Exploring how complex solution-based capabilities (CSC) are developed and integrated in engineering companies

This paper explores how engineering companies develop and integrate solution-based capabilities for complex ‘one-off’ or small-batch production. Although there is extant literature on developing a standalone service, product and process capabilities, an integrated solution-based capability for effective execution of complex ‘design-build’ projects is currently underdeveloped. For such firms to be successful in delivering complex solutions, there is the need for organisational structured routines and processes which we conceptualise as complex solution-based capabilities (CSC). The study was based on a multiple case study using in-depth semi-structured interviews with managers and engineers. Primary data collected were complemented by documentary evidence, for triangulation and validity. The data were analysed using thematic analysis to develop a framework of CSC. The findings show that the case study companies have developed and integrated CSC through organisational routines and processes of make-to-concept approach, value creation, and strategic coordination. Implications and future research are discussed

The Belt and Road Initiative and the SDGs: Towards Equitable, Sustainable Development

Established in 2013 by President Xi Jinping, China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is the source of significant academic and policy debate, in terms of how it is defined and how far it can contribute to the achievement of the United Nations Global Goals for Sustainable Development (Global Goals) by 2030. This introductory article seeks to explore these debates in more depth, looking at the opportunities and challenges that are associated with aligning the BRI and Global Goals frameworks at local, national and international levels to achieve universal global economic social and environmental goals. It highlights new evidence, analyses and insights from across a range of experts from China and BRI countries, and points both to the potential for the BRI to help achieve sustainable development outcomes and the political, economic, financial, environmental and social risks, implications and impacts for involved countries and communities.Center for International Knowledge on Development’s (CIKD) China–UK Partnership Programme on Knowledge for Development

Just Transition: Implications for the Corporate Sector and Financial Institutions in Australia

The era of coal-fired power is coming to an end. Solar and wind energy are the least-cost source of new electricity generation in two-thirds of the world (Bloomberg New Energy Finance, 2019) and growing rapidly at the expense of coal power. Under the Paris Agreement, almost all nations have signed commitments that require net zero emissions by 2050. Over 130 financial institutions globally have announced exit dates from financing, investing in or insuring thermal coal (Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis [IEEFA]), 2020) and close to 1000 companies have set or committed to set targets aligned with the Paris Agreement under the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi). The International Energy Agency (IEA) has highlighted that COVID-19 has caused a plunge in energy demand ‘seven times greater than the global financial crisis’, impacting heavily on coal, oil and gas whilst renewable energy is proving so far to be more resilient (IEA, 2020). The full impact of COVID-19 will be determined by the recovery paths taken around the world, but if low thermal coal demand persists as economies reopen, coal retirements are likely to accelerate. The question is no longer ‘if’ there will be a transition from coal to renewable energy but ‘when’ and ‘how’. For coal producing countries such as Australia, the challenge is how to avoid a ‘disruptive’ transition with social and economic dislocation in coal regions, while at the same time positioning ourselves to maximise the economic opportunities

The political economy of Japanese and Chinese infrastructure financing governance in Indonesia: Organising alliances, institutions, and ideology

In recent years, Chinese and Japanese infrastructure financing in Southeast Asia has taken different forms, ranging from Official Development Assistance (ODA), commercial loan, export credits, direct outward investment like business-to-business (B-to-B) and public private partnership (PPP). Much of the international relations literature on Chinese and Japanese infrastructure financing argues that these forms of financing are a kind of geoeconomic statecraft. For instance, skeptical accounts tend to identify Chinese infrastructure loans with ‘debt-trap’ phenomena while seeing Japanese loans as balancing Chinese influence. This thesis contests this outside-in perspective and argues that these different forms of infrastructure financing reflect wider power relationships among socio-political and economic groups that are bound together within ideological framework of risk and technical rules. From this perspective, I argue that forms of infrastructure are not a tool to gain leverage over host countries. Neither is it a functional toolkit as the scholarly literature argues. Rather, different forms of infrastructure financing are distinct regulatory strategies by which different social groups develop alliances and unevenly distribute material benefits among them. Therefore, these regulatory strategies are not a given. They are reproduced – materially and ideologically – within the host state over time. To explain the process, the thesis introduces the term ‘regulatory complex’ which denotes an assemblage of institutions as well as ideological frameworks through which different social class forces negotiate compromises and formulate shared interests to sustain particular regulatory strategy. Essential conditions for project financing – the shifting formation of alliances, preferential policies, certain rules and mechanisms, and regulatory reforms – are reshaped through and within the regulatory complex. Regulatory organisations, financing institutions, as well as technocratic agents in infrastructure (or urban development) such as the master plan study team, ad-hoc committee, technical task forces and the like are important parts of this regulatory complex. Using qualitative comparative analysis methods, the thesis traces the dynamics of alliances and the reproduction of Japanese and Chinese regulatory complexes in Indonesia. Supported by case studies, I show how the concept of the regulatory complex offers an understanding of how the social alliances underpinning Japanese and Chinese infrastructure are managed. Crucially, these alliances are undergirded by the broader ideological projects that further build legitimacy for given regulatory strategies. Key findings extend the geographic and comparative research of the current study. Infrastructure financing is inextricably conflict-ridden. Its variegated forms are embedded within complex realities of social and political power structures in host countries and enforced by regulatory complexes over time. Intrinsic to the regulatory complex is that there is a fine line between risk management and conflict management for which both may be locked in the same institutional frame within a given period of time. Within this institutional frame, negotiated compromises among forces take shape – who gets what, when, and how

Environmental, Social and Governance Report... /

Descripció feta a partir de: 2019, el 25 març 2021

A long quavering chant : peonage labor camps in the rural-industrial South, 1905-1965

This dissertation is a study of social and environmental conditions inside rural industrial labor camps throughout the U.S. South between 1905 and 1965. The use of peonage labor, i.e., the coercion of labor against ones’ will through indebtedness or violence impacted nearly a fourth of rural workers in the postbellum south, particularly in isolated railroad construction sites, lumber operations, turpentine camps, and commercial vegetable farms. Though employers’ various peonage labor regimes changed within the context of the camps’ physical environment and evolved over time, they continually took advantage of marginalized social groups, immigrants, African-Americans, and the poor. The relative inability of workers, their families, and reformers to prosecute employers and foremen for labor abuses stemmed from the collusion of local law enforcement and the indifference of federal government officials. Ultimately, broader market forces of globalization and technology changed peonage labor regimes, not the enforcement of federal statues outlawing the practice.Histor

Engineering linkages with the coal chain

"Industrial restructuring without parallel in recent British industrial history" is how the current Chairman of British Coal, Sir Robert Haslam, has described events in that industry. Since 1960 upwards of three quarters of a million jobs have gone in the deep coal mining industry alone. Numerous studies have analysed the underlying mechanisms behind the rapid decline of the nationalised coal industry, but hitherto little attention has been paid to the national linkage effects of that decline. This thesis is an attempt to analyse the consequences of industrial restructuring in coal mining on its UK engineering suppliers. In so doing, the thesis develops into much more than an empirical case study of industrial linkage and becomes a critical analysis of state capital-private capital relations. In particular, it focusses on the shifting boundaries of state ownership in the energy sector of the 'eighties. It considers what are the main processes involved and some of the consequences for those people and places most dependent on mining related jobs for their livelihoods