Suchergebnisse

In the past, studies on inclusive development involve mainly the perspective of equitable distribution of economic and societal outputs. This study, however, takes a different approach and analyses the potential roles of regional coordination mechanisms (RCMs), specifically universities and research council's networks within Southeast Asia, in disseminating the innovation-related activities for inclusive development or Innovation for Inclusive Development (IID). The literature on innovation intermediaries within the realm of innovation systems studies was used to establish the framework of the study. The findings indicate that RCMs have a huge potential role to play. However, due to a number of reasons, including lack of funding support, lack of attention and commitment to IID, weak engagement with industry and non-governmental organisations, the implementation of the IID activities was rather poor. As a whole, the study argues that current approaches are not well positioned and it is fragmented preventing the effective use of RCMs despite their potentials for IID efforts. The study attributes this to the systemic failures in the regional coordinating systems. In enhancing the role of RCMs in IID, this study recommends the promotion of IID platform, the leveraging of non-government organisations and industry as well as energising the Southeast Asia engagement in promoting IID. (Pac Rev/GIGA)

This article is asking how service design can be used for development and improving livelihoods in the margin? The margin can be geographical but is can also be created around complex wicked problems that have resulted from historical or societal reasons. The article presents two cases studies where the margin is constructed around two different situations. The first case is looking at the arctic context of Lapland where geography causes marginalization and isolation. This case study is connected with "IKÄEHYT" project focusing on designing services with the elderly. The project was run in 14 Lappish communities to increase accessibility, inclusion and wellbeing. The second case is looking at indigenous San communities in South Africa where historical and societal context is creating a challenging situation for the local youth. The second case study is presenting "PARTY" project (Participatory Development) with youth where service design is used to increase the youth participation in open democratic society and in designing their services. The article has a strong social design ethos. The article gives a brief overview on social design debates and uses that as a framework to analyze the case studies. Both case studies contribute to the rethinking of the marginal, how it is constructed and how service design can be used to create new solutions to overcome the challenges.

The present thesis examines the relationship between contract, on the one hand, and publicity and privacy rights, on the other hand. The possibility to dispose of publicity rights – which, in the Italian system, are not easily separated from privacy rights – by means of contract is traditionally denied, due to the alleged inalienability of such rights. The first part of this work therefore analyses the meaning of inalienability, aiming to investigate the reasons underlying the traditional doctrine, and concludes that, in the modern economy, there are no solid grounds on which to reject the possibility to dispose of one's publicity rights. The thesis then examines the different kinds of contracts in question, which range from merchandising to film-making agreements, from endorsement contracts to agreements aimed to authorize the processing of personal data. The regulation of such contracts - which is not explicitly provided for by the legislator – must take into account the need to protect the person in the disposition of rights which are strongly connected to her personality. For this purpose, these agreements are subject to strict interpretation and the person must be granted the right to recede from the contract in certain qualified circumstances. The thesis therefore analyses such regulation and focuses, more specifically, on the consequences on our subject matter of the legislation on personal data.

The building sector is responsible for consuming approximately 40% of the final energy in Europe. However, more than 50% of this consumption can be reduced through energy-efficient measures. Our society is facing not only a severe and unprecedented environmental crisis but also an economic crisis of similar magnitude. In light of this, EU has developed legislation promoting the use of the Cost-Optimal (CO) method in order to improve building energy efficiency, in which selection criteria is based on life cycle costs. Nevertheless, studies show that the implementation of energy-efficient solutions is far from ideal. Therefore, it is very important to analyse the reasons for this gap between theory and implementation as well as improve selection methods. This study aims to develop a methodology based on a cost-effectiveness analysis, which can be seen as an improvement to the CO method as it considers the investment willingness of stakeholders in the selection process of energy-efficient solutions. The method uses a simple graphical display in which the stakeholdersâ investment willingness is identified as the slope of a reference line, allowing easy selection between building solutions. This method will lead to the selection of more desired â from stakeholdersâ point of view â and more energy-efficient solutions than those selected through the CO ...

In recent years, there has been a sharp growth in political and sociological interest in the British military. Set against the backdrop of the armed forces' increasing presence in everyday life, alongside the organizations' ongoing restructuring, the current paper focuses on the MoD's problematic attempts to recruit 30,000 reservists by 2020; what has become known as the Future Reserves 2020 programme (FR2020). We argue that these changes are driven in part by the need to cut costs in defence. However, we also suggest that they are a reflection of the changing nature of modern military organisation, and the manner in which armed forces engage with the societies of which they are a part, and with the citizens that make up that society. We locate FR2020 programme in the context of a wider narrative about the changing nature of military organisation in contemporary western democracies, identifying structural, circumstantial and normative reasons for change. We also examine the specific challenges of implementing FR2020 in practice, including issues of recruitment and retention, integration and support, and relations with families and employers, drawing on the experience of comparator countries to do so. We conclude by considering the implications of these changes, both for the future of UK armed forces, and for the evolving nature of military-society relations in Britain.

