Volume 3, Issue 1

This paper describes the strategies and tactics that Oxford University has developed over a ten-year period to address the conflicting demands of the traditional university responsibilities of teaching and research, with the so-called third stream needs of more direct economic development.The approach has been based on a clear policy definition of the ownership of Intellectual Property Rights, and the allocation of university resources to encourage, and support researchers in protecting and commercialising inventions.The result has been a marked increase in disclosures and successful commercial development, through licences, consultancy and spinout companies, generating returns to the researchers, university and regional economy.The increasing tide of publications reporting threats to academic freedom from commercialisation and the generation of liabilities and any number of other dangers to universities, have led us to investigate the possibility of balancing the apparently conflicting objectives of maintaining a vibrant, curiosity-led research university whilst at the same time increasing its contribution to local, and national, economic development.

Family firms are very prominent in many parts of the world, including in many of the most dynamic emerging markets. They are often thought to be associated with poor corporate and political governance. This article examines the debate about their durability and efficiency, using material drawn from the long experience of continental Europe and sketches out an ideal type of the family, in which there is a historical experience of entrepreneurship, a brand, and a network built around family enterprise. It then tests various common explanations for the prevalence of family firms, including Roman law versus common law traditions, tax incentives, share voting privileges, and inheritance law; and finds that each applies only in a quite particular historical epoch. Finally, the article suggests that family businesses offer advantages that are most apparent at times of shocks and discontinuities, and that they are thus a response to uneven development.

In this work we discuss the impact of the new ICT techno-economic paradigm upon the vertical and horizontal boundaries of the firm and ask whether the change in the sources of competitive advantage has resulted in changes in the size of distribution of firms and also in the degree of concentration of industries. Drawing both on firm-level and national statistical data we assess the evolution of the overall balances between the activities which are integrated within organizations and those which occur through market interactions.While the new paradigm entails "revolutionary" changes in the domain of technology, the modification in industrial structures has been somewhat more incremental. Certainly, the vertical and horizontal boundaries of firms have changed and together one is observing a turnover in the club of biggest world firms, accounting also for a shift in the relative importance of industrial sectors. Nonetheless, we do not observe any abrupt fading away of the Chandlerian multidivisional corporation in favour of smaller less-integrated firms.