Abstract The paper illustrates the role of political and social dynamics upon technological change. Examining dynamics transforming excavation practices on South Africa’s goldmines, it describes how a technology that opened up a range of social and economic opportunities became a constraint on those opportunities. This technology’s development and diffusion thereby established a critical precedent in the spread of racial occupational mobility restrictions. Collaborative innovation is also a dominant feature in the analysis, highlighting both its historical importance in South Africa as well as the need for caution in its contemporary promotion.

The thesis is an empirical study of the changes that occurred in the Fortune list of the largest American industrial corporations from 1963 to 1987. The mobility and turnover of big firms has been studied only from a neoclassical perspective in the past, and the emphasis was placed on the level of overall concentration in the economy. In this thesis, the changes in the list are analysed adopting a Schumpeterian/evolutionary framework that emphasize the importance of innovation and economic change as major determinants of economic progress. Recent evolutionary models that describe the evolution of industries. and the work of economic historians such as Alfred Chandler provide a framework for the empirical analysis. The main findings.are: I. The takeover activity is the main source of turbulence in the list. 2. There are significant inter-industry differences in the type of competition and in the behaviour of the industries. and these differences shed light on the overall changes. 3. The emergence of microelectronics has powerful destabilising effects, and its diffusion interacts with other trends such as the growing globalisation of competition between large firms and the rise of the market for corporate control.

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Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögskolan, 2006.

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There is large body of research that has investigated inter-firm technology transfer and technological learning within direct producer-user relationships within the context of developing countries. However, due to the growth in the technology transfer market, there has also been an increasing tendency for users to become isolated from producers, as new actors have emerged, which have been named technology intermediaries. The motivation for this thesis is driven by the absence of both theoretical and empirical studies examining technology transfer and learning through intermediaries, particularly in emerging nation contexts, what factors influence the functions of intermediaries along the process, and how those factors influence the recipients' learning. By learning from the technology transfer experiences of the two main users of technologies in the Omani oil and gas sector, namely Petroleum Development Oman (PDO), and Oman Liquefied Natural Gas (OLNG), this research tries to address this theoretical and empirical gap. Through semi-structured interviews, this study explored technological learning during the technology transfer through intermediaries from the perspective of 48 employees (Omani and expatriates) at different levels of hierarchy (managers, section heads/team leaders, site engineers) and from different departments across the two firms. The perspectives of those employees are supplemented by data such as annual reports, which also serves as important triangulation instruments to validate the data collected from respondents. Within-cases and cross-cases qualitative and interpretive content analysis was employed to analyse the empirical data gathered from the two firms. The empirical evidence identified five main factors that influence the functions of intermediaries along the transfer process. These are the proximity of intermediaries with users (geographical and cognitive), specialization of intermediaries (industrial or technological), characteristics of technologies (tacitness, complexity, newness), recipient firm's absorptive capacity, and recipients firm's technology strategy. A good understanding of these factors can increase the ability of firms to reap the maximum potential of inward technology transfer for local learning through intermediaries.

After 100 years at an historically low level, inequality began to rise in the late 20th century, a trend which was especially marked in the English-speaking countries including New Zealand. Various explanations have been advanced, but internationally the most favoured theory is skill-biased technological change, driven by the new information and communication technologies. This thesis used income and wage data from the New Zealand Population Census and the New Zealand Income Survey to examine wage trends between 1991 and 2004. As in other developed countries wage dispersion was increasing in the 1990s, though it appears to have slowed since 2001, and the increased inequality is strongly correlated with workers' skills and qualifications. There is also a correlation between new technology and earnings inequality, but this appears to be attributable to the demand for skills in the industries which are changing fastest, rather than anything intrinsic to the new technology.

The intellectual roots of the innovation system (IS) approach lie in attempts tounderstand the complexities of interactive relations in the innovation process. Thisthesis departs from the systemic view that ISs rest on a co-evolutionary process, inwhich on the one hand technical and economic spheres interact with policies andinstitutions, and, on the other, those spheres affect the natural environment. There isalso evidence that ISs have access to the state-of-the-art flows of knowledge, which isperceived positively in terms of international or trans-border scientific andtechnological cooperation.Comprised of a covering essay and a set of publications, this thesis is structured as acombination of five papers containing findings of the research carried out. Thequalitative research design analyzes sustainability as a desirable theoretical constructtowards which the development of ISs should be oriented. As such, special attentionwas given to both the theoretical arguments that relate to sustainability and theimportance of a shift into a new technological regime oriented towards environmentalissues in ISs. A systematization of the two main theoretical analyses of ISs has beenalso emphasized in the thesis as interactive learning and evolutionary technologicalchange theories, which originate respectively from Schumpeterian and neoevolutionarySchumpeterian views.In Edquist’s view (2001, p.35) "there is a strong need for further conceptual andtheoretical development of the IS approach. The best way of doing this is by actuallyusing the approach in empirical research". How the shift of ISs to environmentalsustainability can come about and how they can be brought together systematically isstill a largely unexplored field of research. Accordingly, the aim of this thesis is toconceptually advance an understanding of the IS as a flexible and useful approach toencompass the environmental sustainability dimension.To address this, the thesis develops a conceptual framework for ISs that is orientedtoward sustainability; based on the interactive, resource, and environmental views;and tested empirically. The conceptual framework is illustrated empirically in the casestudies of the Brazilian subsidiary of the Swedish multinational Ericsson and and the Brazilian multinational USIMINAS, with focus placed on their interactionswith the Brazilian innovation system. Since the cases belong to different sectors, thereare variables between the multinationals in terms of the nature of innovation capacity.The contrast between the two cases in terms of technological regimes provedvery interesting, and hence formed the core of the thesis.The IS approach has been gaining ground in academic circles, as well as in the fieldof public innovation policy-making in industrialized and newly industrializedcountries. The findings of the current study suggest that ISs for environmentalsustainability can be categorized as evolutionary, natural resource based, andinternationally oriented. In the context of newly industrialized countries, theinternalization of ISs has been perceived through effects of research and developmentin multinational firms, technology transfer and the international trade of capital goods.The understanding of ISs and the internationalization phenomenon in relation tosustainability warrants further studies; notably studies are required that examine theinternationalization of ISs, empirically viewing this from the perspective of bothindustrialized and newly industrialized economies. / <p>RESEARCH FUNDERS</p><p>1) Brazilian Agency for Higher Education (CAPES); 2) the ScientificAgency of the Minas Gerais State (FAPEMIG), Brazil. QC 20130211</p><p></p>

The Classic Maya site of Piedras Negras is a located at the western edge of El Peten, Guatemala. Beginning in about A.D. 650 the ceramics of Piedras began to undergo a period of rapid and profound changes that culminated in the development of a distinct regional polychrome style distinguished by the use of an elaborate resist and resist-reserve technique with few analogs elsewhere in the Maya Lowlands.At most Classic Maya sites, the development of a regional ceramic style involved the elaboration of known and widely practiced decorative techniques, such as positive painting. At Piedras Negras, Guatemala, however, this development was manifested by the creation of a distinct tradition emphasizing the use of an elaborate true resist technique. Because the development of this style was the result of new technological practices, rather than the elaboration of extant styles, we are allowed a unique perspective on material culture change. Rather than invoking rational, deterministic explanations to account for the transformations visible in the Piedras Negras ceramics, change is framed primarily as a social phenomena whose study requires a uniquely historical, social, and cultural point of view.

Thesis (Maestro en Ciencias)--Escuela Nacional de Agricultura. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Bibliography: leaves 103-106.