The Great Awakening

"As we enter a time of climate catastrophe, worsening inequality, and collapsing market/state systems, can human societies transcend the old, dysfunctional paradigms and build the world anew? There are many signs of hope. In The Great Awakening, twelve cutting-edge activists, scholars, and change-makers probe the deep roots of our current predicament while reflecting on the social DNA for a post-capitalist future. We learn about seed-sharing in agriculture, blockchain technologies for networked collaboration, cosmolocal peer production of houses and vehicles, creative hacks on law, and new ways of thinking and enacting a rich, collaborative future. This surge of creativity is propelled by the social practices of commoning new modes of life for creating and sharing wealth in fair-minded, ecologically respectful ways. It is clear that the multiple, entangled crises produced by neoliberal capitalism cannot be resolved by existing political and legal institutions, which are imploding under the weight of their own contradictions. Present and future needs can be met by systems that go beyond the market and state. With experiments and struggle, a growing pluriverse of commoners from Europe and the US to the Global South and cyberspace are demonstrating some fundamentally new ways of thinking, being and acting. This ontological shift of perspective is making new worlds possible.

The Global Risks Report 2016, 11th Edition

Now in its 11th edition, The Global Risks Report 2016 draws attention to ways that global risks could evolve and interact in the next decade. The year 2016 marks a forceful departure from past findings, as the risks about which the Report has been warning over the past decade are starting to manifest themselves in new, sometimes unexpected ways and harm people, institutions and economies. Warming climate is likely to raise this year's temperature to 1° Celsius above the pre-industrial era, 60 million people, equivalent to the world's 24th largest country and largest number in recent history, are forcibly displaced, and crimes in cyberspace cost the global economy an estimated US$445 billion, higher than many economies' national incomes. In this context, the Reportcalls for action to build resilience – the "resilience imperative" – and identifies practical examples of how it could be done.The Report also steps back and explores how emerging global risks and major trends, such as climate change, the rise of cyber dependence and income and wealth disparity are impacting already-strained societies by highlighting three clusters of risks as Risks in Focus. As resilience building is helped by the ability to analyse global risks from the perspective of specific stakeholders, the Report also analyses the significance of global risks to the business community at a regional and country-level

Trust and Money or Value Transfers: A study of the implications of global value conflict generated by UN Security Council Resolution 1373

Trust is a fundamental aspect of any given functional society. However, since late September 2001, the UN approach to global financial governance appears to have been driven by distrust of other less formalized money or value transfer (MVT) systems. At the core of this ‘Global Regulatory Effort’ (GRE) is UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1373, which mandated that states legislate to regulate all informal MVT systems. In particular, the MVT system known as ‘hawala’ was implicated by US authorities in the funding of the acts of terrorism committed on September 11 in 2001. Although the focus of this multilateral effort was predominantly on the Islamic hawala system, the regime targeted any MVT system not linked to an established commercial banking operation. In this way UNSCR 1373 put a line in the sand between trustworthy and untrustworthy financial service providers. The necessity of this unprecedented step was ostensibly in order to prevent any future global acts of terrorism and maintain international peace and security. However, the regime’s approach implicitly legitimized formal Westernstyle financial systems while delegitimising all others. This study contends that a significant implication of this securitized approach to global financial governance was the creation of a Global Trust Conflict (GTC). The Global Financial Crisis of 2007/2008 and the adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender by El Salvador emphasize the significance of this Conflict. Moreover, the emergence of blockchain technology, Decentralized Finance (DeFi), and Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) represents a new and challenging front in which the implications of the Conflict may be significant. Particularly in terms of the prevailing nature of trust provision services throughout the global economy. As a result, new possibilities for the shape of global order have arisen as state and private interests compete to influence the future of remittances. This research argues that the UNSCR 1373 mandate is anti-competition and served to institutionalize distrust of non-bank MVT systems. This includes traditionally informal remittances and emergent decentralized value transfer systems built on blockchain technology. This thesis concludes that a Global Trust Conflict exists, which constitutes the most significant barrier to regulatory efficacy and compliance aimed at MVT systems

A multi-disciplinary perspective on emergent and future innovations in peer review [version 2; referees: 2 approved]

Peer review of research articles is a core part of our scholarly communication system. In spite of its importance, the status and purpose of peer review is often contested. What is its role in our modern digital research and communications infrastructure? Does it perform to the high standards with which it is generally regarded? Studies of peer review have shown that it is prone to bias and abuse in numerous dimensions, frequently unreliable, and can fail to detect even fraudulent research. With the advent of web technologies, we are now witnessing a phase of innovation and experimentation in our approaches to peer review. These developments prompted us to examine emerging models of peer review from a range of disciplines and venues, and to ask how they might address some of the issues with our current systems of peer review. We examine the functionality of a range of social Web platforms, and compare these with the traits underlying a viable peer review system: quality control, quantified performance metrics as engagement incentives, and certification and reputation. Ideally, any new systems will demonstrate that they out-perform and reduce the biases of existing models as much as possible. We conclude that there is considerable scope for new peer review initiatives to be developed, each with their own potential issues and advantages. We also propose a novel hybrid platform model that could, at least partially, resolve many of the socio-technical issues associated with peer review, and potentially disrupt the entire scholarly communication system. Success for any such development relies on reaching a critical threshold of research community engagement with both the process and the platform, and therefore cannot be achieved without a significant change of incentives in research environments

