Response Capabilities to Natural Disasters: Case Studies of Thailand Flooding

This paper explores and identifies the natural disaster response capabilities, and uncovers the underlying processes and mechanisms of which businesses respond to natural disasters. Evidence from two comparative extreme cases of factories dealing with the Thailand 2011 flood were examined, which resulted in a process framework that exhibits enabler response capabilities, organization response capabilities and underpinning response capabilities required to achieve a successful response. It highlights that the successful factory had better flexibility, speed and continuous updating enabler response capabilities as well as activated, adaptable and the ability to extend higher amounts of underpinning response capabilities

“Wolf Totem” – metaphorical narrative of sustainability reporting practice from a balanced ecosystem perspective: a longitudinal study of sustainability reporting by Chinese banks

This research attempts to explain and evaluate corporate sustainability reporting practices from an ecosystems perspective, through the application of metaphors. It argues that commonly held ideas of sustainable development, which many firms embrace to produce sustainability reports, narrowly focus on the sustainability performances of individual firms and fail to comprehend a broader systems view, that incorporates a holistic understanding of sustainability embracing ecological perspectives. The study draws on the work of Chinese intellectual Jiang Rong, author of a best-selling semi-autobiographical novel Wolf Totem, which documents the life experiences of a Beijing student sent to the Inner Mongolian countryside during China’s Cultural Revolution. Reflecting on his experiences, the author describes the powerful interrelationships between human beings, animals, nature and culture that work in harmony to sustain nomadic life. The novel is used in this research as a contextual landscape to construct a series of multi-tiered metaphors to make sense of corporate sustainability reporting through metaphorical interpretations. By narrating the Chinese banking sector as the “ecosystem”, various actors within the sector are examined to establish their roles and functions in the ecosystem. This is made possible by conducting a summative content analysis on sustainability reports issued by Chinese banks for the period 2008 to 2012 and a metaphorical narrative representation of the findings. This research aims to become one of the first studies of its kind to use a cross-disciplinary framework and application of metaphors to comprehend sustainability reporting practice with a focus on the context of a financial service sector in a strong, emerging economy

The Impact of Cloud-Based Digital Transformation on ICT Service Providers’ Strategies

The relationship between digital transformation and strategy formulation in the context of new digital technologies is emerging as a research area which is ripe for investigation. Recently, information system researchers have focused their attention on exploring this relationship in the context of cloud computing-based digital transformation. However, while extant research has explored this relationship from an adopter perspective, there is a dearth of research which has used an information and communications technology (ICT) service provision viewpoint. Taking the perspective of fifteen ICT service providers, this comparative case study elucidates how cloud-based digital transformation has impacted these organisations’strategy formulation processes. This paper provides the following insights. First, cloud-based digital transformation can positively impact the realisation of strategic objectives in terms of deliberate strategies such as agility and competitive positioning. Second, we present a process model which delineates how ICT service providers’strategy formulation was observed to be an emergent process, encompassing recursive cycles of business model experimentation and iteration, organisational learning and organisational adaptation, primarily as a result of the profound disruptive and innovative impact of cloud-based digital transformation

BS7799: A Suitable Model for Information Security Management

The world is changing rapidly as technology marches forward and the modern business world expands to take advantage of the new technology. Security is seen as fundamental to rapid changing E-business. To satisfy the urgent need for security on the Internet, organisations need to face these challenges and need a suitable management model for information security management. This paper presents the current foundation of information security standard and analyses the framework of BS7799 British information security model. It describes the basic properties of the important security management processes: security policy, security standards, access control, security architecture. It provides an opportunity for security manager to gain security management knowledge and recognise the important procedures and mechanisms to improve the process of information security management

Remittance flows to post-conflict states: perspectives on human security and development

This repository item contains a single issue of the Pardee Center Task Force Reports, a publication series that began publishing in 2009 by the Boston University Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future.Migrant remittances – that is, money or other goods sent to relatives in the country of origin– play an increasingly central role in post-conflict reconstruction and national development of conflict-affected states. Private remittances are of central importance for restoring stability and enhancing human security in post-conflict countries. Yet the dynamics of conflict-induced remittance flows and the possibilities of leveraging remittances for post-conflict development have been sparsely researched to date. This Pardee Center Task Force Report is the outcome of an interdisciplinary research project organized by the Boston University Center for Finance, Law & Policy, in collaboration with The Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future. The Task Force was convened by Boston University development economist John R. Harris and international banking expert Donald F. Terry, and social anthropologist Daivi Rodima-Taylor, Visiting Researcher at the Boston University African Studies Center, served as lead researcher and editor for the report. The Task Force was asked to research, analyze, and propose policy recommendations regarding the role of remittances in post-conflict environments and their potential to serve as a major source of development funds. The report’s authors collectively suggest a broader approach to remittance institutions that provides flexibility to adapt to specific local practices and to make broader institutional connections in an era of growing population displacement and expanding human and capital flows. Conditions for more productive use of migrants’ remittances are analyzed while drawing upon case studies from post-conflict countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The papers in this Task Force Report establish the importance of remittances for sustaining local livelihoods as well as rehabilitating institutional infrastructures and improving financial inclusion in post-conflict environments. Highlighting the increasing complexity of global remittance systems, the report examines the growing informality of conflict-induced remittance flows and explores solutions for more efficient linkages between financial institutions of different scales and degrees of formality. It discusses challenges to regulating international remittance transfers in the context of growing concerns about transparency, and documents the increasing role of diaspora networks and migrant associations in post-conflict co-development initiatives. The Task Force Report authors outline the main challenges to leveraging remittances for post-conflict development and make recommendations for further research and policy applications

