This study analyzed the factors affecting the educational effect of safety innovation education for management of public institutions. A survey was conducted on 294 CEOs and executive directors of public institutions (divided into construction sites, workplaces, and research facilities) subject to the safety management rating system to understand the impact of educational participants' characteristics and behavioral intentions after safety innovation education. As a result of statistical analysis, it was found that the executive director had a higher behavioral intention than the CEO, and the education quality, education instructor, and educational environment all had a significant positive (+) effect on the behavioral intention. This study can be used as basic data for further research related to safety innovation education for management of public institutions

This paper presented a case of the ICT Innovation Centres in Primary Schools in Kenya for the effective operation and management of ICT integrated education based on the results of the centre users’satisfaction and improved competency in ICT in education. Global society pursed results-based management to materialize the principles of effective development cooperation. In line with the principle, the project team for establishing the Centres has supported the local operators to operate and manage the centres with the manual and surveyed to capture the results of the operation and management focusing on the users' satisfaction and competency. As result, these two centres encouraged the users to be exposed to use facilities and equipment for understanding ICT and applying it in their teaching and learning activities physically. In particular, these centres helped them to participate in community activities which were recognized as the foundation of sustainable operation and management of the centres. The teaching and learning environment significantly affected the users' satisfaction and improved competency. But, still, additional content would be required for enhancing the performance of the users. For the long-term results, this study proposed that the impact of using the centres should be monitored continuously to carry out tangible results of teaching and learning performance because the centres were operated less than a year and still required to stock relevant data.

Introduction Shorter innovation cycles, the huge cost of R&D and dearth of resources compel firms to search for new innovation sources (Gassmann and Enkel 2004). Current research argues that firms need to open up their solid boundaries and seek valuable knowledge from external partners so that firms can extend the innovation function beyond their four walls (Chesbrough 2003). In this context past research has identified universities, or higher education institutions (HEIs) as an important source of innovation (e.g., Lambert 2003). Indeed, universities undertake a “third mission” in addition to their core mission of research and teaching, by focusing on “technology transfer” that engages in the process of the commercialization of science (Etzkowitz et al. 2000). Thus, firms can take huge advantages through the collaboration with universities. While relationships between firms have the risk of opportunism embedded in them, support provided by universities are hard to imitate by competitors due to the novelty and uniqueness in the ideas they provide their partner firms. Despite this important role that universities play, no systematic theoretical treatment has been attempted in academia. Ironically, university and industry links have been studied much less frequently and have been valued lesser than other sources (e.g., suppliers and customers) in terms of knowledge transfer for firm innovation (Hughes 2011). Extant research examines collaborations between universities and firms using simple descriptive analysis (e.g., Laursen and Salter 2004) and illustrates the relationship with anecdotal evidence (e.g., Cosh and Hughes 2010). Thus, extant literature provides little-to-no empirical evidence regarding firm performance, such as a firm’s innovation outcomes, when the firms are supported by universities. Our broad-based investigation makes several key contributions. First, our study is the first to demonstrate empirically what types of HEIs’ activities enhance a firm’s innovation outcomes. Because the two different types of HEI activities have different features, it helps us get a more precise understanding of which specific type of HEI-supported activity influences which firm innovation outcome. Second, our research finds that a firm’s absorptive capacity influences the relationship between HEI-supported activities and a firm’s innovation outcomes. This finding helps to identify how firm capability to absorb outside knowledge influences the relationship of HEIs’ involvement on a firm’s innovation outcomes. Conceptual Framework The most frequent form of a firm’s interaction with universities is people-based activities (Hughes 2011). Universities transfer knowledge through people-related activities such as conferences, special lectures, education programs, and social networks supporting firm