5,988 research outputs found

    An empirical investigation of the relationship between integration, dynamic capabilities and performance in supply chains

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    This research aimed to develop an empirical understanding of the relationships between integration, dynamic capabilities and performance in the supply chain domain, based on which, two conceptual frameworks were constructed to advance the field. The core motivation for the research was that, at the stage of writing the thesis, the combined relationship between the three concepts had not yet been examined, although their interrelationships have been studied individually. To achieve this aim, deductive and inductive reasoning logics were utilised to guide the qualitative study, which was undertaken via multiple case studies to investigate lines of enquiry that would address the research questions formulated. This is consistent with the author’s philosophical adoption of the ontology of relativism and the epistemology of constructionism, which was considered appropriate to address the research questions. Empirical data and evidence were collected, and various triangulation techniques were employed to ensure their credibility. Some key features of grounded theory coding techniques were drawn upon for data coding and analysis, generating two levels of findings. These revealed that whilst integration and dynamic capabilities were crucial in improving performance, the performance also informed the former. This reflects a cyclical and iterative approach rather than one purely based on linearity. Adopting a holistic approach towards the relationship was key in producing complementary strategies that can deliver sustainable supply chain performance. The research makes theoretical, methodological and practical contributions to the field of supply chain management. The theoretical contribution includes the development of two emerging conceptual frameworks at the micro and macro levels. The former provides greater specificity, as it allows meta-analytic evaluation of the three concepts and their dimensions, providing a detailed insight into their correlations. The latter gives a holistic view of their relationships and how they are connected, reflecting a middle-range theory that bridges theory and practice. The methodological contribution lies in presenting models that address gaps associated with the inconsistent use of terminologies in philosophical assumptions, and lack of rigor in deploying case study research methods. In terms of its practical contribution, this research offers insights that practitioners could adopt to enhance their performance. They can do so without necessarily having to forgo certain desired outcomes using targeted integrative strategies and drawing on their dynamic capabilities

    Reframing museum epistemology for the information age: a discursive design approach to revealing complexity

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    This practice-based research inquiry examines the impact of an epistemic shift, brought about by the dawning of the information age and advances in networked communication technologies, on physical knowledge institutions - focusing on museums. The research charts adapting knowledge schemas used in museum knowledge organisation and discusses the potential for a new knowledge schema, the network, to establish a new epistemology for museums that reflects contemporary hyperlinked and networked knowledge. The research investigates the potential for networked and shared virtual reality spaces to reveal new ‘knowledge monuments’ reflecting the epistemic values of the network society and the space of flows. The central practice for this thesis focuses on two main elements. The first is applying networks and visual complexity to reveal multi-linearity and adapting perspectives in relational knowledge networks. This concept was explored through two discursive design projects, the Museum Collection Engine, which uses data visualisation, cloud data, and image recognition within an immersive projection dome to create a dynamic and searchable museum collection that returns new and interlinking constellations of museum objects and knowledge. The second discursive design project was Shared Pasts: Decoding Complexity, an AR app with a unique ‘anti-personalisation’ recommendation system designed to reveal complex narratives around historic objects and places. The second element is folksonomy and co-design in developing new community-focused archives using the community's language to build the dataset and socially tagged metadata. This was tested by developing two discursive prototypes, Women Reclaiming AI and Sanctuary Stories

    The regulation of digital platforms: the case of pagoPA

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    How can EU regulation affect innovation. Digital revolution: How big data have changed the world and the legal landscape. The regulation of digital platforms in Europe. Digital revolution: How distributed ledger technologies are changing the world and the legal landscape. Regulation of digital payments: the case of pagopa

    Specificity of the innate immune responses to different classes of non-tuberculous mycobacteria

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    Mycobacterium avium is the most common nontuberculous mycobacterium (NTM) species causing infectious disease. Here, we characterized a M. avium infection model in zebrafish larvae, and compared it to M. marinum infection, a model of tuberculosis. M. avium bacteria are efficiently phagocytosed and frequently induce granuloma-like structures in zebrafish larvae. Although macrophages can respond to both mycobacterial infections, their migration speed is faster in infections caused by M. marinum. Tlr2 is conservatively involved in most aspects of the defense against both mycobacterial infections. However, Tlr2 has a function in the migration speed of macrophages and neutrophils to infection sites with M. marinum that is not observed with M. avium. Using RNAseq analysis, we found a distinct transcriptome response in cytokine-cytokine receptor interaction for M. avium and M. marinum infection. In addition, we found differences in gene expression in metabolic pathways, phagosome formation, matrix remodeling, and apoptosis in response to these mycobacterial infections. In conclusion, we characterized a new M. avium infection model in zebrafish that can be further used in studying pathological mechanisms for NTM-caused diseases

    The Dark Arts. A Future For Practitioners of Architecture.

