95,804 research outputs found
Bus rapid transit
Effective public transit is central to development. For the vast majority of developing city residents, public transit is the only practical means to access employment, education, and public services, especially when such services are beyond the viable distance of walking or cycling. Unfortunately, the current state of public transit services in developing cities often does little to serve the actual mobility needs of the population. Bus services are too often unreliable, inconvenient and dangerous.
In response, transport planners and public officials have sometimes turned to extremely costly mass transit alternatives such as rail-based metros. Due to the high costs of rail infrastructure, cities can only construct such systems over a few kilometres in a few limited corridors. The result is a system that does not meet the broader transport needs of the population. Nevertheless, the municipality ends up with a long-term debt that can affect investment in more pressing areas such as health, education, water, and sanitation.
However, there is an alternative between poor public transit service and high municipal debt. Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) can provide high-quality, metro-like transit service at a fraction of the cost of other options. This document provides municipal officials, non-governmental organizations, consultants, and others with an introduction to the concept of BRT as well as a step-by-step process for successfully planning a BRT system
Ready for Tomorrow: Demand-Side Emerging Skills for the 21st Century
As part of the Ready for the Job demand-side skill assessment, the Heldrich Center explored emerging work skills that will affect New Jersey's workforce in the next three to five years. The Heldrich Center identified five specific areas likely to generate new skill demands: biotechnology, security, e-learning, e-commerce, and food/agribusiness. This report explores the study's findings and offers recommendations for improving education and training in New Jersey
Understanding Entrepreneurship Process and Growth in Emerging Business Ventures under Market Socialism in China
Objectives: This paper aims to provide an insightful view of the entrepreneurial process and growth in different types of Chinese entrepreneurial enterprises under
market socialism in China. This issue is explored by examining the organisational characteristics of three emerging business ventures under market reforms and
institutional changes. It addresses the interactive effect of key contingency factors in entrepreneurship process and explains its impact on growth or failure outcomes in a
particular âChina typeâ of market economy.
Prior work: Chinaâs hybrid economic system represents a mixed political economy with both socialist and capitalist characteristics (Lichtenstein, 1992; Morphy et al,
1992; Opper, 2001). Despite a growing body of research on Chinese small business practices alongside the economic reforms (Shen, 1994; Child, 1994; Naughton, 1994;
Schlevogt, 2001; Warner, 2004; Yang, 2007; Kshetri, 2007; Yang and Li, 2008), more empirical studies are required to provide a critical insight into the emerging
business practices. This research adopts a contingency model of entrepreneurship(Wickham, 2006) to examine entrepreneurship process and growth in different types
of business venture. It reveals the interactive relationships among key variables such as strategy, ownership, culture and management process.
Approaches: This research is undertaken through the empirical analysis of three case study companies in the textile industry. This fieldwork was conducted in 2006 and
2009 respectively. Multiple sources of data were collected including 21 open-ended interviews of owners and key managers in three case study companies.
Results: The study offers an explanation on how entrepreneurship takes different forms and features in different organisational contexts. Empirical evidence supports four hypotheses: (1) The type of ownership is a key contingent factor that moderates particular entrepreneurial outcomes. (2) Leadership and knowledge accumulation capability are critical factors in learning process, significantly affecting the strategic
choices in either high value or low value added products strategy. (3) The broadening of product portfolios and increased production capacity will improve survival chances
and increase the likelihood of firm growth. (4) Management capability and consistency have greater impact on the outcome of entrepreneurship process than the
resource and strategy factors.
Implications: The findings have significant implications for a conceptual understanding of Chinese entrepreneurship dynamics. It addresses important considerations on government policy making and promotion strategies for
entrepreneurship development in different forms of business venture.
Value: The textile sector has pioneered the government reforms in restructuring and creating entrepreneurial enterprises. It offers a perfect case for assessing the
entrepreneurship processes in a rapidly changing market environment. It emphasizes the important ownership effect on entrepreneurial outcomes. Drawing upon Wickhamâs contingency model of entrepreneurship, it provides an improved understanding of this concept under particular circumstance and different contexts
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Dynamic Pricing, Advanced Metering, and Demand Response in Electricity Markets
Presents an overview and analysis of the possible approaches to bringing an active demand side into electricity markets. Part of a series of research reports that examines energy issues facing California
Comparative Study on Agile software development methodologies
Today-s business environment is very much dynamic, and organisations are
constantly changing their software requirements to adjust with new environment.
They also demand for fast delivery of software products as well as for
accepting changing requirements. In this aspect, traditional plan-driven
developments fail to meet up these requirements. Though traditional software
development methodologies, such as life cycle-based structured and object
oriented approaches, continue to dominate the systems development few decades
and much research has done in traditional methodologies, Agile software
development brings its own set of novel challenges that must be addressed to
satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of the valuable
software. It is a set of software development methods based on iterative and
incremental development process, where requirements and development evolve
through collaboration between self-organizing, cross-functional teams that
allows rapid delivery of high quality software to meet customer needs and also
accommodate changes in the requirements. In this paper, we significantly
identify and describe the major factors, that Agile development approach
improves software development process to meet the rapid changing business
environments. We also provide a brief comparison of agile development
methodologies with traditional systems development methodologies, and discuss
current state of adopting agile methodologies. We speculate that from the need
to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of the valuable
software, Agile software development is emerged as an alternative to
traditional plan-based software development methods. The purpose of this paper,
is to provide an in-depth understanding, the major benefits of agile
development approach to software development industry, as well as provide a
comparison study report of ASDM over TSDM.Comment: 25 pages, 25 images, 86 references used, with authors biographie
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Team to Market (T2M): Creating High Performance Teams in the Digital Age
1. Teams are the essential means of product or service delivery and the fundamental building blocks of modern organisations. An effective team can produce results far outperforming a collection of even the most talented individuals when team members coalesce and jell into a single, well-functioning, fully-aligned organism. This report advances the notion of âTeam to Marketâ (T2M) to help business leaders and knowledge workers understand, create and lead high performance teams in the digital age
Enhancing choice? The role of technology in the career support market
This report explores the role that technology has played in the development of the career support market. This market is conceived broadly to include all possible resources that individuals might draw upon to support them in their career development. A key element is the role that is played by public-sector career services and by careers professionals; though these resources are supplemented by services paid for in a wide range of ways and delivered by a range of professionals and non-professionals.UKCE
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