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Lundvall, Bengt-Åke; Tomlinson, Mark --- "International benchmarking as a policy learning tool" [2002] ELECD 75; in Rodrigues, João Maria (ed), "The New Knowledge Economy in Europe" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2002)

Book Title: The New Knowledge Economy in Europe

Editor(s): Rodrigues, João Maria

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781840647198

Section: Chapter 6

Section Title: International benchmarking as a policy learning tool

Author(s): Lundvall, Bengt-Åke; Tomlinson, Mark

Number of pages: 29

Extract:

6. International benchmarking as a
policy learning tool
Bengt-Åke Lundvall and Mark Tomlinson


1. INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this chapter is to help build the foundation of processes of
policy learning related to the Portuguese Presidency initiative on
`Economic growth and social cohesion ­ a Europe based on knowledge and
innovation'. More specifically the aim is to give a critical assessment of the
standard uses of benchmarking and to suggest a new kind of benchmark-
ing process that overcomes some of the traditional weaknesses as a method
of international policy learning. New policy `architectures' are required for
the European Union in the face of rapid developments in new technologies
and the increasing complexity that these bring. In a world of rapid change,
learning processes have to become more flexible and variated in order to
cope with new features of socioeconomic life. We argue that naïve and
mechanical applications of benchmarking procedures are highly proble-
matic, because they undermine democracy and give rise to biased processes
of institutional reform. But we also argue that the basic idea behind bench-
marking ­ to stimulate processes of `learning by comparing' ­ is sound and
can be seen as a useful policy learning tool in the new environment.
We start out by analysing the origin of the concept `benchmarking' in the
private sector, but the main focus is on benchmarking involving interna-
tional comparisons of institutions, economic indicators and policies related
to competence building and innovation. We will refer to examples of what
we will ...


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