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    Many practitioners experience dissonance between the potential of their field and the realities of practice as defined by status-quo conventions. The forces that shape practice create inefficiencies, barriers to opportunity, and amplify contingency across the built environment. This work aims to establish a new mode of practice that can flow around the status-quo, with the extended goal of accessing a means to impact problems on a systemic plane. This dissertation follows a practice-based design science research methodology. Beginning with a critical dissection of the architectural profession, it progresses via a series of representational and reflective tools that illustrate an emergent framework for the ‘creative project’: the conception, design, and implementation of a novel strategic design practice, called ‘Future Workshop’ (FW). This is developed in parallel with (and in contrast to) an existing architectural practice (DWA). The strategic design approach synthesizes new professional methods from architecture and other disciplines, allowing client organizations to target higher-order problems upstream of typical design engagements, focusing the impact of future design efforts on the most important goals and priorities. The research traverses the tensions between the pragmatic and intellectual hemispheres of practice and establishes metrics for considering these abstract problems through a particular series of diagrams and representational tokens, or ‘glyphs’. The contribution of this work is multivalent, including a novel way of operating a design practice (FW), and new means of inquiry, proposing situated methodologies for research within professional practice

    The absence of community in community forestry: the politics of science and ethics in Nepali forestry policy.

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    This thesis unravels the complex socio-political processes of policy creation and implementation in Nepal’s community forestry sector. It uses a political ecology framework to investigate the policies and politics that shape how local communities manage forests and derive socio-economic benefits to contribute to livelihoods and the national economy. In the thesis, I examine the struggles between the forest authorities, community rights activists and power elites in forest policy process and implementation of scientific forest management programs. I discuss how different forest ethics influence public opinion and policy. Then I investigate how policy actors combine ethical reasoning and logics (and critiques) of forest science to justify their actions and interventions. I draw on data collected via a multimethod qualitative (research) methodology and analysed using an interpretative approach. The empirical chapters outline three key themes. First, I examine the role of scientific forestry in Nepal in struggles between the government and community rights activists over how community forestry works. I outline how the government has mobilised forestry science as authentic, undeniably valid and true in order to increase its control over forest resources and community decision-making. In contrast, community rights activists critiqued scientific forestry to counter the government. In particular, I analyse the discourses that the government and community rights activists developed and the political lobbying they pursued to garner public support for constructing and communicating forest management approaches supporting their position. Second, I discuss forest ethics – specifically utilitarian and preservationist ethics - to show how ethical perceptions shape individual and social norms for forest management and use. I review Nepali forestry history to elucidate how the government historically utilised both utilitarian and preservationist ethics as a means to maintain and reinforce its control over the forests. I demonstrate how the ethical tensions arising from utilitarian and preservationist worldviews animate struggles between forestry stakeholders as individuals and groups, and how ethical discourses are mobilised in support of favoured policies. Finally, I examine the politics of policy making in Nepal. I argue that the government and interest groups have dominated the forest policy process, allowing little space for civic consultation and research-informed policy. Evidence-based policy making is still nascent, not legally binding, voluntary, and therefore subject to the personal discretion of government decision-makers. Most policy consultations are mere formalities while the ministries utilise public consultation to sell policy-drafts to the cabinet and the parliament as ostensible products of public demand, rather than ministerial discretion. This allows bureaucracy, politicians, and interest groups to dominate policy processes, as key policies are predetermined and negotiated informally outside the official consultations customarily conducted in ministries, cabinet, and the parliament. This thesis illustrates the power of a political ecology framework to explain complex policy processes and how politics govern the way policy actors interact and determine forest policy outcomes My research highlights the policy failures undergirding community forestry and prospects of forest-based local economy. Policy outcomes are driven by power elites, rather than civic consultation and research. And policy actors often mask their agendas (and efforts to control resources) with the logics of science and ethics. In particular, this research shows how “community forestry” policy processes in Nepal have, ironically, undermined the role of the community and other non-state actors, consolidating the control of bureaucratic and political leaders

    'She appears a promising child': the role of the c19th orphanage in categorising young care leavers in terms of productive labour. A critical case study of Muller's new orphan homes' Dismissal Books 1830s-1890s

