An evaluation of Nigerian ports post-concession performance

Purpose: The quest for efficiency is claimed to be the major objective of port privatisation and this has led many ports in Africa to undertake port reforms. Based on this, Nigerian ports were concessioned and operations were handed over in one scoop to private operators between 2006 and 2007. This paper is looking to investigate in the reform that took place in a very short period of time improved the performance of Nigerian ports. This paper is also looking to provide a model for future evaluation. Research Approach: A window based DEA model with panel data will be employed to measure pre- and post concession Nigerian ports' performance to determine efficiency gains from port reform. Secondly, to demonstrate how concession influence efficiency, a DEA based Malmquist productivity Insex will be used to determine the sources of (in)efficiency by decomposing the efficiency into frontier shift effects and catch-up effects. Findings and Originality: The results revealed that none of the ports is hundred percent efficient before and after concession but rather a tremendous increase in throughput and ship traffic after the reform in most of the ports. Apapa port is the most efficient while Calabar and Warri are inefficient although there were fluctuations in efficiency in all the ports. The research is inconclusive because it is still ongoing Although some studies have investigated the relationship between port efficiency and privatisation however several gaps still exist as the studies are skewed in favour of container ports in the developed world, mainly in Europe. Therefore, the need arises to critically look at the overall efficiency of national port system to enhance the efficiency of global transport chain. Research Impact: The study will contribute to existing literature on port performance being the first to evaluate the post concession performance of a major maritime player in Sub-Saharan Africa. It will contribute to the never- ending debate by the Academia on the effect of ownership or privatisation on efficiency from the perspective of port institutional reforms in the third world countries Practical Impact: It will benefit the Federal Government of Nigeria as a reference document of the first five years of the port reform policy and help the Government to intervene in areas of observed inefficiencies and make adjustments where possible. On the part of the "Landlord" NPA it will help them in the performing their regulatory role by identifying the operators who are making inefficient use of the resources allocated to them and provide the basis for future evaluation. Finally, it will give the various stake holders in the Maritime Industry a full grasp of the effect of concession in a Nation's port as Nigeria is the first country in the world to hand over terminal operations in all her ports in one scoop

Encoding models for scholarly literature

We examine the issue of digital formats for document encoding, archiving and publishing, through the specific example of "born-digital" scholarly journal articles. We will begin by looking at the traditional workflow of journal editing and publication, and how these practices have made the transition into the online domain. We will examine the range of different file formats in which electronic articles are currently stored and published. We will argue strongly that, despite the prevalence of binary and proprietary formats such as PDF and MS Word, XML is a far superior encoding choice for journal articles. Next, we look at the range of XML document structures (DTDs, Schemas) which are in common use for encoding journal articles, and consider some of their strengths and weaknesses. We will suggest that, despite the existence of specialized schemas intended specifically for journal articles (such as NLM), and more broadly-used publication-oriented schemas such as DocBook, there are strong arguments in favour of developing a subset or customization of the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) schema for the purpose of journal-article encoding; TEI is already in use in a number of journal publication projects, and the scale and precision of the TEI tagset makes it particularly appropriate for encoding scholarly articles. We will outline the document structure of a TEI-encoded journal article, and look in detail at suggested markup patterns for specific features of journal articles

A decision-making model to choose business intelligence platforms for organizations

In recent time, technology applications in different fields, especially Business Intelligence (BI) have been developed rapidly and considered to be one of the most significant uses of information technology with special position reserved. The application of BI systems provides organizations with a sense of superiority in the competitive environment. Despite many advantages, the companies applying such systems may also encounter problems in decision-making process because of the highly diversified interactions within the systems. Hence, the choice of a suitable BI platform is important to take the great advantage of using information technology in all organizational fields. The current research aims at addressing the problems existed in the organizational decision-making process, proposing and implementing a suitable BI platform using Iranian companies as case study. The paper attempts to present a solitary model based on studying different methods in BI platform choice and applying the chosen BI platform for different decisionmaking processes. The results from evaluating the effectiveness of subsequently implementing the model for Iranian Industrial companies are discussed.<br /

Problem-solving courts, therapeutic jurisprudence and the Constitution: If two is company, is three a crowd?

Court costs, resource-intensive trials, booming prison populations and the obduracy of recidivism rates all present as ugly excesses of the criminal law adversarial paradigm. To combat these excesses, problem-solving courts have evolved with an edict to address the underlying issues that have caused an individual to commit a crime. When a judge seeks to help a problem-solving court participant deal with issues like addiction, mental health or poverty, they are performing a very different role to that of a judicial officer in the traditional court hierarchy. They are no longer the removed, independent arbiter — a problem-solving court judge steps into the ‘arena’ with the participant and makes active use of their judicial authority to assist in rehabilitation and positive behavioural change. Problem-solving court judges employing the principles of therapeutic jurisprudence appreciate that their interaction with participants can have therapeutic and anti-therapeutic consequences. This article will consider how the deployment of therapeutic measures (albeit with good intention) can lead to the behavioural manifestation of partiality and bias on the part of problem-solving court judges. Chapter III of the Commonwealth Constitution will then be analysed to highlight why the operation and functioning of problem solving courts may be deemed unconstitutional. Part IV of this article will explain how a problem-solving court judge who is not acting impartially or independently will potentially contravene the requirements of the Constitution. It will finally be suggested that judges who possess a high level of emotional intelligence will be the most successful in administering an independent and impartial problem solving court

