scholarly journals Local industrial strategy and skills policy in England: Assessing the linkages and limitations – a case study of the Sheffield City Deal

2016 ◽  
Vol 31 (8) ◽  
pp. 857-872 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Sissons ◽  
Katy Jones

This paper examines changes in local economic development policy which occurred between 2010 and 2015, with a focus on the relationship between industrial strategy and skills policy. Under the Coalition Government, Local Enterprise Partnerships were established and tasked with facilitating local growth, and to do so many identified a set of (potential) growth sectors for industrial strategy to support. These sectors tended to be drawn from a relatively narrow range of industries which therefore often excluded a large proportion of the local economy. An important focus of the support for growth sectors for many has been through an ambition to influence the local skills system. Skills policy more broadly has been an important dimension of devolution, and a number of City Deals have included elements of skills policy. Echoing previous national policy however, the focus of local concerns with skills under devolution has been framed largely with reference to skills gaps and shortages. While specific skills gaps and shortages can be identified, this paper questions whether this default position is reflected widely, and as such, if a narrow focus on skills supply is a sufficient approach. It is argued that to support local growth across a broad base, greater attention needs to be paid to stimulating employer demand for skills through better integrating industrial and innovation policy with skills policymaking across a wider section of the local economy. To support these arguments we present a case study of the Sheffield City Deal.

2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Wusheng Zhou

With the rapid development of tourism, tourism revenue, as one of the important indicators to measure the development of the tourism economy, has high research value. The quasi-prediction of tourism revenue can drive the development of a series of related industries and accelerate the development of the domestic economy. When forecasting tourism income, it is necessary to examine the causal relationship between tourism income and local economic development. The traditional cointegration analysis method is to extract the promotion characteristics of tourism income to the local economy and construct a tourism income prediction model, but it cannot accurately describe the causal relationship between tourism income and local economic development and cannot accurately predict tourism income. We propose an optimized forecasting method of tourism revenue based on time series. This method first conducts a cointegration test on the time series data of the relationship between tourism income and local economic development, constructs a two-variable autoregressive model of tourism income and local economy, and uses the swarm intelligence method to test the causal relationship and the relationship between tourism income and local economic development, calculate the proportion of tourism industry, define the calculation result as the direct influence factor of tourism industry on the local economy, calculate the relevant effect of local tourism development and economic income, and construct tourism income optimization forecast model. The simulation results show that the model used can accurately predict tourism revenue.


2016 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 294
Author(s):  
Pablo Schyfter

“Synthetic Aesthetics” was a two-year experimental, interdisciplinary project that supported six partnerships between synthetic biologists and artists and designers. Each group sought to accomplish two tasks: build an interdisciplinary partnership and construct a joint representation. In this article, I explore the relationship between partnering and representing in one of the six partnerships: a collaboration between an architect and a synthetic biologist. I describe David Benjamin and Fernan Federici’s work on the self-organization and structural growth of xylem cells, and their pursuit of graphical and mathematical representations of so-called biological “logic.” I analyze the case study using two frameworks in unison. The first, from research in STS, explains representation as a social accomplishment with ontological consequences. The second, by pragmatist John Dewey, describes representation as drawing out and drawing into: selecting and extracting out of the world, and molding and installing into human artifice. I study Benjamin and Federici’s work as two acts of drawing out by drawing into: constructing and representing “logic” by forming a partnership to do so; and building a partnership by jointly forming a commitment to the existence of that “logic.” Doing so also involved ontological labor: making biological “logic” and rendering cells intelligible as products of rational mechanisms (as logical cells). Thus, representing and partnering are mutually enabling, mutually dependent and capable of ontological accomplishments. The lesson is useful to STS, a field increasingly concerned with art and design as topics of study and potential partners in work.


2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yikai Wang

Why do some middle-income economies implement policies to achieve sustainable growth driven by innovation, while others fail to do so? In this paper, I propose a politico-economic explanation: innovation leads to the creative destruction of existing technology that can harm the interests of the pivotal policy maker. Therefore, the pivotal policy maker may implement policies that prevent innovation and harm potential growth in order to protect its own interests. Political institutions, which are endogenously determined by fundamentals of the economy such as state capacity, shape policy maker decisions. This paper studies the relationship between growth, policies, institutions, and fundamentals. Understanding the relationship allows for the design of more efficient aid programs to help the growth of middle-income economies, especially in the long run.


Author(s):  
Reiko Shindo

This chapter explains how the research on language in the context of migrant activism can advance one's understanding of belonging, of what it means to be a legitimate member of a community. To do so, it broadly sketches the relationship between language and community and discusses how the focus on linguistic interactions between citizens and noncitizens offers a productive yet unexplored site of investigation in migration studies. The relationship between language and community has a dual nature. Language solidifies the boundary of community, and separates citizens inside the community from foreigners outside. And yet, it can also obscure the line between the two, exposing fluidity of belonging, and in doing so, imagining community as a dissolving entity. The chapter then provides the specific context in which migrant activism takes place in Japan, and explains how the Japanese case study is helpful for examining citizenship and belonging in relation to language.