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    This thesis uses Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to address the ways in which an evangelical Christian orphanage evaluates the potential productivity of its young people. Plymouth Brethren founder George Muller’s nineteenth century orphan homes, Bristol, were in their day, ‘a wonder even in this age of wonders’, housing over 2,000 orphans in five large institutional buildings. Orphans left around age 14 (boys) and 18 (girls), generally destined to work in labouring jobs as apprentices or in the domestic sector as servants. Covering the latter half of the nineteenth century, the study focuses on the language present in the institution’s Dismissal Books. These were ledgers listing the leaving date and destination of each young person, categorising them as ‘recommendable’ or ‘unrecommendable’ for work. These archive materials have not been used in scholarly research before now, and are not generally available to the public. The findings discussed in this thesis thus focus on this hitherto untold story. I start by using CDA to extend the existing archigraphic approaches to archival analyses, in order to answer calls for more epistemological clarity in archival practice (Moore et al 2016). In doing so I make more transparent the process between archival retrieval, and the eventual, interpretive analysis of materials. My findings reveal that the orphans who were deemed ‘unrecommendable’ were either expelled, or deemed unable to or unfit for work, or were categorised as failing to reach the standard of the Muller institution. These young people were not always returned to family members as the conventional history of the institution states, but could be sent to the workhouse. I use CDA to map out the classifications of these unrecommendable orphans into discursive patterns and themes. I go on to identify how these themes link to wider, ideological discursive formations present in nineteenth century thinking. As the theoretical underpinning for this analysis, I draw on Guery and Deleule’s (1972/2014) concept of the ‘productive body’ in nineteenth century capitalism, as used by Foucault (1977), as the thesis’ theoretical framework. In doing so, this thesis also rectifies the current marginalisation of education in Foucauldian ideas around discipline and dividing practices. This study contributes to wider dialogue, about class, power and the working body in the nineteenth century. The concept of the productive body enables me to show how the institution, whilst exhorting its evangelical rhetoric, works along lines of capitalist efficiency. Whilst the orphans’ souls are saved and their ‘characters’ converted, made respectable, through the institution’s drive for social reform and evangelical conversion, their bodies are judged in terms of productivity. Whilst some are judged fit, reformed and refined, the unrecommendable are deemed ‘spoiled’ products, excluded and marginalised. I go on to argue that such categorisations are ideologically and discursively entwined with the racialised perspectives of imperialist administration, eugenicist rhetoric and pseudo-scientific themes, which operate as nineteenth century, normative common sense. I suggest that the discourses present in the Dismissal Books create norms which bind together those who are ‘normal’ and productive into an imagined community (Anderson 2006) , and portray the unrecommendable, unproductive orphan, as ‘polluted, dangerous, taboo’ (Hall, 1997, p.258). Thus in this thesis’ account of the history of institutionalised care, the orphans are not perceived as ‘rescued’, but are instead conceptualised as fragmented subjects (Guery and Deleule 2014). They are not all saved, but selected. The orphanage, in its role as mediating authority, discursively invites the orphan to accept this process of selectivity and judgement of their working potential as inevitable, factual and true. Their categorisation is ‘proved’ by both the expert scientific observation of their body’s potential productivity by the institution authorities, and by the institution’s assertion that this is ‘the way things are’, and ‘God’s will.’ The child returned to the workhouse is thus conceptualised as belonging there. In setting out this account of the Muller New Orphan Homes in this way, it is acknowledged that this research has not been undertaken in order to denounce or accuse Muller, but in order to understand the discursive processes of the institution’s categorisations. This thesis is not undermining the good of these ‘good works’. Rather, it is locating Muller – for the first time - in the complex social, economic and cultural contexts of nineteenth century Britain, and mapping out, discursively, the ‘messier mingling of good intentions and blinkered prejudices’ (Koven 2004, p.3) which informed such works, as demonstrated in the Dismissal Books. This thesis illustrates how using critical methods of analysis can be used to deconstruct archival materials. It defines the institution as conceptualising, managing and educating the young people in care within the dominant values and ideologies of the time. In doing this, my research enables us to move away from the ‘grand narrative’ of the individual, pioneering reformist in history, and instead trace more critical and contextualising paths through the largely hidden histories of welfare and care

    Blockchain Technology: Disruptor or Enhnancer to the Accounting and Auditing Profession

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    The unique features of blockchain technology (BCT) - peer-to-peer network, distribution ledger, consensus decision-making, transparency, immutability, auditability, and cryptographic security - coupled with the success enjoyed by Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have encouraged many to assume that the technology would revolutionise virtually all aspects of business. A growing body of scholarship suggests that BCT would disrupt the accounting and auditing fields by changing accounting practices, disintermediating auditors, and eliminating financial fraud. BCT disrupts audits (Lombard et al.,2021), reduces the role of audit firms (Yermack 2017), undermines accountants' roles with software developers and miners (Fortin & Pimentel 2022); eliminates many management functions, transforms businesses (Tapscott & Tapscott, 2017), facilitates a triple-entry accounting system (Cai, 2021), and prevents fraudulent transactions (Dai, et al., 2017; Rakshit et al., 2022). Despite these speculations, scholars have acknowledged that the application of BCT in the accounting and assurance industry is underexplored and many existing studies are said to lack engagement with practitioners (Dai & Vasarhelyi, 2017; Lombardi et al., 2021; Schmitz & Leoni, 2019). This study empirically explored whether BCT disrupts or enhances accounting and auditing fields. It also explored the relevance of audit in a BCT environment and the effectiveness of the BCT mechanism for fraud prevention and detection. The study further examined which technical skillsets accountants and auditors require in a BCT environment, and explored the incentives, barriers, and unintended consequences of the adoption of BCT in the accounting and auditing professions. The current COVID-19 environment was also investigated in terms of whether the pandemic has improved BCT adoption or not. A qualitative exploratory study used semi-structured interviews to engage practitioners from blockchain start-ups, IT experts, financial analysts, accountants, auditors, academics, organisational leaders, consultants, and editors who understood the technology. With the aid of NVIVO qualitative analysis software, the views of 44 participants from 13 countries: New Zealand, Australia, United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Hong Kong, India, Pakistan, United Arab Emirates, and South Africa were analysed. The Technological, Organisational, and Environmental (TOE) framework with consequences of innovation context was adopted for this study. This expanded TOE framework was used as the theoretical lens to understand the disruption of BCT and its adoption in the accounting and auditing fields. Four clear patterns emerged. First, BCT is an emerging tool that accountants and auditors use mainly to analyse financial records because technology cannot disintermediate auditors from the financial system. Second, the technology can detect anomalies but cannot prevent financial fraud. Third, BCT has not been adopted by any organisation for financial reporting and accounting purposes, and accountants and auditors do not require new skillsets or an understanding of the BCT programming language to be able to operate in a BCT domain. Fourth, the advent of COVID-19 has not substantially enhanced the adoption of BCT. Additionally, this study highlights the incentives, barriers, and unintended consequences of adopting BCT as financial technology (FinTech). These findings shed light on important questions about BCT disrupting and disintermediating auditors, the extent of adoption in the accounting industry, preventing fraud and anomalies, and underscores the notion that blockchain, as an emerging technology, currently does not appear to be substantially disrupting the accounting and auditing profession. This study makes methodological, theoretical, and practical contributions. At the methodological level, the study adopted the social constructivist-interpretivism paradigm with an exploratory qualitative method to engage and understand BCT as a disruptive innovation in the accounting industry. The engagement with practitioners from diverse fields, professions, and different countries provides a distinctive and innovative contribution to methodological and practical knowledge. At the theoretical level, the findings contribute to the literature by offering an integrated conceptual TOE framework. The framework offers a reference for practitioners, academics and policymakers seeking to appraise comprehensive factors influencing BCT adoption and its likely unintended consequences. The findings suggest that, at present, no organisations are using BCT for financial reporting and accounting systems. This study contributes to practice by highlighting the differences between initial expectations and practical applications of what BCT can do in the accounting and auditing fields. The study could not find any empirical evidence that BCT will disrupt audits, eliminate the roles of auditors in a financial system, and prevent and detect financial fraud. Also, there was no significant evidence that accountants and auditors required higher-level skillsets and an understanding of BCT programming language to be able to use the technology. Future research should consider the implications of an external audit firm as a node in a BCT network on the internal audit functions. It is equally important to critically examine the relevance of including programming languages or codes in the curriculum of undergraduate accounting students. Future research could also empirically evaluate if a BCT-enabled triple-entry system could prevent financial statements and management fraud

    The role of the institutional environment as a barrier or an enabler to entrepreneurial and innovation activity; the case of the South African green economy industry

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    This thesis examines the relationship between the institutional environment and entrepreneurial and innovation activity within SMEs operating in South Africa's green economy, with a focus on the energy, agriculture, water and sanitation, and waste and recycling sectors. The aim is to investigate how entrepreneurs navigate the institutional environment by utilising entrepreneurial orientation and managerial discretion to achieve entrepreneurial output. By examining the implications of South Africa's post-apartheid legacy on present-day entrepreneurship in these sectors, the study yields valuable insights from the entrepreneurs' perspectives. The methodology adopted in this study is phenomenological, which utilises qualitative research methods, cross-validated with some quantitative evidence in the form of statistical analysis and case studies. The study includes 55 participants, comprising 47 entrepreneurs and 8 stakeholders from government departments, government agencies, NGOs, and incubators. The study highlights the regulatory mechanisms in place to promote small business participation in South Africa's economy and transition to a more environmentally conscious one. However, the outcomes suggest that these measures may not be achieving their intended objectives, and the institutional environment and cultural views may pose significant obstacles to entrepreneurship and the adoption of greener practices. The research emphasises the importance of addressing these issues to promote sustainable economic growth in South Africa. The study recommends a more coordinated effort by all stakeholders to target pertinent socio-economic challenges specific to South Africa's context
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