peer-reviewed ; This study investigates the internal and external pressures which explain the adoption or non-adoption of the Irish human resource development standard among organisations. National governments use a variety of strategies and policy measures to encourage organisations and individuals to invest in human capital. A National human resource development standard (NHRD) is one such measure. This research moves beyond the dominant view in the literature that organisations adopt practices for rational reasons. This is the first study to utilise institutional theory to explain the adoption of a NHRD standard. Organisations that had adopted the Irish NHRD standard and non-adopter organisations were surveyed. The results of the logistic regression analysis show that there are some notable differences between adopter and non adopter organisations. This study makes some important contributions as it offers empirical evidence that some relationships between adoption of a NHRD standard and independent variables do exist. The research model and associated hypotheses advances the theoretical understandings of the internal and external pressures which explain the adoption of a NHRD standard. The results provide a new means of understanding organisations' responses to the internal and external pressures in the adoption of a NHRD standard.This study adds to a currently sparse literature on the adoption of a NHRD standard.

In June 2010, European Union (EU) Heads of State and Government adopted a social inclusion target as part of the new 'Europe 2020 Strategy': to lift at least 20 million people in the EU from the risk of poverty and exclusion by 2020. One of the three indicators used to monitor progress towards this target is the EU indicator of severe material deprivation (MD). A main limitation of this indicator is the weak reliability of some of the items it is based on. For this reason, a thematic module on MD was included in the 2009 wave of the EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) survey. This article assesses the 2009 EU-SILC MD data and proposes an analytical framework for developing robust EU MD indicators. It carries out a systematic item by item analysis at both EU and country levels to identify the MD items which satisfactorily meet suitability, validity, reliability and additivity criteria across the EU. This approach has resulted in a proposed 13-item MD indicator covering some key aspects of living conditions which are customary across the whole EU covering a broad range of basic (food, clothes, shoes, etc.) as well as social (Internet, regular leisure activities, etc.) necessities.

Despite compelling reasons to involve nonscientists in the production of ecological knowledge, cultural and institutional factors often dis-incentivize engagement between scientists and nonscientists. This paper details our efforts to develop a biweekly newspaper column to increase communication between ecological scientists, social scientists, and the communities within which they work. Addressing community-generated topics and written by a collective of social and natural scientists, the column is meant to foster public dialog about socio-environmental issues and to lay the groundwork for the coproduction of environmental knowledge. Our collective approach to writing addresses some major barriers to public engagement by scientists, but the need to insert ourselves as intermediaries limits these gains. Overall, our efforts at environmental communication praxis have not generated significant public debate, but they have supported future coproduction by making scientists a more visible presence in the community and providing easy pathways for them to begin engaging the public. Finally, this research highlights an underappreciated barrier to public engagement: scientists are not merely disconnected from the public, but also connected in ways that may be functional for their research. Many field scientists, for example, seek out neutral and narrowly defined connections that permit research access but are largely incompatible with efforts to address controversial issues of environmental governance.

This paper examines the impact of low fertility and early age at sterilisation on women's formal education and skill development in South India. Multilevel ordered-logit modelling of pseudo-cohort data re-organised from the three rounds of National Family Health Survey, and thematic analysis of qualitative data collected from Tamil Nadu and Kerala states showed no evidence of women's resumption of formal education or uptake of skill development training in the post-sterilisation and post-childcare period. While resuming formal education in the post-sterilisation and post-childcare period is harder to achieve for various individual, household, community and policy reasons, there is greater preparedness and support for women to undertake skill development training. As low fertility and early age at sterilisation are widely regarded as the emerging reproductive norm in India, post-sterilisation and -childcare women will be a significant population group both in number and in proportional terms. No government policies or programs have so far recognised this group. India's new government should consider targeted skill development programs for post-sterilisation and -childcare women appropriate to their social, economic and educational levels. An important contribution of the family planning program, particularly female sterilisation, for the economic and social development of the family and the wider society will otherwise be lost.

Priority setting of health interventions is generally considered as a valuable approach to support low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) in their strive for universal health coverage (UHC). However, present initiatives on priority setting are mainly geared towards the development of more cost-effectiveness information, and this evidence does not sufficiently support countries to make optimal choices. The reason is that priority setting is in reality a value-laden political process in which multiple criteria beyond cost-effectiveness are important, and stakeholders often justifiably disagree about the relative importance of these criteria. Here, we propose the use of 'evidence-informed deliberative processes' as an approach that does explicitly recognise priority setting as a political process and an intrinsically complex task. In these processes, deliberation between stakeholders is crucial to identify, reflect and learn about the meaning and importance of values, informed by evidence on these values. Such processes then result in the use of a broader range of explicit criteria that can be seen as the product of both international learning ('core' criteria, which include eg, cost-effectiveness, priority to the worse off, and financial protection) and learning among local stakeholders ('contextual' criteria). We believe that, with these evidence-informed deliberative processes in place, priority setting can provide a more meaningful contribution to achieving UHC.

