17 research outputs found
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 individualsâ 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 yearâs conference theme is âGlobal Challenges in a Disrupted World: Smart, Sustainable and Resilient Approaches in the Built Environmentâ, and expects to publish over a hundred double-blind peer review papers under the proceedings
The role of Micah's rhetorical language and Mwaghavul sayings on congregants' response to sermons in central Nigeria.
Doctoral Degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg.This study focuses on an examination of the role that the biblical rhetoric of the book of Micah and Mwaghavul cultural sayings (sumpoo) play in enabling Mwaghavul congregants in central Nigeria to better understand, respond to and recall sermons preached. In view of the above, this research argues that a preacherâs appropriate synergistic use of the biblical rhetoric and African indigenous wisdom, makes it possible for congregants to more readily respond to and recall sermons. The Mwaghavul people of the Plateau State in central Nigeria, use many wise sayings from the sacred text and cultural memory, as a means to authenticate their traditional mode of communication. Similarly, the researcher noted that the prophet Micahâs skillful articulation
of the indigenous rhetorical devices of the eighth-century BC context equally accorded the prophecy a great response by his immediate audience; and, as a collective memory, was recalled a century later (cf. Jer. 26:18-19). The researcher was motivated to undertake a contextual hermeneutical study of this book, with the view to craft better ways of engaging both the rhetorical elements of the book of Micah and comparable Mwaghavul sayings, ultimately to increase the gospelâs impact on the people.
In order to achieve the above, the research uses three lenses: contextual hermeneutics, using the tripolar model; inculturation; and reception theories. A socio-rhetorical interpretation of the Bible and the African proverbial hermeneutics are used to craft African contextual hermeneutics in the postcolonial period, that values the African knowledge systemâs contribution to understanding and owning the Christian message. A rhetorical and literary analysis of the Book of Micah is done. Attention is also given to African uses of wise sayings as rhetorical devices in secular and religious settings. These circles of rhetoric make
contributions to sermon rhetoric in Africa â the rhetoric of the text and that of African wisdom constitute the sermon rhetoric. Undertaking a comparative study of the responses of twenty-four congregants, from two geographic clusters, "A" and "B", to the sermons through qualitative interviews, it was discovered that the congregants from cluster "B", the experimental cluster where the preachers used wise sayings, recalled and responded better to the message preached, showing evidence of transformation. This shows that sermons anchored in familiar language forms and the congregantsâ cultural roots brings about better understanding, recall and response to the sermons preached. This calls for a change in the curriculum of pastor training institutions like Gindiri Theological Seminary to award privilege to the pedagogy of context and to not neglect the pedagogy of formation for obtaining far reaching significance
Behave 2018 : Book of Abstracts
// Openings and Keynotes //
In September 2018, more than 300 participants debated the perspectives of energy policy transition and implementation of sustainable energy technologies. At Behave 2018 (Conference on Behaviour and Energy Efficiency) in Zurich, the internationality and the interdisciplinarity of scholarship in the field were surprising and inspiring.
The President of the Zurich University of Applied Sciences, Jean-Marc Piveteau, opened the conference by referring to the development of the ZHAW into one of the leading competence centres of applied sciences in the field of energy research in Europe. Benjamin Sovacool, Editor of âEnergy Research & Social Sciencesâ, made a strong claim for research designs that refuse âdiscliplinary chauvinismâ and âtheoretical monogamyâ. From his point of view, energy research can and should be more oriented towards real world problems and thus have to deal not only with theory, but also with policy relevance and application. The other keynote speakers were Marianne ZĂŒnd (Swiss Federal Office of Energy) and Marylin Mehlman (Co-Founder of Legacy 17). They outlined the complex and sometimes curious paths of social change towards more sustainable energy behaviours. Those paths lead us into the value systems of concerned citizens (Mehlman) and into the complex processes of democratic systems in the western world (ZĂŒnd).
