for actions, defining communication patterns, and affecting learning possibilities (Gertler, ).…”

Section: Institutions and Local Economic Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Developing the Shanghai online games industry: A multi‐scalar institutional perspective

Gong

Hassink

2019

Growth and Change

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In recent decades, while place‐based policies and local development have attracted the interest of institutional economic geography, the issue of features of certain industries and how they are shaping and shaped by institutions at multiple spatial scales, has not been taken up sufficiently. This paper, based on a local creative industry—the Shanghai online games industry, which is an essential part of the new media sector, takes issue with it. It explores two aspects, namely how multi‐scalar institutions relate and influence the development of the online games industry in Shanghai and how local firms and entrepreneurs affect local and national institutions. It shows that the three aspects that are related to media sector in general and games industry in particular (i.e., cultural influence, technological significance, and economic value) matter much as they have resulted in diverse industry‐relevant policies and regulations devised by local and national states. Moreover, local firms and entrepreneurs with different capacities and characteristics also differ much in influencing the design of the industry‐specific institutions in the face of institutional voids.

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Institutional thickness and institutional effectiveness: developing regional indices for policy and practice in Australia

Cited by 30 publications

References 52 publications

Social Innovation, Societal Change, and the Role of Policies

Social Innovation, Societal Change, and the Role of Policies

Institutions and the fortunes of territories

Developing the Shanghai online games industry: A multi‐scalar institutional perspective

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