A multilevel approach for assessing business strategies on climate change

The need for an interdisciplinary and integrative approach for doing research on business strategies and climate change is gaining increasing recognition. However, there is a consensus that such crossfertilization is currently missing. Multilevel research methods by virtue of being interdisciplinary in nature may address this need. This paper proposes to advance the adoption of multilevel research approach in the context of business strategies and climate change. As a guide for conducting multilevel assessment, a flexible analytical framework is presented. The framework is developed through a process of structured literature review. The framework consists of thirteen contextual factors spread across five levels and identifies the key multilevel relationships that moderate organisational level climate change related strategy formulation. Level specificities of several theories across these five levels are also identified to facilitate application of the framework in building multilevel hypotheses for business strategies on climate change. In addition, a concise summary of the fundamental concepts of multilevel modelling techniques is provided to help researchers in selecting suitable multilevel models during the operationalization of the framework. The operationalization of the framework is demonstrated by building and testing a three level hypotheses on corporate lobbying activities on climate change issues. It is observed that irrespective of their locations, financially underperforming companies with a larger workforce and belonging to sectors with higher Green House Gas emission intensities particularly lobby intensely on climate change issues. In conclusion, the potential challenges and opportunities in applying the framework for building multilevel theories in the context of business strategies and climate change are discussed. (C) 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd

Conceptualization of Legal Terms in Different Fields of Law: The Need for a Transparent Terminological Approach

Researchers often use subject-specific terminology in order to facilitate communication within a given field of law. Difficulties may arise when they must use scientific information that does not belong to their field. The transfer of information from one subject area to another is restricted by the technical vocabulary used in the particular field. If this is so, what happens when lawyers in one field of law use terms from another? Is the concept in question couched in the same term within another field of law as well? The process of conceptualizing one and the same legal term in different legal fields does not always proceed smoothly. As will be illustrated in this paper, the problem of conceptualizing legal terms in different fields of law calls for a transparent terminological approach. While it is true that legal concepts cannot be fully conveyed by terminology, a transparent terminological approach can contribute to the understanding of these concepts and facilitate their use in legal comparisons, thus making such an approach a conditio sine qua non of legal translation

Physics for non-physicists - Two bio-degrees reforms in Spanish universities: Health Biology and Biology

We present a review of two different innovative experiences of Physics education for Bio-Sciences in two Spanish Universities - the Health Biology degree of the Universidad de Alcalá de Henares (UAH) and the Biology degree of the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM). Both experiences took place simultaneously and coincident with the implementation of Bologna Plan. Although they were developed under different contextual constraints, set by the respective Faculties, they share a number of similar pedagogical strategies which are analyzed. In both cases the reforms allowed a substantial improvement in learning results compared to those obtained in the previous Physics courses in the respective degreesLHM participated in the GIREP-MPTL 2018 on behalf of the project IPLS-Spain, promoted and supported by an inter-university group of physics teachers and young biologist

Virtual Integration Platforms (VIP) –A Concept for Integrated and Interdisciplinary Air Transportation Research and Assessment

The paper descibes a new methodology for a holistic development of air transportation concepts. The Virtual Integration Plattform (VIP) concept is based on an IT tool chain as well as human collaborative methods to deal with complex systems. As a result the definitions of future air transportation concepts for short range "Quiet and Clean", long range "Comfortable and Clean" and individual transport "Fast and Flexible" are presente

The circular economy: An interdisciplinary exploration of the concept and application in a global context

There have long been calls from industry for guidance in implementing strategies for sustainable development. The Circular Economy represents the most recent attempt to conceptualize the integration of economic activity and environmental wellbeing in a sustainable way. This set of ideas has been adopted by China as the basis of their economic development (included in both the 11th and the 12th ‘Five Year Plan’), escalating the concept in minds of western policymakers and NGOs. This paper traces the conceptualisations and origins of the Circular Economy, tracing its meanings, and exploring its antecedents in economics and ecology, and discusses how the Circular Economy has been operationalized in business and policy. The paper finds that while the Circular Economy places emphasis on the redesign of processes and cycling of materials, which may contribute to more sustainable business models, it also encapsulates tensions and limitations. These include an absence of the social dimension inherent in sustainable development that limits its ethical dimensions, and some unintended consequences. This leads us to propose a revised definition of the Circular Economy as “an economic model wherein planning, resourcing, procurement, production and reprocessing are designed and managed, as both process and output, to maximize ecosystem functioning and human well-being”

