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The "analysis of the role and engagement of universities with regard to participation in the framework programmes" was launched by the European Commission, DG RTD, to contribute to a better understanding of the motivations for university participation in the Framework Programmes for research and technological development, the resulting patterns of cooperation and their effects. The study aimed at providing evidence on universities in the context of the ex-post evaluation of FP7. The analysis highlights that university participation in European FPs and the corresponding funding is concentrated in some countries and organisations. There is stability in leadership, meaning that rankings did not change significantly over time. While motivations for participating are roughly comparable across countries and are linked mostly to the drive to improve reputation, output quality and competitiveness, the reasons behind persistent success of some players are to be found mainly in accumulated experience, efficacy of support staff and quality of people, which are also linked to wider national contexts. The quality of the projects' outputs is high on average, suggesting that the FP7 objective to promote excellence and attractiveness was, to a varying degree, achieved. More could have been done to create a cohesive and inclusive ERA and to contribute to reduce the regional variation in research and innovation performance. Free circulation of knowledge outside the well-established, long standing linkages among strong research intensive universities could have been also better facilitated in the FPs.

This chapter melds these interests of understanding how the context of e-Commerce and family business affects organisational form and subsequently organisational identity by integrating a narrative about the development of family business and e-Commerce in China with an exploratory analysis of two Chinese family businesses. Institutional theory informs this discussion (Scott, 2008: Suddaby, Elsbach, Greenwood, Meyer and Zilber, 2010). After describing why businesses adopt e-Commerce, and illustrating the contextual conditions in China that foster the development of private enterprises such as family businesses, and the adoption of e-Commerce, the chapter subsequently explores the question “given the context of “newness” of both private enterprises such as family businesses and e-Commerce in China, how is the organisational form of family businesses in China affected by the adoption of e-Commerce?” The chapter thus makes a contribution to the edited collection by providing some insights about how institutional contexts create both opportunity and challenges for the sustainability of the family business model in the digital economy