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MA/PhD Theses Abstracts of Current Students & Alumni |
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Hagen, Guy. 1996 - The Technology Deployment Center: Communication and Organization for Economic Development and Technology Transfer.
Abstract: This thesis addresses research undertaken during a graduate internship at the Technology Deployment Center (TDC). The Center is a federal demonstration project initiated to convert facilities, equipment, expertise, and administration of a Department of Energy defense plant to a civilian mission. The Center is a cooperative partnership between the University of South Florida, Lockheed Martin Specialty Components, the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense, designed to leverage applied research and development sponsorship with federal funds. The internship was undertaken in partial fulfillment of requirements for a Master's Degree in Applied Anthropology at the University of South Florida. The internship consisted of organizational research for strategic planning activities as directed by TDC administration. The goals of the internship included establlishing an academic, interdisciplinary record of the TDC program, to provide research information for TDC administration, and to investigate the substantive issues of technology transfer, defense conversion and economic development as they pertained to the Center's mission. The research consisted of three distinct projects which serve as the basis for this thesis. The first project included background literature research into the substantive issues of technology transfer and development, federal defense conversion policies and economic development. The second project addressed development of an organizational case study framework based upon open systems theory and social network analysis, and its application to economic development and conversion programs on national, regional and local levels. The final project consisted of analysis of the data gathered in a communication survey to assess level of coordination and leadership in Tampa Bay economic development efforts. This thesis discusses each of these projects in depth and concludes with a discussion of research implications and avenues for future research, as well as a discussion of the impacts of anthropological perspective on the research.
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