10151 Working Groups Results -- How to enable Holistic Approaches to Business Process Lifecycle Management

During the seminar we discussed in working groups the following questions

ICT-based Social Innovation in Africa: the case of Rwanda

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in Sub-Saharan Africa has raised attention for its potential to foster multidimensional development. The rationale for ‘ICT for Development’ (ICT4D) revolves around Africa’s prospects to leapfrog to the digital economy amidst the 4th Industrial Revolution. This thesis reflects on the tech-based initiatives stemming from the African continent through the lens of “Social Innovation”. In other words, ICT-based applications whose primary goal is to tackle social challenges. Related tech products and services are seen as a ‘disruptive’ vehicle to address Africa’s need for ‘Homegrown Solutions’ to regional problems. They are context-specific and tailor-made to local realities. The conditions that foster the creation of impact-driven ICT innovation vary widely among African countries. The continent illustrates diverse ‘innovation ecosystems’ and ‘innovation cultures’. Nevertheless, there is a knowledge gap on how social innovation can be deliberately planned at large scale, and thus on how it translates into a practical formal strategy in contemporary African societies. This study examines Rwanda as a distinct case of African ICT-Based social innovation, that effectively manages to plan ICT-based Social Innovation as a state-led, formal practice. Embarking from the devastating 1994 genocide, Rwanda placed ICT at the forefront and formed a global “success story” of recovery and redevelopment. Presently, ICT Innovation is a cross-cutting force in Rwanda’s development agenda, serving the country’s complex socio-cultural context and macroeconomic particularities. Therefore, social innovation is policy-oriented and serves a long-term vision. The study investigates Rwanda’s approaches to reinforce ICT-based social innovation, by creating a conducive social innovation ecosystem and an innovation culture. It reviews strategies and practical initiatives that Rwanda employs for public mobilization and capacity-building and maps the conditions that enable social innovation to grow in Rwanda. The research conducted a preparatory document review of policies and strategies to outline Rwanda’s key priorities in ICT Innovation and ICT4D. Sequentially, the data collection used in-depth, semi-structured interviews with key informants in Rwanda. The thesis is exploratory and aims to identify key areas for further investigation. Results showed that the government’s openness to innovation and experimentation create a sense of shared purpose for innovation actors. The government designs tailor-made programs and campaigns directed to both users and innovators and establishes flagship regional initiatives that combine local and global approaches. Social innovation is enabled by a wide range of factors, notably sociocultural features, strong political will, the conducive business climate, Rwanda’s tech-based and market-driven development model, and Rwanda’s regional role as an ICT Hub in Africa. Perhaps more strikingly, visionary leadership and political championship enable the incremental growth of innovation. Rwanda’s social innovation ecosystem is supportive, synergetic and provides diversified opportunities for capacity-building and growth, whilst the innovation culture integrates cultural and traditional values in entrepreneurial ventures. Nevertheless, social innovation is a work in progress with challenges concerning finance, human resources, or adoption. Rwanda’s strategies are no fixed-recipe, but bring intriguing implications on how customized planning instruments can shape the conditions for social innovation to emerge

Handbook for SDG-Aligned Food Companies: Four Pillar Framework Standards

The world food system is in crisis. Outright hunger, unhealthy diets and malnutrition occur parallel to food losses and waste. Farming families in poor countries suffer from extreme poverty. And food production is environmentally unsustainable and increasingly vulnerable to extreme weather events caused by climate change. A historic change of direction is needed to bring about a new era of food system sustainability. Our work aims to help companies, investors and other stakeholders move towards a more sustainable food system that is aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals. Transforming the world food system to achieve sustainability in all its dimensions is a major challenge. Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals will require managing major changes to the global food system responsibly, involving hundreds of millions of farmers and their families, global supply chains, thousands of food producing companies, diverse food production systems and local ecologies, food processing and a great diversity of food traditions and cultures. Food companies are engaged in food production, trade, processing, and consumer sales around the world. While they have distinct roles “from farm to fork,” they all share the same responsibility: to be part of the global transformation towards food system sustainability. For more on CCSI and SDSN’s work on corporate alignment with the Sustainable Development Goals, see our framework defining SDG-aligned business practices in the energy sector