innovation. Such people-based activities can influence firm innovation performance. People-based activities involve the activities conducting by firms to increase their business competitiveness. Since a firm’s employees are key to discovering new products and processes, special training programs provided by universities will help supplementing knowledge towards specific firm innovation outcomes. Additionally, other people-related activities such as placing university staff on a firm’s board of directors can also encourage exchange of knowledge and information resulting in cutting-edge new product and process innovation. Tether and Tajar (2008) found that firms that have participated in professional meetings or conferences held by HEIs have a better chance of surpassing their current innovation performance. A firm can improve its innovation performance by making human assets supported by its partners. As partners work together, this helps increasing work efficiency by improving communication, knowledge sharing, and their relative capacity to absorb knowledge for innovation. Research suggests that universities may have lower barriers to engagement with firms by removing bureaucracy, lowering transaction costs and speeding up reaction times (Mateos-Garcia and Sapsed 2011). Therefore, universities have an important role in transferring new knowledge through people-based activities, resulting in new products and processes for the firm. Thus, we hypothesize as follows: Hypothesis 1A (H1A). A firm’s people-based activities with HEIs are positively related to the introduction of new products in the firm. Hypothesis 1B (H1B). A firm’s people-based activities with HEIs are positively related to the introduction of new processes in the firm. Universities have a distinct role in affecting a firm’s innovation performance through problem-solving activities. Firms that acquire knowledge from universities improve their competitive position that helps firm acquire a competitive advantage over other firms that do not collaborate with universities (Gassmann and Enkel 2004). Universities provide problem-solving activities such as joint research, contract research, consulting services, informal advice and provision of access to specialized instrumentation, equipment or materials and of product prototyping. For example, in 2009, US firms sponsored more than $4 billion worth of university research (Kurman 2011), as a result of which U.S. universities own nearly one-quarter of new U.S. patents in the fields of nanotechnology and biotechnology. Thus, firms that collaborate with universities can achieve cutting-edge product and process innovation (Kurman 2011). Hosting workshops and performing joint research with universities are core problem-solving activities. For example, IBM, one of the most successful and established enterprises in the IT market, hosted 350 workshops per year and has had 50-100 ongoing research projects with universities, helping IBM to successfully launch new products into the market (Gassmann and Enkel 2004). Further, firms can also integrate partners (i.e., HEIs) to combine their different competencies to enrich their own innovation process (Gassmann and Enkel 2004). Based on the above, we hypothesize as follows:Hypothesis 2A (H2A). A firm’s problem-solving activities with HEIs are positively related to the introduction of new products. Hypothesis 2B (H2B). A firm’s problem-solving activities with HEIs are positively related to the introduction of new processes. Shorter time-to-market strategies, increasing R&D costs and a dearth of resources cause firms to search for new innovation strategies. This phenomenon is reinforced by a rapid churn in technology and customer demands. In this competitive environment, HEIs’ involvement is increasingly important for a firm’s innovation success because integrating external sources of knowledge from HEIs can result in major advantages for firms (Rappert et al. 1999). Further, people-based and problem-solving activities supported by HEIs do not replace a firm’s internal innovation activities and, as a result, the firm undertakes a great deal of its own innovation activities. Also, scholars argue that collaboration with other partners does not always provide better innovation performance because of the lack of a firm’s capability to processing valuable knowledge from the outside partners (Cohen and Levinthal 1990). This indicates that the mere acquisition and exploitation of knowledge from universities do not guarantee successful firm innovation outcomes. To create successful firm innovation, the firm should possess absorptive capacity, which is the learning capability to processing knowledge acquired from the HEIs into their internal work. Thus, firms can be expected to invest in their absorptive capacity in this situation (Tether and Tajar 2008). Further, Keller (1996) argues that successful R&D spillover (i.e., absorptive capacity) effects are dependent on the activities of human capital (i.e., people-based activities). Also, Cohen and Levinthal (1990) argue that firms can increase their absorptive capacity directly, as when they send personnel for advance technical