Suchergebnisse

One of the main problems confronting the world of the 21st Century is a shortage of water. There is already severe scarcity in many regions of the world, causing tremendous problems for local populations and indeed entire societies. There is insufficient water available for the production of food to alleviate poverty and starvation; the lack of water hampers industrial, urban and tourism development, forcing restrictions on other sectors, especially agriculture; health problems arise as the deterioration of ground and surface waters favours water-borne diseases, which flourish in the absence of decent water distribution and sewerage systems. Water conflicts still arise in areas under stress, while water for nature has become a vanishing priority in such zones. This book is a guide to the establishment of regional and/or local guidelines for developing and implementing new ideas for coping with water scarcity. The basic premise underlying the book is that water scarcity will persist, so personal, human and society-wide skills will be needed to cope with it while living in harmony with the necessary environmental constraints. The book provides basic information to assist decision makers, water managers, engineers, agronomists, social scientists and other professions (and their students) in formulating coherent, hopefully harmonious and consolidated views on the issue. Guidelines are also given for introducing the general public to the concept of water scarcity and how to deal with it--

In the second half of the nineteenth century, Portugal built the main branches of its railway system. In this paper, I will use technical and military reports, parliamentary debates and sundry bibliography to analyse the influence of the different stakeholders. I investigated the expectations, priorities and agendas of engineers, army officers, policymakers and lobbyists in the design of the Portuguese railway network. I argue that historiography about Portuguese railways usually considers the rationale behind their discussion as entirely technological and focuses mainly on their outputs, taking railways for granted, or black-boxed. However, the planification of large transportation systems depends on the sociotechnical context and on hierarchies of power of their time. I will show that experts (mostly engineers) played a decisive role in the planning of the network, but a large part of its design was due to non-technical issues, including political machinations, budgetary constraints and corporative lobbying. ; authorsversion ; published

In this article, the relationship between populist attitudes and conventional and unconventional forms of political participation in Portugal is explored. The data analysis allows us to conclude that these attitudes are linked to a greater likelihood of party affiliation as well as expressive and nonpartisan modes of participation such as association membership, demonstrations, petition signing, and purchasing or boycotting products and services for political, ethical or environmental reasons. On the other hand, populist attitudes are not related to instances of extreme unconventional participation such as blocking roads or railway lines, occupying buildings or factories and damaging public spaces. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

'This paper uses an endogenous structural breaks procedure that provides additional evidence on two alternative views of the British Industrial Revolution. The tests are carried out for two periods: 1750-1800 and 1800-1850. The empirical results show that structural breaks occurred in most British industries throughout the period, suggesting that growth was pervasive and not localized in the iron and cotton industries. Growth accelerated in most industries throughout the period, which indicates an increasing dynamism of the British economy.' (author's abstract)

Volltext // Exemplar mit der Signatur: München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek -- Am.a. 3034 z

Despite a great flourishing of studies on election campaigns, the issue of individualized campaigns has been widely neglected, especially from a comparative perspective. Yet, campaigns differ not only in terms of strategy or style, but also with regard to the role played by individual candidates. This article examines the variation of both the communicative focus and the resources used by candidates across different Western democracies. Using data from the Comparative Candidate Surveys (CCS), it tests the impact of several institutional and political features on campaign individualization. Our results show that both electoral systems and the legal framework regulating electoral contests display a significant impact on campaign individualization. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

Este artigo pretende examinar os sepultamentos realizados no cemitério dos Pretos Novos, à luz da abordagem da história cultural. Buscando analisar os aparelhos simbólicos partilhados por ambas as culturas, a fim de resgatar a especificidade do referido campo santo e o seu lugar na sociedade brasileira dos séculos XVII a XIX.

Are there productivity spillovers from FDI to domestic firms, and, if so, how much should host countries be willing to pay to attract FDI? To examine these questions, we use a plant-level panel covering U.K. manufacturing from 1973 through 1992. Consistent with spillovers, we estimate a robust and significantly positive correlation between a domestic plant's TFP and the foreign-affiliate share of activity in that plant's industry. Typical estimates suggest that a 10-percentage-point increase in foreign presence in a U.K. industry raises the TFP of that industry's domestic plants by about 0.5%. We also use these estimates to calculate the per-job value of these spillovers at about £2,400 in 2000 prices ($4,300). These calculated values appear to be less than per-job incentives governments have granted in recent high-profile cases, in some cases several times less.

Abstract Purpose: This paper aims to examine the influence of social media management practices on hotel performance. Originality/value: The hotel industry is undergoing organizational transformations due to the insertion of social media as a communication platform that engages customers. Given this, verifying whether social media can collaborate on internal resources and help the companies' performance has been a potential source of studies. Design/methodology/approach: The study sample comprised 67 hotels. To this end, hotel managers conducted face-to-face interviews to collect data from their respective hotels. Data were collected using social media management practices and performance measures measured through RevPAR (a revenue division by total rooms available) and online review scores from Booking.com. Exploratory factor analysis and multiple regression analysis were applied to evaluate the study's hypotheses from a quantitative approach. Findings: It was evidenced that social media management practices can be categorized into monitoring and comment responsing practices and the dimension of responsiveness and information dissemination practices. These practices positively influence hotel performance measured through online review scores and revenue measured through RevPAR. Given the results, it is expected that hotels will have competitive advantages by managing their resources with the help of social media and that studies in this sector will gain more visibility.

Resumo Objetivo: Este artigo tem como objetivo examinar a influência das práticas de gerenciamento de mídias sociais no desempenho dos hotéis. Originalidade/valor: O setor hoteleiro está passando por algumas transformações gerenciais por causa da inserção das mídias sociais como plataformas de comunicação que envolvem os clientes. Diante disso, verificar se as mídias sociais podem colaborar nos recursos internos e ajudar no desempenho das empresas tem sido uma fonte potencial de estudos. Design/metodologia/abordagem: A amostra do estudo apresentou 67 hotéis. Para isso, foram realizadas entrevistas presenciais com gestores hoteleiros a fim de coletar os dados de seus respectivos hotéis. Coletaram-se dados sobre a utilização de práticas de gerenciamento de mídias sociais e sobre medidas de desempenho mensuradas por meio do RevPAR (divisão das receitas pelo total de quartos disponíveis) e das notas de avaliação on-line do site Booking.com. A partir de uma abordagem quantitativa, aplicaram-se as técnicas de análise fatorial exploratória e análise de regressão múltipla para avaliar as hipóteses do estudo. Resultados: Evidenciaram-se que as práticas de gerenciamento de mídias sociais podem ser categorizadas na dimensão de práticas de monitoramento e de resposta aos comentários, e na dimensão de práticas de responsividade e disseminação de informações. A utilização dessas práticas influencia positivamente no desempenho hoteleiro medido por meio de notas de avaliação on-line e nas receitas medidas por meio do RevPAR. Diante dos resultados, espera-se que os hotéis tenham vantagens competitivas ao gerenciarem seus recursos com a ajuda das mídias sociais e que estudos nesse setor ganhem mais visibilidade.