In 2013, the government has made the pulps and papers industries into a strategic sector. The decision to make the pulp and papers as the strategic sector, proved that the government is serious in developing companies in this sector. However, in the same year the producer's margin in the Asia market has dropped. Hence, due to the two reasons, the financial performance of the Pulps and Papers in Indonesia need to be evaluated. The objective of the research is to evaluate the financial performance of the pulps and papers companies in Indonesia. The method is using the financial ratio and economic value added that is obtained from the financial data report. The data are entered and processed using Excel software. The result obtained is that in a long term, the Tjiwi Kimia paper company has the best financial performance in solvability and profitability, while Indah Kiat Pulps and Papers Company have the best long term liquidity. In a long term, there are no companies have the best economic value added. In 2013, Indah Kiat Pulps and Papers have the best financial performance in terms of liquidity, profitability and economic value added production, while Tjiwi Kimia Company has the best solvability. Keywords: economic value added, financial performance evaluation, pulp and papers, financial ratio, financial report

Digital Technology is radically changing the way how business and governments operate in today's scenario. From how businesses and governments interact with customers, citizens and suppliers, to how they manage their employees; digitization has entered almost every aspect of our lives. The field of HR is also one of the areas where digital technology has found its way. Human resource management is now evolving into a more technology-based profession. Gone are the days when HR function shouldered the responsibility for managing people in their old traditional ways. Transformation of HR through digital technology has become call of the day. In the light of this rapidly changing scenario where digitization is evolving at a breakneck speed; HR departments that choose to ignore this transformation could face obsolescence. This research paper talks about the probable reasons why transformation in the field of HR is required and what will be its impact on the business performance. This is because many organizations may undertake this activity just for the sake of it. It is quite possible that a transformation will make a little impact on the organization. The paper also focuses on the benefits and hindrances of digital technology in the area HR and the future trends that can be seen in this field so that the companies can make the best advantage of this transformation.

In 2015, the Regional Studies Association (RSA) celebrated 50 years and one of the keywords of this (hi)story is "impactful". Having an impact requires to be able to bring research-based knowledge to policymakers moving out of the academic 'Ivory Tower' and engaging in policy debate, thus acknowledging the societal role of research. Yet, this requires changing the traditional approach to research, academic conferences, publications and scientific workshops. This volume aims to tackle the challenge of a research-policy dialogue addressing the case of the Cohesion Policy (CP), the most important EU regional policy and, probably, the most complex policy in the world for economic, social, geographical, cultural, administrative and legal reasons. This challenge is even more relevant in this period when Europe is showing difficulties to fully recover from the financial and economic crisis that started in 2008, and the following political crisis that culminated with 'Brexit'. In this context, researchers are called to be 'impactful', proposing research-based policy lessons that can feed the political debate. In a period of crisis, research-policy dialogue is needed; however, how to make it happen is not easy. This volume adopts a 'policy learning' perspective proposing sixteen different research-based policy lessons to contribute to the debate on policy learning in the case of the EU Cohesion Policy, and beyond.

The article sheds the light on the Georgian-Russian long negotiations at the Russia's bid to join WTO. The paper discloses details and strategies of bilateral trade diplomacy, offers more in depth analyses and better understanding of reasons and circumstances which led to the long negotiations cycle and time-to-time breaking of entire Russia's WTOaccession process. It is shown that the crisis in relations between Tbilisi and Moscow in most cases was politically motivated and often negatively affected the trade talks. The author tries to respond to speculations about Georgia's "troublemaking" at the WTO deliberations, which was caused by the lack of information and understanding of the background the Georgia-Russia standoff and diplomatic strategies and tools practiced by theboth countries. The current work at the certain degree fills the gap in knowledge of "big country–small country" trade dispute resolution, explores better understanding of negotiations process and its peculiarities as well as outcome of 11 years of start-stop talks. The research concentrates on long pending customs checkpoint issues as well as "costs and benefits" questions and concludes that the signed Agreement on customs administration and monitoring of trade across the contested borders and the enforcement process did not meet Tbilisi's high expectations in five years time since its conclusion.

During 2012-2013, the homicide rate in El Salvador came down from 69.9 to 42.2 per 100,000 population following a truce between the leaders of the two major gangs, "Mara Salvatrucha" and "Barrio 18", and government. But despite the apparent successes of the truce, it was speculated that the drop in murders could have been due to the killers simply hid the bodies of their victims. This paper aims at determining whether gangs effectively disappeared their victims to cut down the official counts of murders, or they committed these crimes for other reasons. The results from this study suggest that Salvadoran gangs had been using disappearance as a resource to gain sustained social control among residents of already gang-dominated areas, that together with homicide, disappearance is part of a process of territorial spread and strategic strengthening by which these groups are enhancing their capabilities to interfere in the alliances of Mexican drug trafficking organizations with Central American criminal organizations specializing in the transshipment of drugs and in providing access to local markets to distribute and sell drugs. Our findings show that the risk for disappearance has been large even before the truce was in place and that actually, it continues as such and going through a process of geographic expansion.