Knowledge and Competitive Advantage or Decline and Fall of Public Service Broadcasting

Knowledge and Competitive Advantage: The Coevolution of Firms, Technology, and national Institutions

Author: Johann Peter Murmann

Entrepreneurs, managers, and policy makers must make decisions about a future that is inherently uncertain. Since the only rational guide for the future is the past, analysis of previous episodes in industrial development can shape informed decisions about what the future will hold. Historical scholarship that seeks to uncover systematically the causal processes transforming industries is thus of vital importance to the executives and managers shaping business policy today. With this in mind, Johann Peter Murmann compares the development of the synthetic dye industry in Great Britain, Germany, and the United States through the lenses of evolutionary theory. The rise of this industry constitutes an important chapter in business, economic, and technological history because synthetic dyes, invented in 1856, were the first scientific discovery quickly to give rise to a new industry. Just as with contemporary high tech industries, the synthetic dye business faced considerable uncertainty that led to many surprises for the agents involved. After the discovery of synthetic dyes, British firms led the industry for the first eight years, but German firms came to dominate the industry for decades; American firms, in contrast, played only a minor role in this important development. Murmann identifies differences in educational institutions and patent laws as the key reasons for German leadership in the industry. Successful firms developed strong ties to the centers of organic chemistry knowledge. As Murmann demonstrates, a complex coevolutionary process linking firms, technology, and national institutions resulted in very different degrees of industrial success among the dye firms in thethree countries.

Book about: Boots on the Ground or The SWAT Workout

Decline and Fall of Public Service Broadcasting

Author: Michael Tracey

Public broadcasting is arguably the single most important social, cultural, and journalistic institution of the 20th century. In the past 15 years it has been assaulted politically, ideologically, and technologically. Today it is everywhere in retreat. This book considers the very idea of public service broadcasting, studying in detail the many assaults made upon it--with specific emphasis on developments and events in the UK, Japan, Europe, and the US. Tracey argues that public service broadcasting has been a vital and democratically significant institution in the past, and that it is now experiencing a terminal decline brought about by great changes in political, economic, and technological circumstances. Based on years of research, and on extensive contact with leading public broadcasters around the world, this book examines the ways in which, for the most part, public service broadcasting has vainly (and often ineffectually) struggled to survive in recent years.

Table of Contents:

1	Public Service Broadcasting in the Post-war World	3
2	Principles of Public Service Broadcasting	18
3	The Deconstruction of Public Service Broadcasting	33
4	Reinventing the BBC in the 1950s	65
5	The BBC and Funding	98
6	Conquerors, Culture, and Communication: The Foundation of Post-war Japanese Broadcasting	121
7	The Making of an Institution: The Rebirth of NHK	131
8	Conquerors, Culture, and Communication: The Intellectual Roots of Post-war German Broadcasting	151
9	Conquerors, Culture, and Communication: The Creation of Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk	165
10	Video Kombat and Highway-Building	183
11	The New Television in Britain	201
12	Broadcasting and New Technologies: The Case of Japan	220
13	A Stricken Place: The Condition of American Public Television	240
14	The Ceremony of Innocence: A Conclusion about the Condition of Public Service Broadcasting	259
	Bibliography	289
	Index	291