Journal Articles

Watkins, A., S. Srinivas, D. Wield (2024). Institutional implications for science and industrial capacity: policy lessons from the UK’s pandemic response, Science and Public Policy, Volume 51, Issue 5, October 2024, 850–860.

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Global shortages of critical equipment and supplies induced by COVID-19 forced countries to rapidly build and ramp up their indigenous testing and production capacities. However, the many ways in which institutional and organizational change occurred has not been sufficiently captured. Building domestic capacity requires the leveraging and repurposing of existing domestic scientific and technological capabilities, coupled with intensified global outreach to new and existing partners and suppliers. Using the framework of institutional variety, this paper looks at two facets of the UK’s COVID emergency industrial response: (1) building its laboratory testing capabilities and (2) for increasing production of personal protective equipment; assessing the institutional capacities and relations that were leveraged in this regard. It uses these findings together with observations of ‘innovation processes under emergency conditions’ and the potential uses of a ‘critical equipment policy’ to sharpen some of the recommendations made in the UK’s post-COVID Research and Development Roadmap. Download the article here: https://doi.org/10.1093/scipol/scae029

Srinivas, S. (2023) India and ‘European’ evolutionary political economy. Rev Evol Polit Econ 4, 415–443.

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Evolutionary political economy (EPE) deals with populations and economic change over time but has not been systematised beyond European industrial history. The world’s largest democracy India, despite challenges from COVID-19, is now the fastest growing and 5^th largest economy in the world, transitioning into a distinct period of industrial deepening, with export expansion in engineering products and services, huge outlays on airports, highways and rail systems, new domestic defence initiatives to boost indigenous R&D, yet retains a global diplomatic stance as a responsible nation–state from vaccine sharing to Asian security. This commentary explores the Indian case to argue that EPE’s combinatorial approach to technological capabilities and industrial development can be considerably strengthened from the study of non-European cases. Download the article here: https://doi.org/10.1007/s43253-023-00105-x

Srinivas, S. (2023) “When is Industry Sustainable? The Economics of Institutional Variety in a Pandemic”, Review of Evolutionary Political Economy, Special Issue on Sustainable Industrial Policies (Eds. Ioanna Kastelli, Keun Lee, Lukasz Mamica)

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Industrialising economies today are characterised by a multi-level heterogeneity of customs, norms, guidelines, standards, regulations, and other laws that provide the broad scaffolding and the technical and knowledge context for industrial activity. This Institutional Variety (IV) leads to combinatorial challenges for deciding what is sustainable. Two health industry cases, Oxygen production and Ayurveda, have come into the pandemic spotlight under high demand and high uncertainty, and adapted under compressed timelines. The paper analyses the technological capabilities and knowledge differentiation of the two cases, and the health and ecological consequences of sustainable industrial policies (SIPs) in terms of Institutional Variety (IV). Download the article here: https://doi.org/10.1007/s43253-023-00093-y

Srinivas, S. (2021). “Heuristics and the microeconomics of innovation and development”. Innovation and Development, 11(2-3), 281-302.

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Researchers have long recognized multiple ways of innovating. However, the expositions fail to connect the microeconomics of production sets to the real-world institutional variety required to build technological capabilities and innovate. This paper argues for explicit attention to institutional variety in the heuristics used in innovation policy and practice, and analyses three such heuristics. While some types of social challenges can be addressed through formal science and industrial R&D, the most common proxies for innovation, most industrializing contexts will require changes in institutions and organizations to frame and solve local development problems. The analysis thus bridges the traditional microeconomics of production sets with innovation and development priorities. Download the article here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/2157930X.2021.1986894

Srinivas, S. (2021) Institutional Variety and Ayres-Veblen “Lag”: Implications for Selection and Development, Journal of Economic Issues, 55:2, 293-305

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Firms and nations attempt to build their technological capabilities amidst coexisting systems of knowledge and a variety of institutions. This variety might in principle result in fragmented knowledge and learning systems with no easy adaptation, clear social connection, or shared idea of progress. High institutional variety environments may be innovative but offer an uncertain future environment in which individuals and firms act, and which can paralyze the search and learning process. Download the article here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00213624.2021.1907153?needAccess=true

Srinivas, S. (2020). Institutional variety and the future of economics. Review of Evolutionary Political Economy, 1(1), 13-35.

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This article contributes to new ways of thinking of institutional variety in order to advance scientific argument within the broad tradition of evolutionary political economy (EPE). First, it draws on the Nyāya (Hindu) systems of logic and reasoning about inference and judgement which can potentially reveal inter-and intra-paradigmatic differences for EPE and economics. Second, it uses four brief illustrative cases from the author’s development research on technological learning and innovation to argue for more explicit and systematic treatment of inference and judgement about institutional variety. Download the article here: https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s43253-020-00010-7.pdf

Papaioannou, T., & Srinivas, S. (2019). Innovation as a political process of development: are neo-Schumpeterians value neutral?. Innovation and Development, 9(1), 141-158.