Prioritizing Offshore Vendor Selection Criteria for the North American Geospatial Industry

The U.S. market for geospatial services totaled US $2.2 billion in 2010, representing 50% of the global market. Data-processing firms subcontract labor-intensive portions of data services to offshore providers in South and East Asia and Eastern Europe. In general, half of all offshore contracts fail within the first 5 years because one or more parties consider the relationship unsuccessful. Despite the high failure rates, no study has examined the offshore vendor selection process in the geospatial industry. The purpose of this study was to determine the list of key offshore vendor selection criteria and the efficacy of the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) for ranking the criteria that North American geospatial companies consider in the offshore vendor selection process. After the selection of the initial list of factors from the literature and their validation in a pilot study, a final survey instrument was developed and administered to 15 subject matter experts (SMEs) in North America. The SMEs expressed their preferences for one criterion over another by pairwise comparisons, which served as input to the AHP procedure. The results showed that the quality of deliverables was the top ranked (out of 26) factors, instead of the price, which ranked third. Similarly, SMEs considered social and environmental consciousness on the vendor side as irrelevant. More importantly, the findings indicated that the structured AHP process provides a useful and effective methodology whose application may considerably improve the quality of the overall vendor selection process. Last, improved and stabilized business relationships leading to predictable budgets might catalyze social change, supporting stable employment. Consumers could benefit from derivative improvements in product quality and pricing

Discursive Psychology for Applied Qualitative Research

In this paper, we offer discursive psychology (DP) as a particularly useful analytic approach for engaging in applied research. We begin by overviewing the broad area of discourse analysis and then more specifically describe the contours of discursive psychology. Drawing upon a secondary, shared dataset, we provide a general discussion of the analytic process for conducting a DP informed analysis and offer some example findings. Notably, we highlight the limitations of doing DP work when working with a secondary data set and point also toward the possibilities and opportunities

Opportunities and challenges in developing markets for energy service companies (ESCOs) to promote energy efficiency programs in Indonesia”

It is predicted that between 2004 and 2030, around 80% of the world’s economic growth will be contributed by non-OECD countries (Ellis 2009). Energy Service Companies (ESCOs), could play a vital role in improving energy efficiency in these countries. ESCOs can help energy users, companies, industries, and commercial sectors in improving the efficiency of equipment by providing energy service (energy performance and/or credit risk). ESCOs were implemented quite successfully for promoting energy efficiency (EE) in many European Union (EU) countries and other developed countries such as the USA, Canada, and Japan. However, not many developing countries run ESCO successfully. This raised the question of potential barriers for using ESCO for EE programs in developing countries. To successfully implement and operate ESCO in developing countries like Indonesia, it is crucial to study and understand the opportunities and challenges encountered in running this program. The aims/objectives of this study are to understand and verify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of developing markets for Energy Service Companies (ESCOs) in Indonesia. This will be achieved by surveying the key stakeholders in the industry and identifying significant factors such as regulatory, financial, and awareness aspects for decision makers (governments). The results from this research will aim to provide recommendations for the decision makers, who can then review the significant factors that influence the development of ESCO in Indonesia

Contemporary Archival Appraisal Methods and Preservation Decision-Making

Archival administrators are beginning the search for administrative tools that rationalize difficult preservation priority decision-making processes. Some are suggesting that the new appraisal literature be evaluated for its application to preservation selection. This article reviews the literature covering archival appraisal\u27s role in the process of selection for preservation in archives, and addresses recent efforts to create archival preservation assessment and selection tools. It also provides overviews of some modern appraisal models which are intended for collections and preservation archivists who are working with selection-for-preservation issues. The author suggests that archivists need to concern themselves less with implementing preservation selection tools. They must concentrate first on understanding the values that make archival records significant, and then rationalize their preservation selection decision-making processes. Then, and only then, should the decisions\u27 hierarchy and flow be incorporated into a preservation assessment and selection tool that is adaptable to individual archival institutions, yet consistent enough to yield comparable data

Quantifying, Visualizing, and Tracking Capability Gaps

While there are numerous sources of information/knowledge that identify warfighting capability gaps and/or provide recommendations to close gaps and/or provide new/improved capabilities to the fleet, there is no comprehensive system, and responsible entity, that captures all that information in one place to provide a clear and concise picture of progress being made, or not made, to close identified gaps and/or provide a capability. To address this problem, we developed a methodology based on Multi Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) methods to calculate and visualize a capability gap score at any given point in time to depict capability gap resolution progress based on substantiated real-time information. In this effort we expand the framework used to evaluate capabilities by adding new elements and sub-elements to the framework and extend the MCDA methodology by incorporating different models for calculating the capability gap score. These models include the Weighted Sum Model (WSM), the Weighted Product Model (WPM), the Weighted Aggregated Sum Product Assessment (WASPA), the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS), and the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). The goal is to develop a comprehensive methodology to 1) support prioritization of capabilities based on hard data, 2) provide a clear and concise picture of progress being made, or not made, to close identified gaps and/or provide a capability, and 3) support the creation of a central repository for organizations to distribute pertinent information.Navy Warfare Development Command (NWDC)Naval Postgraduate SchoolNaval Research Program (PE 0605853N/2098)Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited