Evaluating Public Policy Formation and Support Mechanisms for Technological Innovation
Abstract
Policy evaluation is a complex task. Most approaches now adopt a mixed method approach combining both quantitative and qualitative techniques. A shortcoming of the standard approaches is that they fail to measure or investigate deeper perceptions of the policy. In this paper the usefulness of projective techniques as a tool for policy evaluation is investigated. Projective techniques are widely used in psychology and consumer studies but their usefulness in policy evaluation has still to be assessed. A simple evaluation is done in this paper by reporting on a study of owner-managers of tradeable-services small and medium size enterprises attitudes to Government e-business policy. The survey included firms from Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland and New Zealand. Traditional quantitative and qualitative survey techniques were used, however these failed to produce conclusive evidence. To overcome this limitation two projective techniques- word association and completion tests were employed as an additional evaluation method. The paper illustrates how the results of projective techniques can be analysed using both context and matrix analysis. Given that the area of e-business is dynamic and fast changing and that SMEs are extremely heterogeneous, it is argued that the application of projective techniques to assess their attitudes and perceptions of government policy is a good test of the usefulness of the method. The results of the projective techniques lead to more insight into the perceptions and attitudes of the owner-managers and provide interesting individual perspectives into the issues. Problems with the method, such as costs, the level of skill needed to apply the technique and generalization are highlighted. The overall conclusions are that projective techniques could provide an interesting additional tool for policy evaluation and that further assessment of its usefulness is needed.Download Info
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Paper provided by University Library of Munich, Germany in its series MPRA Paper with number 253.Length:
Date of creation: Jul 2006
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:253
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Related research
Keywords: Policy evaluation; Projective techniques: E-business; SMEs;Other versions of this item:
- Elaine Ramsey & Derek Bond, 2007. "Evaluating Public Policy Formation and Support Mechanisms for Technological Innovation," International Review of Applied Economics, Taylor and Francis Journals, vol. 21(3), pages 403-418.
- O32 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Technological Change; Research and Development; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Management of Technological Innovation and R&D
- O38 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Technological Change; Research and Development; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Government Policy
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
- NEP-ALL-2006-10-21 (All new papers)
- NEP-ENT-2006-10-21 (Entrepreneurship)
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Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
- Mr Clive Boddy & Mr Derek Bond & Dr Elaine Ramsey, .
"Projective Techniques Are they a Victom of Clashing Paradigms,"
Business Retail and Financial Services Working Papers
1, Ulster Business School.
- Bond, Derek & Ramsey, Elaine & Boddy, Clive R., 2011. "Projective techniques: Are they a victim of clashing paradigms?," MPRA Paper 33331, University Library of Munich, Germany.
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