Sectoral levelling funds are an arrangement aimed at alleviating a well-known theoretical problem of underinvestment in worker training due to free-rider behaviour of firms. In The Netherlands, collective agreements require firms to participate in such funds in a number of sectors. Using a comprehensive data-set on Dutch firms, we attempt to answer the question to what extent these levelling funds have a stimulating effect on the level of training investments of firms. Surprisingly, no indications are found for the existence of such an effect. Training levels are not higher in sectors with a fund than in sectors without a fund. Several explanations are discussed to account for these findings.
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This paper reports a study on the importance of enablers in order for IT to support effective supply chain management, as perceived defined by different positions in the supply chain. In the study, a significant difference for the enabler “Funds for IT enablement” is found between the supplier position and other positions. Furthermore relations between the enablers are examined and research is done into why certain factors are being perceived more important than others.
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This report is the result of a research interest stemming from the case presented by the City of Budapest on the misalignment between EU funding opportunities and the interdependence of the national government. The main research question was “Which channels exist for a local or regional government to access EU funding directly, without the need for interference of the national government?”. Recent political developments in Hungary have led to an increasing amount of budgetary challenges for the City of Budapest. Besides domestic factors, the European Commission’s decision to suggest to withhold cohesion and RRF funds to Hungary raises the question of what different avenues of direct EU funding instruments might be at the city’s disposal. Therefore, the aim of this research is to provide recommendations on what avenues the City of Budapest might want to invest in in terms of advocacy activities on the EU level. We first conducted a desk research, mapping the current landscape of EU funding instruments under the direct management of the EU (the overview can be found in the appendix). Secondly, ten interviews were conducted in October and November 2022 with several multi-level stakeholders from the European Parliament, the European Commission, the umbrella organisation of cities in the European Union ‘Eurocities’, a Hungarian journalist and a regional representation in Central-Eastern Europe. Based on these conversations, we identified five main findings with corresponding recommendations for action.
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Festivals are nowadays a cultural, social, and economic force to be reckoned with. This study will offer an overview of the Dutch festival landscape, which has been lacking. There are commercial initiatives that target only a portion of the festival sector, and there are specific branch organisations or cultural funds that only cover the data of their members, for instance the Netherlands Film Fund reports on ten major Dutch film festivals in their annual Film Facts & Figures of the Netherlands. National institutes such as Statistics Netherlands (CBS) and The Netherlands Institute for Social Research (SCP) also lack substantial data on Dutch festivals.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has sparked the debate on strengthening European-level cooperation and solidarity in tackling the disease. The debate has focused on several questions: Given the common threat to public health, is conferral of more competences upon the EU (1) desirable and (2) feasible? As for desirability: Can the EU better achieve the public health goals than Member States can and is there an added value in increasing EU competences? As for feasibility: Can a competence increase be carried out in practice - given the cross-country differences in the organizational and managerial features of national healthcare systems? Healthcare systems are influenced by the underlying normative aspirations, historic legacies, and level of economic development of the given country. They are characterized by a high degree of government intervention and absorb a significant share of public funds, so no wonder this sector is politically sensitive. So concretely, if more powers are to be conferred upon the EU, what exactly should these powers consist of, bearing in mind the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality?
MULTIFILE
Our IPD-projects have changed: more international partners became involved and simultaneously we started to carry out real projects for real companies. This caused a number of problems. In order to be able to give full support to the projects and conclude them with a nice, formal symposium we need financial funds. Therefore companies were asked for additional sponsoring, which introduced new problems. How we dealt with all these problems is explained in this paper. Other ways of co-operating with different partners in the IPD-projects are also considered. A recent development is to create combinations with students from secondary technical education that already work in practice. First experiments have started in February 2004. First results and further plans on these combinations are reported here.
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With the rise of innovation and entrepreneurship as avenues for journalists to take in their search for journalistic work, we need to critically interrogate how these terms are understood. Various journalism institutions are pushing a particular understanding of journalism, and of what constitutes meaningful and innovative journalism. In this paper, we review the literature on these themes and draw on experimental research done by one of the authors to argue for a more process-oriented approach to journalistic innovation and entrepreneurship. As a researcher-maker, one of the authors created an innovative journalistic project and tried to develop a business model for this project. She participated in an accelerator process organised by one of the main funds aimed at journalism innovation in the Netherlands. We show that one existing, and prevalent, understanding of innovation in journalism is one that is linear, rational and outcome-oriented. We challenge this understanding and draw on process-oriented theories of innovation to introduce the concepts of effectuation, improvisation and becoming as new lenses to reconsider these phenomena. These concepts provide clearer insight into the passionate and improvisational nature of doing innovative journalistic work.
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This paper describes a study into consumers' reasons for buying socially responsible (SR) products, such as Fair Trade products and organic meat. As opposed to other studies, we use a qualitative approach based on 25 in-depth interviews and include several different products in the research. This leads to several new results, such as: (1) buying SR products is perceived as an imperfect moral duty; (2) low quality of SR products is a dissatisfier, but high quality not a satisfier; (3) the attitude towards SR products is related to the reputation of charitable funds; (4) the demand for SR products is negatively related to the frequency of purchasing SR products; (5) reflection on SR products raises the demand for SR products; (6) consumers that have witnessed the social problems that SR products aim to alleviate purchase more SR products. Finally, we find that the demand for different SR products is correlated: if a consumer buys one SR product, it is more likely that (s)he purchases other SR products as well.
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In de discussie over activistische aandeelhouders zijn velen van mening dat het evenwicht verstoord is en dat de aandeelhouders te veel macht hebben. Het werkelijke probleem is dat de trouwe langetermijnaandeelhouder niet meer bestaat en is vervangen door de kortetermijnbelegger met alleen oog voor rendement. Deze nieuwe realiteit vraagt om een andere benadering.
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