Public relations: From strategy to action

Public Relations: From Strategy to Action guides students through the process and practice of engaging in the world of public relations. The book teaches audience analysis, campaign planning, strategy, tactics, message development, and media relations for the PR practitioners of today and the future.Published. This PDF is a representation of the book as of June, 2023. The online version may have been updated and includes interactive components. For the most recent interactive version, please visit the online book linked in this record.Public relation

Transitioning additive manufacturing from rapid prototyping to high-volume production: A case study of complex final products

This article seeks answers to the question: what are the key factors that enable the scaling of additive manufacturing (AM) from rapid prototyping to high volume production? Using a longitudinal case study, we collected primary and secondary data to trace the AM scaling journey of AeroCo, a highly innovative aerospace firm. Based on the case findings, we position AM as a whole system technology because it can print components for a wide range of subsystems in a complex final product. Scaling AM requires a significant realignment of existing, and often deeply entrenched, new technology and product development processes. To achieve this alignment, AeroCo formed institutional alliances with the UK government and universities to establish university technology centres, which facilitated early stage ideation and ‘catapult’ centres, which enabled high volume testing in factory-like facilities. The case reveals how multiple functions needed to integrate, including R&D, product design, and future programmes, to ensure that design changes cascaded from one subsystem to another, and that new technologies were linked to a future product to create a final product pull. These findings inform a managerial framework for additive manufacturing scaling that is generalizable to other digital technologies used in the design and production of complex final products, including artificial intelligence, machine learning, smart factories and cyber physical production systems. Our framework contributes to innovation thought and practice by explaining how new product development processes and organizational structures change under the effect of digital technologies.Peer reviewedFinal article publishedadditive manufacturingdigital technologies3D printingcomplex final productsnew technology scalingartificial intelligenc

REIMAGINING RITUALS - Design’s role in amplifying cultural Identity

My research focuses on the Parsi diaspora, its disengagement with tradition, its lack of access to and its desire to conduct and participate in their cultural rituals. Employing the methods of autoethnography, participatory research, and cultural design, my research explores the cultural practices of the Parsi community to understand the current role that rituals play in their lives and the barriers to performing these rituals. I discovered evidence of the community's desire to make the steps behind Parsi rituals and their significance more accessible. I focused on developing a digital application (app) to express and explore responses to my research findings. This app serves as a repository and almanack that will allow community members to access rituals and traditions by disseminating information about how the rituals are conducted, the materials used, and the events and beliefs upon which they are based.UI/UX designParsi ritualsIdentityCultural amplificationZoroastrian ritualsCultural preservationZoroastrian diasporaCulture, ritualsDesign for belongingCommunication desig

Palm Readings

This thesis document titled Palm Readings is informed by entangled topics that take up plein air painting, watercolour as a primary medium and the relationship of colour to the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico. The specific questions that I address in the work are: How can plein air painting in the Caribbean function as a form of deep acknowledgement of place? What is the potential of watercolour as a contemporary artistic medium? How can colour represent the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico and its culture? Each chapter of this thesis addresses these questions and is anchored by different visual examples of my Thesis Project. My research questions are informed predominately by visual research, observation and thinking through doing. While I do integrate various citations in this text, I am inspired predominantly by the physicality of experiential learning. My research occurs in the action of painting and what comes up in the process.Large formatCaribbeanClimate crisisFemale painterDiasporaIslander artis

No poverty

This zine was created as an assignment for a Global Learning Global Citizenship class (GLGC 1101) with Douglas College instructor Janice Sestan. Students created zines exploring and expressing personal passion related to the advocacy of a chosen United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG)

Transformative drivers of environmental sustainability in contemporary organizations [2017-2020]

Seventy-one percent of global emissions are attributed to just 100 companies, which are all from the fossil fuel sector. The world’s current trajectory of exponential population growth is yielding widespread environmental degradation, highlighting the need for transformation in the usual business models and substantial action towards environmentally responsible initiatives. For global collaboration on combatting climate change, the United Nations introduced international climate treaties, the most recent and notable example being the Paris Agreement, which aims to keep the global temperature rise below 2℃, and ideally within 1.5℃ relative to pre-industrial levels. Using a bottom-up approach, this research explores the emissions reduction efforts of for-profit companies. Towards this end, it draws upon extensive datasets for the 2017-2020 period from the Carbon Disclosure Project, on over 100 large corporations across eleven industries in the U.S. and Europe. It aims to address whether the Kyoto Protocol and Paris Agreement may have influenced corporate strategy, which in turn would affect changes in corporate governance, risk management, and targets and performance, thereby translating to lowered emissions and/or energy intensity reductions. Additionally, a modified version of the IPAT model is applied at the corporate level to assess drivers of environmental impact, which helps identify areas needing change. The IPAT also helps track changes in emissions, revenue, and use of renewable versus non-renewable energy in these 100+ corporations, both before and after the COVID-19 pandemic came into play. The thesis found that over the four-year period of 2017-2020, these 102 European and U.S. companies represented 5.5% of the 2021 global CO2 emissions. For both regions, the highest-emitting industries are in exactly the same order: Power Generation, Airlines, and Fossil Fuels. In the three-year period of 2017-2019, prior to COVID-19, emissions dropped in both regions and most sectors due to a joint improvement in energy and carbon efficiency. Moreover, the pandemic’s impact in 2020 was just as significant as that of technology’s impact over three years. A notable finding was that COVID-19 lockdowns reduced emissions significantly more in the U.S. than policies and business strategies could before the pandemic year of 2020. Interestingly, the research also saw that emissions can be reduced with increasing revenue and possible profitability, depending on cost increases. This thesis demonstrates that corporations in advanced industrialized nations have the potential to play an instrumental role in reducing emissions through improving both energy and carbon efficiency, and by making robust efforts. These corporations can set an example for their counterparts in developing nations, proving that it is possible to reduce emissions while increasing revenue. Ultimately, this can create a pathway toward stabilizing climate change.Carbon Disclosure ProjectIPATChange ManagementClimate ChangeCorporate StrategyCorporate Social ResponsibilityGHG EmissionsKyoto ProtocolParis AgreementCOVID19Net-ZeroSustainabilit