Chinese bank's credit risk assessment

This thesis studies the Chinese banks’ credit risk assessment using the Post Keynesian approach. We argue that bank loans are the major financial sources in emerging economies and it is uncertainty, an unquantifiable risk, rather than asymmetric information about quantifiable risk, as held by the mainstream approach, which is most important for the risk attached to credit loans, and this uncertainty is particularly important in China. With the universal existence of uncertainty, borrowers and lenders have to make decisions based on convention and experience. With regard to the nature of decision-making, this implies the importance of qualitative methods rather than quantitative methods. The current striking problem in Chinese banking is the large amount of Non-Performing Loans (NPLs) and this research aims to address the NPLs through improving credit risk management. Rather than the previous literature where Western models are introduced into China directly or with minor modification, this work advocates building on China’s conventional domestic methods to deal with uncertainty. We briefly review the background of the Chinese banking history with an evolutionary view and examine Chinese conventions in the development of the credit market. Based on an overview of this history, it is argued that Soft Budget Constraints (SBC) and the underdeveloped risk-assessing mechanism contributed to the accumulation of NPLs. Informed by Western models and experience, we have made several suggestions about rebuilding the Chinese convention of credit risk assessment, based on an analysis of publications and interviews with Chinese bankers. We also suggest some further development of the Asset Management Companies (AMCs) which are used to dispose of the NPLs

Reimagining geographies of public finance

The study of public finance—the role of government in the economy—has faded in geography as attention to private finance has grown. Disrupting the tendency to fetishize private financial power, this article proposes an expanded conception of public finance that emphasizes its role in shaping geographies of inequality. We conceptualize the relationship between public and private finance as a dynamic interface characterized today by asymmetrical power relations, path-dependent policy solutions, the depoliticization of markets, and uneven distributional effects. A reimagined theory and praxis of public finance can contribute to building abolitionist futures, and geographers are well positioned to advance this project

The E-Banknote as a \u27Banknote\u27 : A Monetary Law Interpreted

The article discusses whether an electronic banknote is a ‘banknote’. The issue is dealt with as a matter of general statutory interpretation in the context of evolving technologies and institutional arrangements. The article proposes a clear terminology to address concepts underlying digital currencies and access to central bank money and argues that a banknote may be ‘written’ electronically. The article is critical of both account-based Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) and cryptocurrencies and highlights features of nonblockchain token-based alternatives. It sheds light on considerations affecting the selection of a design which is appropriate from both a functional and legal perspective and addresses architectural models for the issuance of e-banknotes

Recovering from a disaster

On 26 December 2004 at 6.58 hours (Sri Lanka Time), a massive earthquake with its epicentre outside the coast of Sumatra generated a series of gigantic waves, tsunamis. At 8.35 hours the waves reached the eastern and southern coastline of Sri Lanka, crushing hundreds of villages and towns, killing and maiming tens of thousands of people within seconds. When the waves pulled back, and the ocean calmed down, local people came running to the scene to help. In the first couple of days after the disaster the survivors and their helpers had to manage largely on their own. When the professional experts arrived, most of them without any prior knowledge about the country, they took full command over the situation, brushing aside the local communities and their indigenous emergency systems. At this stage, those who were meant to die had already succumbed, and most of the wounded had received assistance from friends and neighbours

Measuring Regional Economic Resilience across Europe: Operationalising a complex concept

This paper describes an approach developed to measure regional economic resilience across Europe which is novel in three key dimensions. Firstly, it seeks to date regional downturns as opposed to assuming that all regional economies are affected by economic shocks at the same point in time; secondly, it measures the amplitude and duration of economic downturns and subsequent recoveries; and thirdly, as well as measuring recovery, it measures the resistance of regional economies to economic shocks. The paper applies this methodology to selected European countries to provide an analysis of differential regional responses to several economic shocks since the early 1990s. The paper then reflects upon the utility of this methodology for operationalizing regional economic resilience in cross-comparative studies