Modeling dynamic community acceptance of mining using agent-based modeling

This research attempts to provide fundamental understanding into the relationship between perceived sustainability of mineral projects and community acceptance. The main objective is to apply agent-based modeling (ABM) and discrete choice modeling to understand changes in community acceptance over time due to changes in community demographics and perceptions. This objective focuses on: 1) formulating agent utility functions for ABM, based on discrete choice theory; 2) applying ABM to account for the effect of information diffusion on community acceptance; and 3) explaining the relationship between initial conditions, topology, and rate of interactions, on one hand, and community acceptance on the other hand. To achieve this objective, the research relies on discrete choice theory, agent-based modeling, innovation and diffusion theory, and stochastic processes. Discrete choice models of individual preferences of mining projects were used to formulate utility functions for this research. To account for the effect of information diffusion on community acceptance, an agent-based model was developed to describe changes in community acceptance over time, as a function of changing demographics and perceived sustainability impacts. The model was validated with discrete choice experimental data on acceptance of mining in Salt Lake City, Utah. The validated model was used in simulation experiments to explain the model\u27s sensitivity to initial conditions, topology, and rate of interactions. The research shows that the model, with the base case social network, is more sensitive to homophily and number of early adopters than average degree (number of friends). Also, the dynamics of information diffusion are sensitive to differences in clustering in the social networks. Though the research examined the effect of three networks that differ due to the type of homophily, it is their differences in clustering due to homophily that was correlated to information diffusion dynamics --Abstract, page iii

EVALUATION OF IRANIAN SMALL AND MEDIUM-SIZED INDUSTRIES USING THE DEA BASED ON ADDITIVE RATIO MODEL – A REVIEW

Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is a prominent procedure in the decision-making process with a pivotal role in the sustainable development assay. Project identification is the first step of sustainability assessment in the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) program for the industrial projects prior to complete establishment. The present review research comprised 405 Iranian industries assessment regarding both input and output criteria via DEA integrated with the ratio model of Additive Ratio ASsessment (ARAS) and weighing systems of Kendall and Friedman's tests supported by SPSS software. The findings deployed a classification for Iranian industries pertaining to industries' nominal capacity in certain clusters. Also, the current review paved the pathway towards executing both energy and materials streams in industries

The nature of communication and its influence on resistance to change :three radical change cases

PhD ThesisIt has long been established that communication supports organizational change management, but there remains a lack of understanding of the role played by the nature of communication (COM) and its impact on resistance to change (RTC). This research seeks to fill this gap by examining respondents’ sensemaking about change, considering either a predominant monologic or dialogic COM and its influence on RTC, in three case organizations. It adopts the principles of dialogic communication (Commitment, Risk, Empathy, Propinquity and Mutuality) as dimensions of COM as well as the Cognitive, Affective and Behavioural as dimensions of RTC. The research was set in organizations in Brazil that were subject to an acquisition, which were studied over a period of up to 18 months. The research adopted a mixed method approach in a comparative case study design that included 84 individuals involved in semi-structured interviews and questionnaires at two points of data collection as well as documentary and observational sources. The interview, observational and documentary data were analyzed through thematic analysis and the questionnaire through descriptive statistics. Findings reveal that perceived RTC extent can decrease in situations with a perceived predominant dialogic COM. Empathy and Commitment were the COM dimensions perceived as those contributing most to a reduction in RTC. The theoretical importance of these findings includes contributions to change communication and RTC theories and empirical evidence for a perceived inverted relationship between dialogic COM and RTC. The practical importance of these findings includes managers being able to manage change more effectively through the prioritization of communication efforts. Finally, this research challenges the widespread assumption that all communication minimizes resistance. This work sustains that by adopting a dialogic COM as an organizational change approach, change leaders are better able to embrace RTC, with the main support of two COM dimensions of Empathy and Commitment.Fundação Dom Cabral (FDC), the business schoo

Unravelling the Influence of Online Social Context on Consumer Health Information Technology (CHIT) Implementations

While health information technology research has examined a variety of topics (e.g., adoption and assimilation of technology within healthcare organizations, critical success factors), it has remained unclear how the uniqueness of the online context (e.g., users connecting with strangers for social and emotional support) influences consumer health information technology (CHIT) implementations. Towards this goal, this dissertation examines the influence of online social context on CHIT implementations and outcomes. Using theories from social psychology, this dissertation encompasses two empirical research essays. The first essay draws on the environmental enrichment concept to examine the influential role of the online social context of a gamified CHIT on its success. By surveying existing fitness technology users, we demonstrate the influence of the social context enabled by CHITs on behavioral adherence to exercise. The second essay draws on construal level theory to examine the influence of textual information (such as race, geographic location) in online patient communities on a user’s trust of the community and the system as well as their intentions to participate in them. Using randomized experiments, we identify some of the propinquity-related factors that influence a user’s trust in online patient communities. The key contribution of this dissertation is the advancement of our understanding of the important role played by the social context enabled by the CHITs