Langara College Reel History Project

A project undertaken by the Langara History Department to capture the zeitgeist of the time, specifically regarding Indigenous matters and political history in British Columbia. Also includes personal narratives and memoirs

Re-creating Recreation: Climbing Replicas and their Effects on the Sport

Rock climbing is a sport with a contentious relationship to technology. Technical innovation has improved safety for participants creating new styles of climbing. This allows for a wider range of climbs to be set up on natural rock that are also less invasive to the environment itself. Since it is a sport born of the outdoor movement with philosophical roots in Romanticism, technology is often regarded suspiciously. It detracts from the experience. But technology breeds innovation, and 3D scanning, and CNC technology means that increasingly, outdoor climbs are replicated out of indoor holds. A practice-based study, coupled with research into existing replica use, was undertaken with the goal of understanding how replicas are made as well as how they affect the experience of rock climbing. When climbing outdoors, participants interact with the rocks as the shape of the rock guides their movement. Through the act of climbing, they build a relationship to the rock, however brief that may be. As indoor climbing became more popular, indoor holds became abstract from natural stone. This means climbers interact much more with hold shapers and route setters. Through 3D scanning, and CNC technologies, we can now near perfectly recreate popular outdoor routes out of indoor holds, bringing outdoor rock back into the gym. Replicas can invite participants to consider the rock more thoughtfully but fall short of emulating the entire experience of climbing outdoors. Ultimately, nature can’t be faked, but the replica forces the climber to consider the real outdoor stone which can help guide them to a more authentic experience. However, replicas can still ease the transition from gym to crag, remove barriers to trying climbs that might be otherwise difficult to access, and preserve climbs that might be threatened by excessive erosion or rock fall.Rock climbingBoulderingClimbingCNC manufacturing3D scannin

Experiences and Challenges: Service Providers Working with People Living with HIV in Alberta

presentationThis presentation explores the narratives and the stories of the service providers working with People Living With HIV (PLWH) amidst COVID-19 in Alberta and propose a transformative community-led COVID-19 recovery model. Using a mixed method research design, we conducted a community-based study with the service providers with aims to identify the challenges that the service providers experience in their service provisions amidst COVID 19 and develop a transformative COVID -19 recovery model to effectively and efficiently support the HIV community. In collaboration with the community-based HIV agencies in Calgary and Edmonton, we virtually conducted 3 focus groups with the leadership team and one focus group with the front-line workers. We also distributed surveys to the HIV organizations in Albert, and 25 people attended the surveys. Using a thematic analysis, we developed key challenges including staff shortage, lack of funding/resources, uncertainty in social service provisions, technical difficulties, maintain confidentiality of clients, lack of coordination amongst staff, meeting immediate needs, lack of guidance from the leadership team. Forged by adversity, the service providers' efforts towards supporting the HIV community is praiseworthy. Using the model, the implications of the study will be shared at the conference. Overall, we claim that COVID-19 escalated the pre-existence injustice and the vulnerability of service providers to mental health and psychological marginalization. Further research focusing on the mental health and psychological wellbeing of service providers working with HIV communities from a social justice lens is critically needed

Double standards? An interdisciplinary, comparative study of the impacts of neoliberal conservation on national park systems in Canada and Brazil

In the last 40 years, neoliberalism has become the dominant political economy, guiding not only global economies and politics, but also every other aspect of contemporary life, including the management and planning of national parks and equivalent reserves, and global conservation goals and objectives. Despite a growing body of academic research on the impacts of neoliberal conservation, there is still a need for studies that explore the issue from a comparative, international perspective and examine its different repercussions on nations with different historical, social, and geographical contexts. An interdisciplinary approach, combining the data analysis methods of critical discourse analysis, Foucauldian discourse analysis and historical institutionalism was used to perform a comparative case study between national park systems in Canada and Brazil. The research identified the main path dependencies, as well as the periods of stability, and internal and external aspects that shaped the national park systems in both countries. Discourses used to promote or resist the adoption of market-based instruments and other neoliberal policies were also identified and grouped into three larger discursive formations: 1) Public funding is the ideal model for national parks; 2) There is no alternative to the market for national parks; and 3) The market is the best solution for national parks. The results suggested a double standard between Canada and Brazil related to their position in the world-system as core and peripheral nations. Discourses were used to promote neoliberal policies as the best and only solution for national parks, but the external and internal pressure for their implementation was more geared towards peripheral countries while core countries had more power to decide which policies would be adopted. Foucauldian discursive strategies were used to provide an alternative way to understand how core nations and international organizations work to control the discourses that are available to peripheral countries