Measuring knowledge sharing processes through social network analysis within construction organisations

The construction industry is a knowledge intensive and information dependent industry. Organisations risk losing valuable knowledge, when the employees leave them. Therefore, construction organisations need to nurture opportunities to disseminate knowledge through strengthening knowledge-sharing networks. This study aimed at evaluating the formal and informal knowledge sharing methods in social networks within Australian construction organisations and identifying how knowledge sharing could be improved. Data were collected from two estimating teams in two case studies. The collected data through semi-structured interviews were analysed using UCINET, a Social Network Analysis (SNA) tool, and SNA measures. The findings revealed that one case study consisted of influencers, while the other demonstrated an optimal knowledge sharing structure in both formal and informal knowledge sharing methods. Social networks could vary based on the organisation as well as the individuals’ behaviour. Identifying networks with specific issues and taking steps to strengthen networks will enable to achieve optimum knowledge sharing processes. This research offers knowledge sharing good practices for construction organisations to optimise their knowledge sharing processes

The 45th Australasian Universities Building Education Association Conference: Global Challenges in a Disrupted World: Smart, Sustainable and Resilient Approaches in the Built Environment, Conference Proceedings, 23 - 25 November 2022, Western Sydney University, Kingswood Campus, Sydney, Australia

This is the proceedings of the 45th Australasian Universities Building Education Association (AUBEA) conference which will be hosted by Western Sydney University in November 2022. The conference is organised by the School of Engineering, Design, and Built Environment in collaboration with the Centre for Smart Modern Construction, Western Sydney University. This year’s conference theme is “Global Challenges in a Disrupted World: Smart, Sustainable and Resilient Approaches in the Built Environment”, and expects to publish over a hundred double-blind peer review papers under the proceedings

Cryptonetworks - The incentive-based Economics of Blockchain

Blockchain technology has the novel ability to ‘create' trust in a decentralised environment. With this technology, third-parties and middlemen are no longer necessary to enforce transactions. Instead, blockchain uses decentralised consensus protocols and embedded logic to enforce contracts. The applications of blockchain are vast and include cryptonetworks, the culmination of blockchain and crypto tokens. Cryptonetworks can have an impact on the business models of firms, both in terms of cost structure and value creation. By blending the functionality of centralised platforms with the community-orientated nature of the original open protocols of the internet, cryptonetworks enable value creation to be correctly assigned to the actual content creators through tokens. The work of Ronald Coase illustrated the need for firms to overcome the transaction costs of operating within the market. Cryptonetworks, however, provide an alternative ‘middle ground' option to the firm and the market, allowing both to benefit from reduced transaction costs and incentive maximisation of the market. In addition, the implementation of economics in today's cryptonetworks, often referred to as ‘cryptoeconomics', remains conventional and conservative, placing a limit on the potential of cryptonetworks. By revaluating and reconstructing today's value measurement criteria, cryptonetworks have the potential to move beyond a single ‘Hayekian price' and instead incorporate multiple other indexes that better measure and capture value creation as it pertains to wider social issues of production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Finally, this thesis incorporates a case study on the MakerDAO stablecoin as a practical illustration of a cryptonetwork

Management Perspectives: Implications of Plastics Free Sport Facilities’ Beverage Service

Water is vital in supporting all life on Earth, and without it, all living things would cease to exist. Despite this vitality, water resources are steadily polluted and mismanaged. The challenge of pre-eminence, however, is plastic pollution within global water resources. Plastic is exceptionally disruptive and harmful to all forms of life, killing aquatic animals and is a toxicant to the chemistry of drinking water utilized for human consumption. The review of literature sought to understand how waste ends up in Earth’s oceans and the role sport plays in contributing to and mitigating plastic waste and use. This research sought to illustrate the perspectives food and beverage managers (P=10) have toward the future of managing plastic waste at sporting events in their facilities. Discussions stemmed through semi-structured interviews, influenced by four central research questions, theoretically underpinned by Transition Management Theory (TMT), the Attitude-Behaviour-Gap (ABG), concepts of Environmental Sustainability (ES) and ecocentric approaches to management. The study primarily focused on perceptions of participants toward implementing plastic-free programming within their facilities, and additionally, the adoption and incorporation of biodegradable alternatives. Collectively, participants called for an increased cohesion between all levels of government and their corporate partners, and a federal standardization of recycling practices. Participants collectively did not align with Koskijoki’s (1993) perceptions of ecocentric consumerism, but demonstrated consistently an awareness and desire to reconcile plastic-related consequences