Back to the future : the networked household in the global economy

Developed nations have promoted a modernist view of the nuclear family functioning in spatially separate public and private spheres of production and consumption. However, in these countries, the coalescence of communications and information technologies has given rise to ‘office automation' and ‘business process re-engineering’ which have destablilised employment. These technologies have also problematised the concept of organisational boundaries by enabling networked alternatives to conventional forms, and have challenged established relationships between size and performance. Currently emergent technologies are allowing small homebased businesses to confront much larger competitors beyond their immediate vicinity, while the same technologies are allowing the state to relocate functions such as hospital care and confinement to the home. Economic globalisation is opening communities in both ‘under' and ‘over' developed economies to direct competition from across national and cultural boundaries and making access to appropriate information and communication technologies as significant as physical location.Australian Policy Online (APO)'s Linked Data II project, funded by the Australian Research Council, with partners at the ANU Library, Swinburne University and RMIT

Loosing it: Knowledge Management in Tourism Development Projects

Knowledge management and the development of the destination’s capacity of the intellectual skills needed to use tourism as an effective tool in the search for regeneration and development are central themes explored within this paper. The authors have lived and worked with the problems inherent in short term funding of special projects designed to achieve or facilitate tourism development. We have witnessed with growing sadness the results – and the lack of them – as funding cycles end and staff with experience move away. Development processes require multi-stakeholder involvement at all levels, bringing together governments, NGOs, residents, industry and professionals in a partnership that determines the amount and kind of tourism that a community wants (Sirakaya et al., 2001). Planners need to provide knowledge sharing mechanisms to residents, visitors, industry and other stakeholders in order to raise public and political awareness. We note an absence of literature relating to the capacity of communities to learn from short-term funded projects that inherently are destined to provide a strategic blueprint for destination development and in most cases regeneration through community-based tourism action.Knowledge management, sharing and embedding, community tourism

California Dreaming? Cross-Cluster Embeddedness and the Systematic Non-Emergence of the 'Next Silicon Valley'

The importance of social embeddedness in economic activity is now widely accepted. Embeddedness has been shown to be particularly significant in explaining the trajectory of regional development. Nonetheless, most studies of embeddeddness and its impacts have treated each locale as an independent unit. Following recent calls for the study of cross-cluster social interactions, we look at the consistent failure of numerous localities in the United States with high potential to emulate Silicon Valley and achieve sustained success in the ICT industry. The paper contends that the answer lies in high-technology clusters being part of a larger system. Therefore, we must include in our analysis of their social structure the influence of cross-cluster embeddedness of firms and entrepreneurs. These cross-clusters dynamics lead to self-reinforcing social fragmentation in the aspiring clusters and, in time, to the creation of an industrial system in the United States based on stable dominant and subordinate (feeder) clusters. The paper expands theories of industrial clusters, focusing on social capital, networks, and embeddedness arguments, to explain a world with one predominant cluster region. It utilizes a multimethod analysis of the ICT industry centered in Atlanta, Georgia, as an empirical example to elaborate and hone these theoretical arguments.

Attitudes towards Face-To-Face Meetings in Virtual Engineering Teams: Perceptions from a Survey of Defense Projects

Modes of communication used in virtual defense projects have changed dramatically over the years with tools such as email and video-conferencing dominating face-to-face (FTF) meetings. We conducted a survey at a defense firm with an aim to test current attitudes towards FTF meetings – with respect to significant problems faced, project success, transfer of technical requirements, preference for FTF vis-à-vis virtual meetings, differences between virtual and co-located environments, criticality of various forms of communication, and whether FTF meetings were scheduled as often as desired. Our survey participants, about one hundred in number, were experienced engineers, technicians, and program managers – working in a virtual product development team at a defense firm. The results suggest that despite significant advances in virtual communication technologies, FTF meetings remain critical and cannot be eliminated from defense firms. Further, it is also clear that FTF meetings can play a significant role in reducing chances of miscommunication

Towards an ‘alternative’ geography of innovation:Alternative milieu, socio-cognitive protection and sustainability experimentation

This paper highlights the hitherto unrecognised role of ‘alternative’ places in protecting different forms of sustainability innovation. The paper uses the concept of an alternative milieu to illustrate how a geographically localised concentration of countercultural practices, institutions and networks can create socio-cognitive ‘niche’ protection for sustainability experiments. An alternative milieu creates protection for the emergence of novelties by (i) creating ontological and epistemological multiplicity; (ii) sustain- ing productive spatial imaginaries; and (iii) supporting ontological security. These different dimensions of protection are explored with reference to an in-depth, empirical case study of Totnes in the United Kingdom. The paper concludes with some reflections on the theoretical implications of this research for the theorising of niche protection and for the geographies of innovation more generally, along with some recommendations for future areas of enquiry