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Ensuring Access to Safe and Nutritious Food for All Through the Transformation of Food Systems
A Design Science Research Approach to Smart and Collaborative Urban Supply Networks
Urban supply networks are facing increasing demands and challenges and thus constitute a relevant field for research and practical development. Supply chain management holds enormous potential and relevance for society and everyday life as the flow of goods and information are important economic functions. Being a heterogeneous field, the literature base of supply chain management research is difficult to manage and navigate. Disruptive digital technologies and the implementation of cross-network information analysis and sharing drive the need for new organisational and technological approaches. Practical issues are manifold and include mega trends such as digital transformation, urbanisation, and environmental awareness.
A promising approach to solving these problems is the realisation of smart and collaborative supply networks. The growth of artificial intelligence applications in recent years has led to a wide range of applications in a variety of domains. However, the potential of artificial intelligence utilisation in supply chain management has not yet been fully exploited. Similarly, value creation increasingly takes place in networked value creation cycles that have become continuously more collaborative, complex, and dynamic as interactions in business processes involving information technologies have become more intense.
Following a design science research approach this cumulative thesis comprises the development and discussion of four artefacts for the analysis and advancement of smart and collaborative urban supply networks. This thesis aims to highlight the potential of artificial intelligence-based supply networks, to advance data-driven inter-organisational collaboration, and to improve last mile supply network sustainability. Based on thorough machine learning and systematic literature reviews, reference and system dynamics modelling, simulation, and qualitative empirical research, the artefacts provide a valuable contribution to research and practice
Corporate Social Responsibility: the institutionalization of ESG
Understanding the impact of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) on firm performance as it relates to industries reliant on technological innovation is a complex and perpetually evolving challenge. To thoroughly investigate this topic, this dissertation will adopt an economics-based structure to address three primary hypotheses. This structure allows for each hypothesis to essentially be a standalone empirical paper, unified by an overall analysis of the nature of impact that ESG has on firm performance. The first hypothesis explores the evolution of CSR to the modern quantified iteration of ESG has led to the institutionalization and standardization of the CSR concept. The second hypothesis fills gaps in existing literature testing the relationship between firm performance and ESG by finding that the relationship is significantly positive in long-term, strategic metrics (ROA and ROIC) and that there is no correlation in short-term metrics (ROE and ROS). Finally, the third hypothesis states that if a firm has a long-term strategic ESG plan, as proxied by the publication of CSR reports, then it is more resilience to damage from controversies. This is supported by the finding that pro-ESG firms consistently fared better than their counterparts in both financial and ESG performance, even in the event of a controversy. However, firms with consistent reporting are also held to a higher standard than their nonreporting peers, suggesting a higher risk and higher reward dynamic. These findings support the theory of good management, in that long-term strategic planning is both immediately economically beneficial and serves as a means of risk management and social impact mitigation. Overall, this contributes to the literature by fillings gaps in the nature of impact that ESG has on firm performance, particularly from a management perspective
The ageing Caribbean: 20 years of the Madrid Plan of Action
This report assess the situation of older persons and reviews the actions taken in Caribbean countries and territories, particularly over the past five years, to implement the Madrid International Plan of Action on Ageing and related regional agreements. It contributes to the global and regional reviews of the Plan of Action, 20 years on from its adoption in 2002, and includes recommendations to further address population ageing and the rights of older persons in the Caribbean.Abstract .-- Introduction .-- I. Ageing, economic security and public policy .-- II. Ageing, health and care .-- III. Enabling and supportive environments .-- IV. Conclusions and key recommendations
Patient and public involvement and engagement (PPIE) with animal research
This is the final published version. Available from the Animal Research Nexus Project via the link in this recordInterim report from the Animal Research Nexus Project, January 2019Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement (PPIE) is increasingly embedded within healthcare research. PPIE seeks to enable patients and members of the public to apply their priorities to the development and delivery of health services and improve the quality and relevance of research by drawing on the lived expertise of individuals affected by the health conditions that research aims to benefit. These activities are varied. They range from the identification of research priorities and questions, the appraisal of study design, visits to research facilities, to the dissemination of research results. ‘Lay people’ can become involved at multiple points within the research pipeline and are increasingly encountering basic and preclinical research further ‘upstream’. The movement of PPIE into basic and pre-clinical research raises new questions for practices of involvement and engagement, particularly, in emerging interfaces between PPIE and animal research.
We have been using qualitative research methods to trace the ways in which lay members and publics are encountering animals within biomedical research. We are seeking to understand how involvement and engagement activities can be organised in ways that are sensitive to the diverse experiences of lay members, researchers, and others involved, and open up authentic and meaningful conversations. This involves working with a range of different stakeholders: engaged and involved lay members, research funders and involvement professionals, and basic and translational researchers to progress conversations around PPIE with animal research. In this report we present our preliminary analysis and invite feedback around the themes, questions, and recommendations that have emerged since we commenced this work in autumn 2017.Wellcome Trus
A qualitative study about first year students’ experiences of transitioning to higher education and available academic support resources
Successfully transitioning students to higher education is a complex problem that challenges institutions internationally. Unsuccessful transitions have wide ranging implications that include both social and financial impacts for students and the universities. There appears to be a paucity in the literature that represents student perspectives on their transition experiences. This research study aimed to do two things: first to better understand the transition experience and use of academic support services from the student perspective and second to provide strategies for facilitating a more effective transition experience based on student discussions.