Since the reconstruction of Joseph Schumpeter’s view of innovation as a driver of capitalist development and the subsequent formation of the national innovation systems (NIS) theory in the early 1990s that can be described as neo-Schumpeterian, there has been a continuous attempt to explain innovation in social-scientific terms. However, much of this has positioned innovation as a value-neutral process. We argue that such value-neutrality requires closer analysis because the neo-Schumpeterian thinkers do appear to acknowledge that capitalism itself is an uneven, dynamic process. Read more about it here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/2157930X.2018.1535872

Srinivas, S. (2010). Industrial welfare and the state: Nation and city reconsidered. Theory and Society, 39(3-4), 451-470.

It is simplistic to argue linear growth of national welfare or of states autonomously regulating markets to achieve risk-mitigation. I contend that welfare institutions emerge from the state’s essential conflict and collaboration with
various alternate institutions in cities and regions. Using histories of Europe, India, and Karnataka, I propose a place-based, work-based, and work-place based welfare typology evolving at differential rates. Although economic imperatives exist to expand local risk-pools, it is precisely the alternate institutional diversity that makes late industrial nation-states unable or unwilling to do so. Read more about it here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11186-010-9116-2

Srinivas, S., & Sutz, J. (2008). Developing countries and innovation: Searching for a new analytical approach. Technology in society, 30(2), 129-140.

This article argues that the technological innovation is a contextual process whose relevance should be assessed
depending on the socio-economic condition it is embedded in. Without this, technology-led economic policies (of CatchUp varieties) are unlikely to meet the needs of most people, especially in countries where innovation and poverty reside side by side. We analyse micro-level account of the cognitive and socio-economic context within which innovations arise and argue that a process of real importance is being sidelined: the ability to innovate under ‘scarcity’ conditions. Read more about it here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160791X07000863

Srinivas, S. K-J Kosonen, K Viljamaa, J Nummi (2008) Varieties of Innovation and Welfare Regimes: The Leap from R&D Projects to the Development of City-regions, European Planning Studies, 16 (9) 1267-1291

In both the welfare capitalism and the systems of innovation literatures, the university is a critical actor as public employer, trainer and provider of several public goods. However, in both literatures there is relatively weak enquiry into the spatial and institutional characteristics of how university-led economic development occurs in practice and a relative neglect of the political economy of organisation of embedded R&D projects in urban and regional planning.We argue that technical projects,far from being stand-alone entities, have taken on the broad characteristics of the university and city-regional development mandate in where they reside. The article is based on an exploratory study of university-industry R&D projects in six city regions of Finland. We show that (a) the shifting role of universities reflects a changed context for the welfare state in which the “public” debate occurs. (b) These create distinct issues of legitimacy and coalition-building in local economic planning which give rise to diverse regional interpretations of single technology programmes. (c) We categorise three general types of models of R&D projects in universities and propose tentative categories of contributions to “public knowledge”. This diversity of interpretations and outcomes leaves us optimistic regarding the ability of city-regions to adapt and plan for the future against a changing welfare state that shapes the university’s role, yet more cautious about any clear-cut “public knowledge” emerging from such technical projects.

Read more about it here: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Smita_Srinivas/publication/240523793_Varieties_of_Innovation_and_Welfare_Regimes_The_Leap_from_RD_Projects_to_the_Development_of_City-regions/links/0deec52998eb2c02e7000000.pdf

S Srinivas and K Viljamaa (2008) Emergence of economic institutions: Analysing the third role of universities in Turku, Finland, Regional Studies 42 (3), 323-341

How do universities become economic development institutions? The normative ”Third Role” in Europe refers to universities taking on explicit economic development mandates such as greater technology transfer, and commercial outputs, without providing much of a compass for institutional change. We argue that universities transform themselves into economic institutions against a changing canvas of national welfare by a process of ”task-oriented institutionalisation” which involves both individual action and university strategy. We investigate two universities’ interactions with firms in Turku, Finland’s biotechnology concentration. Using universities as a lens, we find notable gaps in frameworks on how economic institutions emerge, and conclude with five hypotheses for future studies on universities, institutions and economic development. Read more about it here: https://rsa.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00343400701291534

Sotarauta, M., & Srinivas, S. (2006). Co-evolutionary policy processes: Understanding innovative economies and future resilience. Futures, 38(3), 312-336.

The great debates of most fields associated with economic development rest on emergence versus intention and the interplay between the two. The ‘residual’ of unexplained divergence between goal and outcome, in this sense, can be ascribed in part to the interplay, or co-evolution, between policies (intention) and self-organizing (emergent) development. Do public policy and economic development co-evolve in technologically innovative economies, and if so, how?. Read more about it here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0016328705001369