Suchergebnisse

In addition to retaining high levels of customer satisfaction, sustainability of businesses is also heavily reliant on the efficiency of their internal and external processes. Continuous performance evaluations using key performance metrics to leverage operations are essential in maintaining a sustainable business while achieving growth objectives for revenue and profitability. Traditionally, companies have considered various financial criteria, quality characteristics, and targeted levels of service as their primary factors for performance evaluation. However, increasing environmental and social awareness and accompanying governmental legislations are now requiring companies to integrate these two aspects into their performance evaluations. With this motivation, this study proposes a Balanced Scorecard (BSC)-based approach combining Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) and Analytic Network Process (ANP) methodologies for performance evaluation. The grey system theory has been utilized in order to capture the vagueness and the uncertainty in decision making. To demonstrate the functionality of the approach, a case study is conducted on a U.S.-based food franchise. The results of the algorithm and a discussion elaborating on the findings are provided.

Classical agricultural development paradigms prioritise basic requirements such as agronomic, caloric and economic needs for the target environment and for beneficiaries. As challenges associated with climate change, globalisation, and population growth compound and amplify one another, project scope must be broadened to take a holistic food systems approach that includes sociocultural and historical contexts, as well as climate impacts as underpinning project design. In this paper, we illustrate the importance of adopting a food systems development paradigm rather than a classical agricultural development paradigm through a case study in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea. The case uses Rich Picturing, targeted and focus-group interviews, and garden visits in remote Bougainville; it provides a poignant illustration of the importance of this more holistic perspective given the historical inefficacy of food systems development, as well as Papua New Guinea's exposure to a plethora of compounding environmental, social, economic, and political stresses and shocks that demonstrate the important linkages between ecosystem services and health. The study aims to demonstrate how including localised gender dynamics, climate vulnerability, rapidly morphing social norms, and climate analogue environments is critical in building food systems resilience and is key to designing policies, programs, and development projects that more effectively address environmental, sociocultural, and health considerations. Building on the inadequacies in agricultural development efforts previously documented for Papua New Guinea, we propose an improved framing for food systems development and identify areas for future research.

This qualitative study using a grounded theory approach, assesses the construction of claims in online news articles and below the line comments in connection with foodbank use in the West Midlands region, UK. The sample includes 146 online news articles and 132 below the line comments, commencing 23 September 2010 until 8 April 2019. Individual foodbank users' stories are told and these relay discourses of stigma, shame, embarrassment and desperation. In contrast, the below the line comments centre on the undeserving poor. Here, emphasis is on the migrants who are 'flooding' the country, and the scroungers who are work-shy.

The "2013-2014 Data & Trends of the European food and drink industry" report provides a comprehensive description of the food and beverage industry, the largest manufacturing sector in the EU. That report emphasises the consumer expectations as the driving force for in- dustrial innovation. Consumer expectations are classied in five axes: pleasure, health, physical, convenience and ethics. Although price remains a key criterion of most purchasing decisions, pleasure, convenience and health are driving factors of food market evolution. In a largely atomised sector, with thousands of SME companies in Europe accounting for more than the 50% of food and drink industry turnover, the challenge to remain competitive, is not only to spot the product that will deliver business, but to be the first in developing and delivering it to the market. Typically the food industry largely relied on tradition for the formulation of new food products or the improvement of existing ones. However, this approach is no longer suitable due to the necessity to respond rapidly to changes in consumers' preferences. As a consequence, there is currently a great deal of technological de- velopment in food industry both at the "product" and at the "process" levels. New product developments combine strategic and organisational actions with technical effort; the former dealing with the management of the development process, strategic placement and launch of the new product; the latter concerned with the design of the product and its manufacturing process (Charpentier and McKenna, 2004; Costa et al., 2006). From a practical point of view, the design of a new product involves the embodiment of two major pillars: i) components and properties (or attributes), and ii) processes, storage and usage conditions. Attributes are often used to characterise the quality of the product from the consumer perspective, and will be referred as quality factors from now on. In many cases, as in fried or baked foods, these quality factors are inherently subjective ...

The effect of oil price shocks on global economy has been a
great concern since 1970s and has instigated a great deal of research
investigating macroeconomic consequences of oil price fluctuations.
Later on, the instability in the Middle East and recent oil price hike
confirmed the enduring significance of the issue. Though a voluminous
body of literature has evolved examining the bearings of oil prices for
internal sectors of economies [to name a few, e.g., Barsky and Kilian
(2004); Kilian (2008a,b); Hamilton (2008)], the studies analysing the
external sector response to oil price shocks are very few [see, e.g.
Kilian, et al. (2007)]. The determination of current account and
exchange rate—the two major indicators of external sector—has been
studied widely in theoretical and empirical literature but mostly the
discussion of the two variables largely remained separate [Lee and Chinn
(1998)]. Similarly, investigation of simultaneous response of these two
variables to an oil price shock remained relatively less ventured avenue
of research. Initial work done on the relationship between current
account and oil price could not ascertain conclusive link between these
two variables.1 Recent work on the issue revealed the diversity of
responses of current account of different countries to an oil price
shock. For instance, oil price increase deteriorates current account
balance of developing countries [OECD (2004); Rebucci and Spatafora
(2006); Killian, et al. (2007)] but may improve it if the country
happens to be a net oil-exporter. This implies that the relationship
depends on the number of factors among which oil dependency of country,
oil-intensity of production process2 and responses of non-oil trade
balance3 and sources of oil price fluctuations4are of particular
significance.

Inflationary performance in sub-Saharan Africa since 1996 is examined. Median inflation has tended to be higher than in other regions of the developing world, such as MENA and Latin America. Inflation is highly persistent and is higher in countries that are less politically stable, in those without hard-peg exchange rate regimes, and in those with larger fiscal deficits. Inflation has declined over time, at least at the upper end of the distribution. There is no evidence that commitment devices such as inflation targeting have reduced inflation, but in SSA the sample is confined to two countries. Inflation typically spikes after a devaluation, and is sensitive to supply-side shocks. Movements in the real price of oil and rice (but not maize) have significantly affected the inflation rate. In countries that are poor in oil and minerals and therefore more reliant on agriculture, output growth is negatively correlated with inflation, presumably because, when the harvest is good and agricultural output is high, the extra supply reduces food prices. Fiscal balances also display considerable persistence and are more favourable in resource-rich and politically stable countries and in those with hard-peg exchange rate regimes, and have improved over time.