JOURNAL OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY POLICY
Year:2017 | Volume:9 | Issue:1 |Papers Count:7

SHAMTAK network could be recognized as the first and most deliberate formal attempt in I. R. of Iran for sharing S&T infrastructures at the national level. Failure of this network has led to serious doubts among S&T policy-makers and national-level decision-makers about the possibility of establishing a stable S&T network in the country. However, a number of new networks emerged through the last decade in the S&T fields. Many lessons could be drawn from the deep investigation of SHAMTAK network’s failure story in order to prepare a guideline for emerging S&T networks in the country. Nevertheless, S&T policy and management researchers have not done a remarkable study about this network yet. In this qualitative research, we deeply investigated SHAMTAK network’s story to uncover reasons for its failure. In this way, conducting a qualitative inquiry and using case study method, we collected related data adequately from in-depth interviews with key informants, observation, archived documents, and reviews published on this network. In order to study this experience effectively, we classified SHAMTAK networks into three main generations. The study reveals a number of facts as the reasons for SHAMTAK network’s failure including; dissolution of initial funding organization and transferring SHAMTAK to another institute, large scale initiation of SHAMTAK network without a well-defined model, weakness in collaboration and linkage mechanisms of the network and it’s acting as a budget distribution system, and different opinions of policy-makers in funding/supporting organizations about the goals and roles of the network in SHAMTAK’s lifelong.

The occurrence of the knowledge revolution and introducing the knowledge-based economy model have attracted societies and policy makers' attention, due to their striking achievements. Although during recent decades, most of the countries have found the necessity of transition to a knowledge economy, but they have had different success in this case. This essay with taking into account of this point and by assessing the neoclassical and institutional economics tries to find a proper approach to analyzing transition to the knowledge economy. To this purpose, first, no matter of the knowledge-based economy, we explore the neoclassical and institutional economics in the problem of "transition", with a descriptive-analytical method and based on the institutional theoretical foundations; and second, providing an institutional analysis of the economy resulted from the knowledge revolution. The results show that neoclassical approach, in the first part, has flaws such as staticity and crisis-producing assumptions, and in the second part, It suffers from market failures and basic transformation of some its fundamental assumptions like scarcity. Moreover, institutional discontinuity resulted from the knowledge revolution necessitates adopting an institutional approach for analyzing the problem of transition to the knowledge-based economy.

One of the main challenges of innovation and technology development for decision makers is how policies should be provided for a complex sector under environmental instabilities (e.g. economic, political, social transitions). In this regard, in current study through inspiring by Hegel’s dialectic approach, the variety and contradictions of Iranian oil and gas drilling industry experts’ viewpoints toward innovation and technology development policymaking under economic transition conditions have been identified. Considering the consistency between Q-methodology and Hegelian dialectic approach, we utilize Q-method to conduct the case study, and to extract the variety of standpoints. The output of Q-method indicates that there are a high diversity (10 different viewpoints) and conflicts among the viewpoints in the concourse of petroleum drilling industry. To scrutinize the conflicts, which are according to dialectic method the origin of dynamism in systems, we categorized the viewpoints by applying hierarchical clustering method. The resulted clusters show that each group of key players has similar and common cluster, therefore we can argue that the conflicts are among the group of players not the individuals. These conflicts are necessary for developing dynamic policies to enhance the system. Thus, the extracted advised policies based on this method are not the optimum balance of the viewpoints or they are not the consensus of the standpoints, rather they are the new viewpoints created from synthesizing the conflicted viewpoints. Accordingly, the helical innovation policymaking model for the large technical systems (sectors) have been conceptualized and proposed.

In the past, many studies have been conducted to analyze the modes of learning and innovation. In literature of innovation management there are two distinct modes of learning through science, technology and innovation (STI) and learning by doing, using and interacting (DUI). Having variations in the dominant mode of innovation, can be considered as one of the existing differences in innovation systems of countries. The essence of innovation and also the technological learning differ in developed and developing countries. In previous studies, the utilized criteria for analyzing the learning styles have been mostly suitable for and compatible with the situations in developed countries. In the current study, fourteen criteria which comply with the situations of developing countries and are relevant to two dimensions of technological learning resources and inter-organizational factors, have been utilized and applied in order to achieve a more accurate analysis of learning style and innovation.Having studied the relevant information of 138 companies active in the field of ICT, it was shown that the following four learning and innovation styles exist in these companies: 1) Companies with little or no interactional learning styles, 2) Companies with weak STI learning style & 3) Those with combined style STI+DUI. 4. And finally those with experimental and interactional style DUI.The analysis of operational criteria of these companies displayed that the best and the most suitable learning style is the third mentioned style and that the companies with the combined style STI+DUI have experienced the highest level of growth in their turnover.

Latecomers should fill technology, management and marketing gaps in order to catch-up with leading companies. It seems that in large industrial groups, that produces complex systems and products, different capabilities at different levels are formed to fill the gaps with the leading companies. In this research Mapna Group Catch-up in thermal power plant manufacturing industry was investigated. The results show that catch-up at group level encountered considerable complexity, but technological catch-up at factory level as a separable part of group catch-up had significant similarities with classic models. The role and importance of leveraging learning from technological cooperation along with internal targeted efforts in Mapna Group catch-up was also studied. The results can be used as a guide for large industrial group catch-up.

Currently social sciences and humanities are evaluated by the same model and indicator with natural and engineering sciences and there is no specific model for it’s evaluation and this made lots of criticisms between scholars and researchers in these fields, deficiency of evaluations and misinterpretation of social sciences and humanities’ situation in Iran. Because of this necessity, aim of this paper is making a conceptual model and suggesting a multi-dimensional model for evaluating of social sciences and humanities. So with review of literature of roles of humanities and social sciences and choossing integrated approach and developing Burowoy’s 4 kind of sociology to 4 kinds of social sciences and humanities we came to a primary model and then correct it with using multiple research methods including content analysis of Iran and other countries ‘s experiences and qualitative interview with 35 faculty members and research fellow by targeted sampling in 18 different disciplines in this field and finally having current upgrade instruction of faculty members and research fellows in mind, we propose the multidimensional model of evaluation of social sciences and humanities.