Scaling Success: Lessons from Adaptation Pilots in the Rainfed Regions of India

"Scaling Success" examines how agricultural communities are adapting to the challenges posed by climate change through the lens of India's rainfed agriculture regions. Rainfed agriculture currently occupies 58 percent of India's cultivated land and accounts for up to 40 percent of its total food production. However, these regions face potential production losses of more than $200 billion USD in rice, wheat, and maize by 2050 due to the effects of climate change. Unless action is taken soon at a large scale, farmers will see sharp decreases in revenue and yields.Rainfed regions across the globe have been an important focus for the first generation of adaptation projects, but to date, few have achieved a scale that can be truly transformational. Drawing on lessons learnt from 21 case studies of rainfed agriculture interventions, the report provides guidance on how to design, fund and support adaptation projects that can achieve scale

Intervening to improve outcomes for vulnerable young people : a review of the evidence

Concerns about the number of young people who fail to reach their potential at school, or get into trouble, or are not in education, employment or training (NEET), underpin the continuing commitment to end child poverty in the UK by 2020, and the Coalition Government’s pledge to increase the focus on supporting the neediest families and those with multiple problems. A strong policy commitment to improving the life chances of vulnerable young people has in recent years led to the testing of a number of initiatives. This review sought to identify: the common barriers to the effective implementation of new initiatives; elements of effective practice in the delivery of multi-agency services for vulnerable young people and their families; the costs associated with integrated service delivery; the outcomes that can be achieved; and whether fewer and more targeted initiatives might offer better value for money, particularly during a period of fiscal reform. Includes: •Introduction to the Review •Identifying and Assessing Vulnerable Young People •Multi-Agency Working: Innovations in the Delivery of Support Services •Delivering Interventions and Improving Outcomes for Young People •Assessing Value for Money in Interventions To Improve Outcomes for Young People •Looking to the Future: Defining Elements of Effective Practic

Electronic information sharing in local government authorities: Factors influencing the decision-making process

This is the post-print version of the final paper published in International Journal of Information Management. The published article is available from the link below. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. Copyright @ 2013 Elsevier B.V.Local Government Authorities (LGAs) are mainly characterised as information-intensive organisations. To satisfy their information requirements, effective information sharing within and among LGAs is necessary. Nevertheless, the dilemma of Inter-Organisational Information Sharing (IOIS) has been regarded as an inevitable issue for the public sector. Despite a decade of active research and practice, the field lacks a comprehensive framework to examine the factors influencing Electronic Information Sharing (EIS) among LGAs. The research presented in this paper contributes towards resolving this problem by developing a conceptual framework of factors influencing EIS in Government-to-Government (G2G) collaboration. By presenting this model, we attempt to clarify that EIS in LGAs is affected by a combination of environmental, organisational, business process, and technological factors and that it should not be scrutinised merely from a technical perspective. To validate the conceptual rationale, multiple case study based research strategy was selected. From an analysis of the empirical data from two case organisations, this paper exemplifies the importance (i.e. prioritisation) of these factors in influencing EIS by utilising the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) technique. The intent herein is to offer LGA decision-makers with a systematic decision-making process in realising the importance (i.e. from most important to least important) of EIS influential factors. This systematic process will also assist LGA decision-makers in better interpreting EIS and its underlying problems. The research reported herein should be of interest to both academics and practitioners who are involved in IOIS, in general, and collaborative e-Government, in particular

Assessing Communities of Practice in health policy : A conceptual framework as a first step towards empirical research

Peer reviewe

Small and Medium sized Enterprises’ Collaborative Buyer-Supplier Relationships: Boundary Spanning Individual Perspectives

Boundary-spanning individuals (BSIs) play a critical role in supply chain management, especially in small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) where interactions with buyers and suppliers can depend heavily on just a few individuals. This study, utilizing data from Korean manufacturing-sector SMEs, explores whether cooperative social value orientations of SMEs’ BSIs influence the effects of collaborative buyer-supplier initiatives. The results suggested that the performance implication of decision-sharing initiative increases when BSIs have a high level of cooperative social value orientation. However, it also negatively moderates the relationship between risk/benefit sharing (involving financial losses or gains) and performance suggesting possible negative side-effects. However, we found that such orientation also negatively moderates the relationship between risk/benefit sharing (involving direct financial losses or gains) and relationship performance suggesting possible negative side-effects

Why continue sharing: determinants of behavior in collaborative economy services

La economía colaborativa está revolucionando la forma en que los consumidores utilizan los bienes y servicios. En nuestro estudio modificamos y ampliamos el modelo de confirmación de expectativas para determinar los factores motivacionales que impulsan la satisfacción y la intención de continuar usando los servicios de viajes colaborativos. Más importante aún, agregamos el valor social como un factor adicional. En este estudio fueron encuestados usuarios españoles experimentados de BlaBlaCar. La calidad del servicio, la utilidad percibida, la confianza y el valor social son determinantes de la satisfacción de los usuarios experimentados y, a través de ella, de la intención de continuar usando; mientras que no es el caso para el impacto ambiental ni para los beneficios económicos. Además, la confianza afecta directamente a la intención de continuar. Estos resultados tienen implicaciones gerenciales relevantes, mostrando que los usuarios de algunos servicios colaborativos están motivados por otros factores además de los económicos.The sharing economy is revolutionizing the way consumers use goods and services. In our study we modify and extend the expectation confirmation model to determine the motivational factors which drive the satisfaction and continue intention to use ridesharing services. Most importantly, we add social value as an additional factor to those previously studied in the literature. We apply our model in a survey among experienced Spanish users of BlaBlaCar. Service quality, perceived usefulness, trust and social value are determinants of satisfaction of experienced users and through it, of intention to continuance; while it is the case neither for environmental impact nor for economic benefits. Additionally, trust affects directly continuance. These results have relevant managerial implications, showing that users of some sharing services are motivated by other factors than purely economic