The School Based Health Center Design Guidelines

School Based Health Centers (SBHC) have traditionally gone unacknowledged for their support in providing essential healthcare services to underserved school-aged children. The well-being of these students and their communities rely heavily on a safe, efficient and encouraging physical and responsive environment for successful health outcomes. Literature reveals that the negative health and intricate social issues that face the American youth are stunting growth in academic performance and promoting high risk health behaviors through adulthood. To help eliminate the difficulty in access to healthcare for the underserved, healthcare must be brought to them. The School Based Health Center represents a unique position to alleviate many debilitating obstacles such as poor Communication , lack of transportation, strain on the healthcare system and the high cost of basic medical and mental care. Currently, the built environment of SBHCs are not held to a standard of design necessary to deliver quality health. A set of design principles and guidelines are essential to building future centers successfully that support the health and well being of students and their communities. Unfortunately, limited funding has resulted in a low design quality in School Based Health Centers, creating conditions that do not adequately support optimal healthcare and health education. Makeshift classrooms, bungalows and spare rooms represent a majority of centers that cannot fully realize their impact on students, family and the community. The often hostile exteriors and exposed interiors can create a stressful experience that rarely provides a healing and encouraging environment. The few detached centers that exist are quickly becoming models for new construction and renovations to older sites. Advances in modular construction are paving new ways of providing an affordable setting for school based health services coupled with customizable design features. The importance of SBHCs has been well documented, but guidelines to select appropriate sites and design facilities are scarce. In this thesis, site selection, design principles, guidelines and concepts are developed through research in literature, site visits and case studies of current centers. The County of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Unified School District were studied to demonstrate context for selecting sites based on the health and social issues that prevail throughout the United States. Studies in Los Angeles on the juxtaposition of the prevalence of high risk behaviors, such as family income, teen pregnancy rates and obesity, in corresponding middle and high schools revealed a strong correlation between low socio-economic conditions and health. Areas in most need of a SBHC were easily identified with many overlapping high risk behaviors occurring in a several concentrated neighborhoods. To best serve student patients and their communities, the promotion of patient and community-based care values, affordability, sustainability, staff satisfaction and efficiency should direct each architectural design decision. Through the development of these guidelines, School Based Health Centers will have important new tools to create environments that support the holistic well-being of students and their surrounding support system

Quality management performance modelling for the South African contact centre industry.

Doctoral Degree. University of KwaZulu- Natal, Durban.Against the background of an extreme youth unemployment problem, South Africa seeks to identify and support industries that may offer substantial solutions. The employment potential of the contact centre industry was recognised by the South African government as far back as 2004. By capitalising on comparative advantages such as lower costs, South Africa has successfully claimed a place amongst the preferred international customer service destinations. While lower costs remain a key driver behind the outsourcing of services to offshore destinations like South Africa, a shift in focus towards the ‘quality of service’ is increasingly featured in outsourcing decisions. It follows that, in order to maintain the competitive momentum amidst intense international rivalry, it is imperative that contact centre managers understand the relationship between quality practices and business performance. While these relationships have been investigated across various industry sectors and in various locations globally from as far back as the early 90s, such relationships have not been empirically investigated in the contact centre environment and specifically not in the South African context. The primary objective of this study is to address this gap by developing a model that reveals the nature of the quality practice / performance relationships together with the moderating impact of contingency factors. This should serve as a valuable, context-specific, industry reference while academically contributing towards the development of quality management theory. Based on extensive academic and practice literature, a new industry-specific measurement instrument was developed that demonstrated very good reliability and validity. By initially exploring the extent and manner in which quality practices are deployed it was found that the South African contact centre industry are generally ‘high users’ of quality practices that are normally deployed as part of a more holistic quality program. The proposed quality practice / performance model was based on features of prominent models found in the literature where Path Analysis techniques were employed to test the relationships among variables. Regression analyses confirmed the importance of ‘Top Management Support’ where Leadership quality practices showed a strong, positive and significant impact on the deployment of ‘Core quality practices’ such as Customer, Human Resource, Operational, Infrastructure and Relationship practices. When the impact of each core group of quality practices was measured in isolation i.e. via directly related performance metrics, the results show that all groups have a strong, positive and significant impact on performance. Similar results were obtained when performance was measured at an organisational level for both operational and business performance. Further, synergistic value was found in the deployment of quality practices thus confirming the interdependent nature of such practices. The key implication is that although there are variations in the impact among the various quality practices, all contribute significantly to operational and business performance – thus supporting the deployment of full-blown quality programs. The results may however be used for piecemeal program implementations that focus on the practices that offer the highest impact on performance i.e. customer and human resource-related practices. Finally, the contingency factors that demonstrated the highest moderating impact on the practice / performance relationships included ‘Management Knowledge’, External Demand for Compliance’ and ‘Culture’ while demographic factors had no significant impact. The result partially supports both the universal and context driven approaches to quality management. Path analyses revealed a good fit of the model to the data

Exploratory research into supply chain voids within Welsh priority business sectors

The paper reports the findings resulting from the initial stages of an exploratory investigation into Supply Chain Voids (SCV) in Wales. The research forms the foundations of a PhD thesis which is framed within the sectors designated as important by the Welsh Assembly Government (WAG) and indicates local supplier capability voids within their supply chains. This paper covers the stages of initial data gathering, analysis and results identified between June 2006 and April 2007, whilst addressing the first of four research questions. Finally, the approach to address future research is identified in order to explain how the PhD is to progress

Earth Observation Open Science and Innovation

geospatial analytics; social observatory; big earth data; open data; citizen science; open innovation; earth system science; crowdsourced geospatial data; citizen science; science in society; data scienc