This research explores the experiences of primarily non-traditional students at one institution in Australia. Data collection involved two phases using a yarning circle approach. The first involved participants in small unstructured yarning circles where they were given the opportunity to speak freely about their transition experience and their use of academic support services. This was then followed by a larger yarning circle that was semi-structured to explore some of the themes from the small yarning circles more fully. The yarning circle data was analysed using Braun and Clarke’s (2006) six-steps of thematic analysis.
The analysis indicated that participants felt that the available academic support services did not meet their needs. It also provided insight into how the students approach higher education and what they are seeking from their institution by means of support. One major finding that has the potential to impact transition programs around the world is that older non-traditional students appear to approach higher education as they would a new job. This shifts the lens away from the traditional transition program of social integration to one that uses workplace induction strategies as a form of integration. The recommendations from this study also include recognising and accepting the emotions associated with transitioning to higher education, reworking the transition strategies for non-traditional students and facilitating opportunities for engagement as opposed to providing them directly
TOWARDS AN UNDERSTANDING OF EFFORTFUL FUNDRAISING EXPERIENCES: USING INTERPRETATIVE PHENOMENOLOGICAL ANALYSIS IN FUNDRAISING RESEARCH
Physical-activity oriented community fundraising has experienced an exponential growth in popularity over the past 15 years. The aim of this study was to explore the value of effortful fundraising experiences, from the point of view of participants, and explore the impact that these experiences have on people’s lives. This study used an IPA approach to interview 23 individuals, recognising the role of participants as proxy (nonprofessional) fundraisers for charitable organisations, and the unique organisation donor dynamic that this creates. It also bought together relevant psychological theory related to physical activity fundraising experiences (through a narrative literature review) and used primary interview data to substantiate these. Effortful fundraising experiences are examined in detail to understand their significance to participants, and how such experiences influence their connection with a charity or cause. This was done with an idiographic focus at first, before examining convergences and divergences across the sample. This study found that effortful fundraising experiences can have a profound positive impact upon community fundraisers in both the short and the long term. Additionally, it found that these experiences can be opportunities for charitable organisations to create lasting meaningful relationships with participants, and foster mutually beneficial lifetime relationships with them. Further research is needed to test specific psychological theory in this context, including self-esteem theory, self determination theory, and the martyrdom effect (among others)
'Exarcheia doesn't exist': Authenticity, Resistance and Archival Politics in Athens
My thesis investigates the ways people, materialities and urban spaces interact to form affective ecologies and produce historicity. It focuses on the neighbourhood of Exarcheia, Athens’ contested political topography par excellence, known for its production of radical politics of discontent and resistance to state oppression and eoliberal capitalism. Embracing Exarcheia’s controversial status within Greek vernacular, media and state discourses, this thesis aims to unpick the neighbourhoods’ socio-spatial assemblage imbued with affect and formed through the numerous (mis)understandings and (mis)interpretations rooted in its turbulent political history. Drawing on theory on urban spaces, affect, hauntology and archival politics, I argue for Exarcheia as an unwavering archival space composed of affective chronotopes – (in)tangible loci that defy space and temporality. I posit that the interwoven narratives and materialities emerging in my fieldwork are persistently – and perhaps obsessively – reiterating themselves and remaining imprinted on the neighbourhood’s landscape as an incessant reminder of violent histories that the state often seeks to erase and forget. Through this analysis, I contribute to understandings of place as a primary ethnographic ‘object’ and the ways in which place forms complex interactions and relationships with social actors, shapes their subjectivities, retains and bestows their memories and senses of historicity
Educating Sub-Saharan Africa:Assessing Mobile Application Use in a Higher Learning Engineering Programme
In the institution where I teach, insufficient laboratory equipment for engineering education pushed students to learn via mobile phones or devices. Using mobile technologies to learn and practice is not the issue, but the more important question lies in finding out where and how they use mobile tools for learning. Through the lens of Kearney et al.’s (2012) pedagogical model, using authenticity, personalisation, and collaboration as constructs, this case study adopts a mixed-method approach to investigate the mobile learning activities of students and find out their experiences of what works and what does not work. Four questions are borne out of the over-arching research question, ‘How do students studying at a University in Nigeria perceive mobile learning in electrical and electronic engineering education?’ The first three questions are answered from qualitative, interview data analysed using thematic analysis. The fourth question investigates their collaborations on two mobile social networks using social network and message analysis. The study found how students’ mobile learning relates to the real-world practice of engineering and explained ways of adapting and overcoming the mobile tools’ limitations, and the nature of the collaborations that the students adopted, naturally, when they learn in mobile social networks. It found that mobile engineering learning can be possibly located in an offline mobile zone. It also demonstrates that investigating the effectiveness of mobile learning in the mobile social environment is possible by examining users’ interactions. The study shows how mobile learning personalisation that leads to impactful engineering learning can be achieved. The study shows how to manage most interface and technical challenges associated with mobile engineering learning and provides a new guide for educators on where and how mobile learning can be harnessed. And it revealed how engineering education can be successfully implemented through mobile tools
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