// On the Built Environment //
Sustainability and environmental policies that increasingly target the building sector may explain why a lot of studies presented at Behave 2018 were devoted to understanding and changing behaviour related to energy use and CO2-emissions of buildings. While most research still focusses on the individual energy-relevant behaviour of private citizens, there is a small but growing interest in the decisions and actions of institutional building-owners and building professionals. Energy feedback, gamification, nudging, promoting acceptance and adoption of new technologies, science-city collaboration, alternative policies and business models were among the solutions discussed to support the energy transition.
// On the Public Sphere //
Within the framework of the sessions that were dedicated to communication sciences and discourse studies, scholars from all over Europe presented their investigations of media coverage, stakeholder expectations and goals, and systemic effects of focussed communication efforts. These sessions clearly showed that the challenge of changing behaviours cannot be faced by marketing measures or other isolated strategic measures. Itâs rather about curating the common sense, deliberating citizensâ value systems and letting society participate in the huge project of policy transition.
// On Interventions and Feedback //
Much of the conference dealt with interventions concerning how to change humansâ behaviour towards more environmentally friendly actions in different sectors. A total of three different parallel sessions addressed humansâ behaviour and households. The importance of feedback was also considered in many talks during the conference. Last but not least, a session of several talks was dedicated to the transportation sector, which accounts for a large quantity of CO2-emissions.
// Acknowledgement //
With more than 30 sessions on these and other subjects and numerous personal discussions of the participants on the margins of the conference, Behave 2018 was a huge success. The members of the organising committee thank all participants, visitors, partners, the media and the ZHAW for their support that made this success possible
Web service control of component-based agile manufacturing systems
Current global business competition has resulted in significant challenges for
manufacturing and production sectors focused on shorter product lifecyc1es, more diverse
and customized products as well as cost pressures from competitors and customers. To
remain competitive, manufacturers, particularly in automotive industry, require the next
generation of manufacturing paradigms supporting flexible and reconfigurable production
systems that allow quick system changeovers for various types of products. In addition,
closer integration of shop floor and business systems is required as indicated by the
research efforts in investigating "Agile and Collaborative Manufacturing Systems" in
supporting the production unit throughout the manufacturing lifecycles.
The integration of a business enterprise with its shop-floor and lifecycle supply partners
is currently only achieved through complex proprietary solutions due to differences in
technology, particularly between automation and business systems. The situation is
further complicated by the diverse types of automation control devices employed.
Recently, the emerging technology of Service Oriented Architecture's (SOA's) and Web
Services (WS) has been demonstrated and proved successful in linking business
applications. The adoption of this Web Services approach at the automation level, that
would enable a seamless integration of business enterprise and a shop-floor system, is an
active research topic within the automotive domain. If successful, reconfigurable
automation systems formed by a network of collaborative autonomous and open control
platform in distributed, loosely coupled manufacturing environment can be realized
through a unifying platform of WS interfaces for devices communication.