Hipertext.net ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 105-114
Author(s):  
Roger Soler i Martí ◽  
Mariona Ferrer-Fons ◽  
Ludovic Terren

The lockdown imposed in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak as well as the resulting surge in the use of digital technologies and social media for activism or social life all represent a unique opportunity to study the relationship between online and offline activism. To do so, we focus on the Barcelona branch of Fridays For Future, the recent and global youth climate movement that expanded through social networks and organised several large-scale global protests. Based on data from Fridays For Future-Barcelona’s Twitter account, the analysis looks at and compares the level of activity and interactions during normal times and during the lockdown. The results suggest a close and mutually-reinforcing relationship between offline and online activism, with peaks of Twitter activity and interactions usually revolving around offline protest actions. They also show that the lockdown period was characterised by an increase in the number of tweets but a decrease in the number of interactions and thus in the repercussion of the movement on social networks.


2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 105-118
Author(s):  
María J. Andrade ◽  
João Pedro Costa ◽  
Eduardo Jiménez-Morales ◽  
Jonathan Ruiz-Jaramillo

The relationships Malaga has established with its port have changed over the centuries, conjuring up a variety of scenarios and circumstances. The past and present are closely linked phenomena in this case study where the porosity of the port‐city fabric has marked the city’s development and constitutes a key issue in the current and future challenges it faces. Malaga provides a particularly interesting example of a post‐industrial city that has reopened its port to its inhabitants’ acclaim while maintaining port activity. However, the growth tourism has seen in recent years has come to dominate the local economy. Cruise ships have taken on a significant role and have brought about important changes in the dynamics and flows between the port and the city, unsettling the balance between the two. This profile explores port‐city development through the lens of boundaries and flows, demonstrating how their dynamics have determined Malaga’s spatial, functional, and social development over time and how they continue to do so to this day. This article reviews the transformations the city has undergone and its future opportunities to achieve a balanced and sustainable port‐city relationship.


Author(s):  
Andrea Cameron

This case study reports on the information literacy component of a pilot first-yearexperience course, U1X, at Concordia University. Based on the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education, the information literacy component of U1X was designed to encourage self-direction. Through exploring the university’s larger research mission, the module aimed to shift the emphasis from “how to do research correctly” to viewing research as a personal endeavour in which the researcher cultivates the skills necessary to make a meaningful contribution. It encouraged students to reflect on what they could contribute and the skills they would need to do so. The design of this module aligned with the U1X syllabus, which included as learning outcomes that students gain an understanding “of the University’s research mission at its highest level” and “of the relationship between research and citizenship.” The module took a similarly “big picture” approach, while also looking at students’ personal development through reflection. This paper will explore the challenges and opportunities of this approach.    


2007 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 445-467 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart Strother

Local government leaders in the U. S. employ a multitude of programs and policies in the name of economic development to increase the number of firms, employment, wages, and, of course, the tax base. The past few decades have seen a surge in local economic development policies, yet research analyzing their effectiveness is sparse. This study analyzes the relationship between local economic development policy and economic growth in a data set of 412 U. S. cities. Results indicate that policy has only has a weak correlation with economic growth, suggesting that growth is determined more by market conditions rather than government intervention. The article concludes with an entrepreneurial policy approach this author believes may yield development results in an era of limited policy effectiveness.


Author(s):  
Katalin R Forray ◽  
Tamás Kozma

AbstractWhat happens, if a university moves to a town that never had a higher education institution previously? What is the impact of this development both on the community and the institution? The aim of this paper is to answer this question. The authors use the concept of ‘social innovation’ for understanding the developments. An institute may initiate, organise and coordinate all kinds of learning that takes place in a given community (Bradford, 2003). To do so, the institute may have to change its missions (not only its third, but also its first, second and third ones. These developments could be interpreted as a ‘social innovation’ during which the local economy and society was challenged and they looked for new responses. As suggested in the ‘social innovation’ literature the main research method was participatory research, combined with structured and semi-structured interviews, story-telling and narrative analyses. As a result, three interest groups could be described with various requirements different demands toward the university; while the university had to modify its structure, curriculum and communications. The main lesson to learn is that ’social innovation’ as a frame of interpretation can be used to understand the developmental processes that occurred between the locals and a new university.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Tapscott

Abstract The twenty-first century is marked by the rise of new forms of authoritarianism, many of which are characterized by the ‘paradox of restraint', in which reforms compliant with the rule of law are used to unshackle the ruler's arbitrary power. Despite a proliferation of scholarly studies on this topic, we still have limited understanding of how national-level authoritarian power reaches ordinary citizens in these contexts. This article identifies the performance of militarized masculinities as an understudied mechanism that does so. It offers two main contributions: first, it highlights how performances of militarized masculinities enact the paradox of restraint through gendered idioms, thereby magnifying the ambiguities of modern authoritarianism and diffusing them at a local level. Second, it recasts the conceptual utility of militarized masculinities, showing that the concept's inherent tensions between ordered discipline and unaccountable violence produce and project authoritarian power, giving militarized masculinities special potency as a mode of social discipline in these contexts. The article draws on feminist International Relations, employing grounded ethnographic research to illustrate how national-level power circulates locally. To do so, it first illustrates the relationship between the paradox of restraint and militarized masculinities using the cases of Putin's Russia and Duterte's Philippines. It then turns to an in-depth case study of a local dispute between soldiers and civilians in Museveni's Uganda to trace how gendered local encounters facilitate the transmission of national-level authoritarian power into the lives of ordinary people.


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