Christmas 2014 fast approaches and we are just putting the June 2014 issue of Prometheus to bed. It has taken much longer than anticipated to return the journal to normal following our quarrel with Taylor & Francis. As with disrupted railway or airline services, removal of the immediate cause does little to alleviate the chaos. Drivers and trains, pilots and planes are in the wrong place, and not even the same wrong place. And so with an academic journal: a year’s interruption of services has left authors and referees and editors in confusion. But we are making steady progress and soon we will all be in the right place.
This issue contains some unusual papers. One of these examines the diffusion of innovation in Saudi Arabia. Ali Al-Kandari and Ali Dashti work from the basic Rogers model, focusing on the diffusion of the internet in Saudi Arabia. At this point, familiarity evaporates: the authors are interested in the influence of Muslim scholars on this diffusion. Innovation studies are nearly always set in a Western context, the rest of the world characteristically seen as somewhere that will eventually catch up with the West. In this paper, we enter the world of fatwa, an utterly non-Western world in which religious scholars pronounce upon the acceptability of an innovation the West has adopted wholeheartedly and unquestioningly. Students of the diffusion of innovation will find this a strange study, typical in its reliance on Rogers, yet set in a context of unease about feminism and male-female relations that is anything but typical.
Ralph Schroeder also writes about the internet, about the search engine so dominant that it has become synonymous with scouring on the internet. Schroeder asks whether Google has become so powerful that it is able to determine not just what we know, but also what we want to know. To be sure, Google is as secretive about its algorithms as it is about its taxation arrangements. There is much public interest in the latter, yet the former is likely to have vastly greater social impact. Most use of Google is for leisure and we tend to overlook the serious role Google plays as the gatekeeper of the global knowledge economy.
The paper from Alireza Kashan and Kavoos Mohannak is a more traditional piece. They look at product innovation in the context of the strategic capability of the organisation and the contribution of this capability to the organisation’s competitive advantage. Their specific concern is the knowledge integration that is required in innovation projects. Kashan and Mohannak construct a conceptual framework which emphasises the importance of micro processes in enhancing organisational capability to innovate.
The context in which the paper by Mariano Zukerfeld is set is really the frantic determination of very many governments to increase the supply of graduates in high technology. Core to government policy is vast investment in higher education to produce appropriate manpower. It seems obvious that a high technology economy is dependent on individuals with appropriate educational qualifications, even that supply of these individuals will actually create such an economy. Yet, when Zukerfeld examines the situation in Argentina, he finds the supply of computer science graduates disconnected from the manpower demands of the information technology sector. Employers in the information technology sector look less to those with formal qualifications in computer science than to those who have acquired their skills informally. The paper’s findings have implications for high technology policy just about everywhere.
Sandrine Thérèse and Brian Martin build on many years of research into the suppression of intellectual endeavour with a paper on the degradation of scientists. Degradation occurs when the individual academic is targeted by the employing organisation, and sometimes by colleagues as well, to deter thinking that is considered disruptive, unorthodox or incompatible with accepted norms. In discrediting the individual, the individual’s ideas and activities are also discredited. Isolation and uncertainty disarm those targeted. Victims may be pacified by a naïve faith that the organisation will be fair, a faith that right will out which lulls them into neglecting self-defence. Thérèse and Martin consider the tactics targeted individuals should adopt to resist such assault. They also present case studies – not uncontroversial case studies – to illustrate how individuals should fight back. Sadly, their paper is a handbook for our times.
To the authors and referees who have been so patient and understanding during our hard times, my heartfelt thanks. We will be back to normal soon.
General Editor