The adoption of SOA- Web Services on embedded automation devices can be achieved
employing Device Profile for Web Services (DPWS) protocols which encapsulate device
control functionality as provided services (e.g. device I/O operation, device state
notification, device discovery) and business application interfaces into physical control
components of machining automation. This novel approach supports the possibility of
integrating pervasive enterprise applications through unifying Web Services interfaces
and neutral Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) message communication between
control systems and business applications over standard Ethernet-Local Area Networks
(LAN's). In addition, the re-configurability of the automation system is enhanced via the
utilisation of Web Services throughout an automated control, build, installation, test,
maintenance and reuse system lifecycle via device self-discovery provided by the DPWS
protocol...cont'd
Innovation and the big builders : barriers to integrating sustainable design and construction practices into the production homebuilding industry : the case of Pulte Homes
Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2005.Includes bibliographical references (p. 154-150).The homebuilding industry has held a dominant presence in the U.S. economy over the past century. It has been a source of profit, shelter and jobs for countless Americans. In order to meet the needs of an ever-burgeoning population, the industry itself has grown into a complex and vast linkage of developers, designers, contractors and regulatory officials whose job it is to build the houses that most Americans live in. Yet the growth and success of the homebuilding industry in America has not come without repercussions. Today, more than ever, we are cognizant of the environmental impacts that the homebuilding industry is having on our physical landscape and our natural resources. As a response to this cognizance, there has been a growing movement towards less environmentally harmful methods of design and construction. Many, if not most, of these methods require substantial changes to the way the industry currently builds homes. In this sense, they are considered innovations. This thesis will provide an illustration of the process of innovation and how it diffuses throughout an existing industry in addition to recapping historical arguments for why the U.S. homebuilding industry has long been characterized as resistant to change. The industry, however, is currently witnessing several trends which begin to refute the notion that homebuilding is change-resistant. These trends and the effects that they are having on large scale production homebuilders, what I will refer to as mega-production builders, are leading to a period in which this ever-growing segment of the industry will be ripe for more innovative practices. To test this hypothesis, I have undertaken a case study of two divisions of America's second largest homebuilder, Pulte Homes.(cont.) The Las Vegas Division, through their partnership with the Department of Energy's Building America Program, is building more energy efficient homes largely through incremental product and process-based technologies. The Washington D.C. Division is pursuing more radical and systemic innovations through component manufacturing processes entirely independent of any government or third-party partnerships. 'This thesis finds that while both divisions have been largely successful to date, the potential for growth lies in the more systemic innovations being pursued in the Washington D.C. Division of -Pulte because these innovations are more strongly tied to Pulte's national agenda for expansion and can be improved upon more easily than the more incremental innovations pursued by Las Vegas. Furthermore, this thesis finds that the disconnect between design and engineering currently exhibited by most large production builders is a detriment to the adoption of more innovative practices and, finally, that government programs designed to foster innovation in homebuilding should focus more on small regional builders, corporate decision makers and product manufacturers as opposed to the independent operating divisions of large production builders.by Justin T. Pauly.M.C.P
A sociological study of school transfer and the learning of mathematics
This research explores the complexities of children's everyday experience, examining the common threads and distinctive textures of the lives of four children on their educational journeys from primary to secondary school. Whilst the classroom focus of the empirical work has remained with the teaching and learning of mathematics, I have retained a wider view on the overlapping social spaces in which these children are located. Hence this thesis is less to do with mathematics per se than it is concerned with the lives of children and their families, friends and teachers. This research was conducted, and this thesis constructed, in parallel to my transition into academia and so what follows narrates part of my own story of transfer and socialisation. The notion of reflexivity, of understanding my position within the research, is central to the methodological and theoretical work of the thesis and so I will begin with an account of how I have come to be doing this research, at this time, in this place.
Following that personal preface I proceed to review the literature concerning the transfer from primary to secondary school. This is organised chronologically with the aim of tracing the development of the main themes during the last forty years, as well as identifying what is missing in the literature. This lays the foundations for an exploration of the stubbornly resistant, reproductive mechanisms that work to structure the social and educational experiences of children at transfer. This social structuring is part of what I have termed the learning landscape.
Metaphor is a conceptual tool by which we come to understand our world and through the development of a learning landscape metaphor I will theorise the various influences upon the learner of mathematics. This will include a consideration of how government policy, school cultures, family attitudes and so on, affect the learning of mathematics in the classroom. The motivation for such theorisation arises firstly from the supposed failure of educators to ameliorate the problematic aspects of school transfer. Such accusations of teacher failure are made possible by oversimplified, decontextualised theories of the highly complex influences at this educational branching point. The literature reveals that despite decades of research there is still a relative disadvantaging at transfer of those children who come from families with lower capital resources. The second motivation for this research is my deeply held personal concern about poor attitudes to the study and use of mathematics in the UK. The learning landscape metaphor provides some insights into the culturally embedded nature of this problem.