Boylan's Fugue in 'Sirens'

Recent discoveries in genetic studies require a revision of the fugal structure in ‘Sirens.’ We hope we can shed light on some of the remaining unsolved questions by applying these studies to an interdisciplinary approach. We will put forward our point of view on the most controversial debate on music in Joyce: does this episode of Ulysses contain the eight parts of a fuga per canonem, as the author asserted, and how can we find these parts. Our study is based on the The Sirens Copybook manuscript authenticated by Michael Groden, as well as on the further analysis by two scholars, Daniel Ferrer and Susan Brown. We believe that the role of the character Blazes Boylan in ‘Sirens’ is crucial to divide the episode in eight parts chronologically. First of all, we must point out that some of the concepts that are being used for this interdisciplinary analysis are not unambiguous and depend on the field of study alluded to. A good example is the notion of “theme,” which appears in literature as the main subject of a text, but in music it is understood as a synonym for motif, the musical material that provides a work with its own identity. Some problems of interpretation arise when this term is applied in both music and literature without a clear distinction, such as in the discussion of the eight fugal parts in ‘Sirens.’ Two authors – Stuart Gilbert and Susan Brown – claim to identify these eight sections by mentioning the “themes.” Also, the accuracy of an interdisciplinary study depends on the meticulous use of homogenous sources for the musical concepts. If not, one may argue that the scholar quotes one dictionary or another depending on his/her own interests. Susan Brown recently established that Joyce’s musical knowledge was based on the Grove’s Dictionary of Music (in this paper we will be using the abbreviation GDM). Despite detractors of Brown’s thesis, like Michelle Witen, we believe that for all practical purposes this encyclopaedia is the most useful source for establishing a standardised musical terminology. Every definition of a musical term for this research has been taken from this source

Diagramming social practice theory:An interdisciplinary experiment exploring practices as networks

Achieving a transition to a low-carbon energy system is now widely recognised as a key challenge facing humanity. To date, the vast majority of research addressing this challenge has been conducted within the disciplines of science, engineering and economics utilising quantitative and modelling techniques. However, there is growing awareness that meeting energy challenges requires fundamentally socio-technical solutions and that the social sciences have an important role to play. This is an interdisciplinary challenge but, to date, there remain very few explorations of, or reflections on, interdisciplinary energy research in practice. This paper seeks to change that by reporting on an interdisciplinary experiment to build new models of energy demand on the basis of cutting-edge social science understandings. The process encouraged the social scientists to communicate their ideas more simply, whilst allowing engineers to think critically about the embedded assumptions in their models in relation to society and social change. To do this, the paper uses a particular set of theoretical approaches to energy use behaviour known collectively as social practice theory (SPT) - and explores the potential of more quantitative forms of network analysis to provide a formal framework by means of which to diagram and visualize practices. The aim of this is to gain insight into the relationships between the elements of a practice, so increasing the ultimate understanding of how practices operate. Graphs of practice networks are populated based on new empirical data drawn from a survey of different types (or variants) of laundry practice. The resulting practice networks are analysed to reveal characteristics of elements and variants of practice, such as which elements could be considered core to the practice, or how elements between variants overlap, or can be shared. This promises insights into energy intensity, flexibility and the rootedness of practices (i.e. how entrenched/ established they are) and so opens up new questions and possibilities for intervention. The novelty of this approach is that it allows practice data to be represented graphically using a quantitative format without being overly reductive. Its usefulness is that it is readily applied to large datasets, provides the capacity to interpret social practices in new ways, and serves to open up potential links with energy modeling. More broadly, a significant dimension of novelty has been the interdisciplinary approach, radically different to that normally seen in energy research. This paper is relevant to a broad audience of social scientists and engineers interested in integrating social practices with energy engineering

Crossing the boundaries of film and architectural pedagogy

In this paper the potential role film has as an educational tool in the field of architecture design will be discussed. It will document workshops done by the author with students of architecture and interior design in both the UK and Spain. It will show how students are able to analyse film and directorial techniques to understand how film directors look at / use space. It will also show how that understanding has been used by students in their own designs projects to discover and explore previously hidden possibilities in spatial layouts and arrangements. Specifically, it is a paper on the relationship between film and spatial design. However, in a general sense, it is a paper about the potential of interdisciplinary design thinking in an educational context. It is based on a constructive approach that deliberately attempts to force architecture students to address their own subject through schemata they are not used to. As a result, it is an approach that naturally obliges them to reconsider their standard ways of working and thinking