training (i.e., people-based activities). Further, Kim (1998) argues that absorptive capacity is the major factor in developing problem-solving skills that allow a firm to create new knowledge that influences firm innovation performance. As such, absorptive capacity stresses the internal capability to acquire and assimilate outside knowledge into a firm while HEIs’ involvement is a resource that is created by external source enhancing a firm’s innovation outcomes. Therefore, identifying the role of absorptive capacity is a useful tool to explain the relationship of HEIs’ people-based activities and problem-solving activities on firm innovation performance. However, Nooteboom and colleagues (2007, pp. 1031) argue that “while there may be increasing returns in absorptive capacity, improving the general ability to understand and appreciate novelty value in collaboration, there are decreasing returns to knowledge in finding further novelty: the more one knows the further away one has to look for novelty.” This indicates that too much absorptive capacity in a firm negatively affects the impact of people-based activities on a firm’s innovation performance. While people attending conferences or lectures supported by universities may acquire novel knowledge that can influence a firm’s innovation performance, their activities may have negative impact on a firm’s innovation outcomes when a firm has greater absorptive capacity, due to diminishing impact of a firm’s absorptive capacity to create novel idea. Extant research suggests that the greater a firm’s absorptive capacity, the lesser the firm can find further novelty (Noteboom et al. 2007), which suggests that absorptive capacity makes firm innovation activities less efficient. Based on the above discussion, we hypothesize as follows:Hypothesis 3A (H3A). People-based activities with HEIs positively related to the introduction of new products and/or processes will become weaker at a higher level of absorptive capacity. Hypothesis 3B (H3B). People-based activities with HEIs positively related to new product radicalness will become weaker at a higher level of absorptive capacity. Hypothesis 4A (H4A). Problem-solving activities with HEIs positively related to the introduction of new products and/or processes will become stronger at a higher level of absorptive capacity. Hypothesis 4B (H4B). Problem-solving activities with HEIs positively related to new product radicalness will become stronger at a higher level of absorptive capacity. Methods We test the hypotheses presented across two studies. The purpose of Study 1 is to validate our prediction about how HEI activities affect firm innovation performance (H1A to H2B). Study 2 expands this initial research frame by validating the moderating effects of a firm’s absorptive capacity on firm innovation outcomes (H3A to H4B). Implications There is an argument to transfer knowledge from HEIs to firms due to the cultural differences between them (Lambert 2003). Nevertheless, universities are playing an increasingly strategic role in stimulating innovation in firms though the transfer of technology (Hughes 2011). Scholars have largely disregarded the more specific activities performed by HEIs such as people-based and problem-solving activities. Little attention has been paid to how people-based and problem-solving activities affect firm innovation performance. Further, firm innovation outcomes can be affected differently by some specific HEI activities because each activity supported by HEIs plays a different role in impacting certain types of firm innovation outcomes. Based on our results, problem-solving activities are related to new product innovation while people-based activities are related to new process innovation. Additionally, absorptive capacity had a negative moderating effect with people based activities and a positive moderating effect with problem solving activities on a firm’s innovation outcomes. This is important to theoretical and practical implications because a firm is able to know which activities are required to improve their new product or process innovation. This leads a firm to save huge costs to achieve successful innovation.

세계화가 빠르게 진행되면서 표준화의 중요성은 날로 증대되고 있으며 표준화를 통한 제품의 호환성 확보는 해외 시장에서의 경쟁력을 결정하는 필수적인 경쟁요소가 되고 있다. 본 연구는 이러한 세계적인 흐름에 부응하여 중소기업의 혁신 역량과 기업 내 표준화 교육 활동 및 그 성과 간의 관계를 분석하였다. 이를 위해 국내 정보통신 및 전기전자 업종 중소기업 약 900여개를 대상으로 분석을 수행하였다. 분석 결과 표준화 교육활동은 기업의 생산 및 품질개선 정도와 R&D 활동개선에 긍정적인 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타났다. 또한, R&D 투자비율은 표준화 교육활동이 생산 및 품질개선에 미치는 영향을 조절하는 것으로 분석되었다. 본 연구는 중소기업의 표준화 교육 활동, 교육성과, 혁신활동의 관계를 규명함으로써 중소기업 및 관계기관의 의사결정자가 혁신 및 표준화 활동의 성과를 극대화하는데 도움을 줄 수 있는 실질적인 시사점을 제공한다는 점에서 그 의미가 있다고 하겠다.

본 연구의 목적은 수요자 측면에서 지방대학 혁신역량강화사업의 효과성을 분석하는 것이었다. 2004년도부터 2008년까지 총 5년간 NURI 항만물류사업단의 자체보고서를 기초로 선정한 효과성 평가지표는 전반적 만족도와 세부적 만족도, 타 대학 출신인력 비교우위, 지속적 채용의사, 재교육의 필요성, 필요교육 우선순위 등이었다. 그리고 보다 객관적인 분석을 위해 2006년부터 2009년까지의 취업률을 지표로 선정하였다. 분석의 결과, 만족도는 대체적으로 꾸준히 증가하였고, 타 대학 비교우위는 높게 나타나면서 재교육의 필요성은 점점 낮아져 사업의 효과성은 매우 높은 것으로 나타났다. 특히 재학생의 외국어능력 수요를 충족시키고 있는 것으로 나타났지만, 산학연계는 보다 강화될 필요가 있는 것으로 분석되었다. 또한 누리사업단의 참여학부(과)는 비참여학부(과)에 비해 취업률이 지속적으로 증가한 것으로 나타나 사업의 효과가 객관적으로 있는 것으로 나타났다.