I have adopted a collective case study approach and made considerable use of the theory of practice developed by the French sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu. Using Bourdieu's tools of habitus, field and capital I have moved to and from the macrosociological 'landscape' to a study of individual and interrelated lives. At the heart of the thesis the theoretical framework sits together with the empirical case studies and although they will be read sequentially they can only be understood together. Following Bourdieu, the theoretical and empirical cannot be separated without the risk of the practice of theorising becoming more central than the theorising of practice.
Following the analytic case reports, I develop a model that describes four 'aspects' that describe the critical role played by teachers in children's experience of moving between the two schools. These aspects are teachers' subjective views of children's based upon historical, mathematical attitudinal and capital data. These aspects are used, together with the case reports, to explain the mechanisms whereby social inequality is reinforced and how those children endowed with greater capital are relatively advantaged in the transfer.
Finally, I conclude with a discussion of the current state of the mathematics learning landscape and a reconsideration of whether or not school transfer could ever be described as a "fresh start". In addition, I will discuss how my theoretical perspective explains systemic and individual contributions to processes of resistance and reproduction.
NB. This ethesis has been created by scanning the typescript original and may contain inaccuracies. In case of difficulty, please refer to the original text
A framework for the analysis and evaluation of enterprise models
Bibliography: leaves 264-288.The purpose of this study is the development and validation of a comprehensive framework for the analysis and evaluation of enterprise models. The study starts with an extensive literature review of modelling concepts and an overview of the various reference disciplines concerned with enterprise modelling. This overview is more extensive than usual in order to accommodate readers from different backgrounds. The proposed framework is based on the distinction between the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic model aspects and populated with evaluation criteria drawn from an extensive literature survey. In order to operationalize and empirically validate the framework, an exhaustive survey of enterprise models was conducted. From this survey, an XML database of more than twenty relatively large, publicly available enterprise models was constructed. A strong emphasis was placed on the interdisciplinary nature of this database and models were drawn from ontology research, linguistics, analysis patterns as well as the traditional fields of data modelling, data warehousing and enterprise systems. The resultant database forms the test bed for the detailed framework-based analysis and its public availability should constitute a useful contribution to the modelling research community. The bulk of the research is dedicated to implementing and validating specific analysis techniques to quantify the various model evaluation criteria of the framework. The aim for each of the analysis techniques is that it can, where possible, be automated and generalised to other modelling domains. The syntactic measures and analysis techniques originate largely from the disciplines of systems engineering, graph theory and computer science. Various metrics to measure model hierarchy, architecture and complexity are tested and discussed. It is found that many are not particularly useful or valid for enterprise models. Hence some new measures are proposed to assist with model visualization and an original "model signature" consisting of three key metrics is proposed.Perhaps the most significant contribution ofthe research lies in the development and validation of a significant number of semantic analysis techniques, drawing heavily on current developments in lexicography, linguistics and ontology research. Some novel and interesting techniques are proposed to measure, inter alia, domain coverage, model genericity, quality of documentation, perspicuity and model similarity. Especially model similarity is explored in depth by means of various similarity and clustering algorithms as well as ways to visualize the similarity between models. Finally, a number of pragmatic analyses techniques are applied to the models. These include face validity, degree of use, authority of model author, availability, cost, flexibility, adaptability, model currency, maturity and degree of support. This analysis relies mostly on the searching for and ranking of certain specific information details, often involving a degree of subjective interpretation, although more specific quantitative procedures are suggested for some of the criteria. To aid future researchers, a separate chapter lists some promising analysis techniques that were investigated but found to be problematic from methodological perspective. More interestingly, this chapter also presents a very strong conceptual case on how the proposed framework and the analysis techniques associated vrith its various criteria can be applied to many other information systems research areas. The case is presented on the grounds of the underlying isomorphism between the various research areas and illustrated by suggesting the application of the framework to evaluate web sites, algorithms, software applications, programming languages, system development methodologies and user interfaces