22 research outputs found

    North Korea: Transport and Logistics Scenarios and South Korean Enterprises' Location Decisions

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    North Korea is one of the world’s last remaining communist countries. Insistence on self-sufficiency has resulted in the stagnation of its economy and collapse of its transport distribution system. This research project examines how various scenarios for North Korea and the implications of South Korean enterprises’ location decisions affect future transport and logistics developments in North Korea. In the foreseeable future, aside from Chinese companies, South Korean investors will probably be the only companies to invest heavily in the North, driven by political and economic motivations. The objectives of this study are four-fold. Firstly, it analyses the political and economic factors affecting North Korea. Secondly, it appraises the present conditions of transport and logistics infrastructure in North Korea. Next, in order to ascertain the implications of business organisations’ decisions to locate in North Korea, it is imperative to determine the probable scenarios surrounding North Korea due to its unique and reclusive nature. Finally, it identifies the factors that will affect potential investors’ location choices. In order to answer the above research question and objectives, a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods was used. In the absence of reliable data from North Korea, an exploratory study was undertaken with eight experts to gain deeper understanding of the issues surrounding North Korea. The insights gathered, together with the comprehensive literature review led to the development of eight sub-research questions. Next, in-depth qualitative interviews were conducted to help develop scenarios for North Korea. Quantitative surveys were concurrently conducted which engaged SMEs and logistics companies. The findings of the research uncovered new insights. Experts think that the status quo scenario is most likely to continue in the near future unless one of the wildcard situations, such as the death of Kim Jong-il occurs. Investors are likely to invest $1-9 million in North Korea, with Nampo and Sinuiju as probable investment locations. Four main factors will influence the location choices of potential South Korean investors including ‘legal’, ‘political economy’, ‘spatial’ and ‘infrastructure’. Road transport was found to be the choice of mode for both experts and investors and China and South Korea would be the mostly like export destinations for North Korean-made products

    The Activities , Drivers and Barriers of ‘Electronic Public Service Delivery’ in Dubai’s public organisations

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    Abstract The quest to transform the delivery of government services through innovative and electronic means has been embraced by public organisations worldwide in an ever rising phenomenon, sought after to reap some of the potentially rewarding benefits of the digitisation of government services. In this study, the author reports the experiences of four major public organisations in Dubai as its governing office have imposed a deadline for all of its public agencies to transform and deliver 100 per cent of their services electronically by the end of year 2009. Notably, despite the fact that worldwide reports have placed Dubai as the leader among its Arab peers in the provision of e-government services, technological infrastructures, government’s transparency and internet and mobile penetration rates. Yet, Dubai has missed its 2005 target of transforming 70 per cent of it services electronically facing a dilemma with its digital implementation efforts with achieving less than 45 per cent transformation rate. With e-government deployment failure rates reaching levels of 60 per cent worldwide, the challenges arising from the development of e-government initiatives have proven to be extensive. The complexity of the nature of e-government initiatives as well as the ambiguity surrounding its e-services development process makes reasonable justifications for the high failure rates associated with its deployment efforts all over the world and not just in Dubai. Furthermore, the lack of a universal model and theoretical studies to guide the deployment of this phenomenon have lead researchers and practitioners alike to focus their attention on finding ways and means of improving the adoption and implementation of e-government initiatives. Thus, it was established that it was necessary to find answers for the following questions: How are public organisations in Dubai are going about the diffusion of their egovernment initiatives and what determinates are necessary to be considered in the development process to achieve the initiatives’ success? In response to the aforementioned issues and in order to respond to the research’s objectives and questions, a theoretical framework guided by Roger’s (1995) Organisation Innovation Process theory and extended by Tornatzky and Fleisher’s Technological, Organisational, Environmental (1990) model have been developed to gain a holistic understanding of the phenomenon. The author reported using a multiple in-depth case study research design, drawing on empirical data from semi-structured interviews with e-government participants and gathering evidence from organisations’ documents and proceedings from local and regional Arabic e-government conferences, as well as on-site participants’ observations. This study documented the e-service development activities and identified the influential attributes driving the e-government phenomenon using both a descriptive and exploratory research strategy. Content analysis of the interview transcripts was used to extract answers given during the semi-structured interviews and to identify new themes that emerged from the data. Revision of research findings and comparison with literature have taken place from May, 2011 till April, 2012. The review has contributed to adding over 100 pages to the literature review chapter and over 20 pages to the final chapter of recommendation and conclusion. xi Upon the conclusion of the study’s data presentation and analysis, a further literature review has provided a significant improvement in refining the study’s conceptual framework. It has provides additional theoretical elaboration of key ideas, clearer definition and articulation of the e-services development process and contributed towards the formation of fourteen propositions. The empirical findings indicated three main stages (planning, transformation and deployment) similarly delineated by Rogers’ (1995) Organisation’s Adoption Process theory (initiation, adoption and implementation). However, the stages emerged in a more interactive looping patterns unlike Rogers’ linear model. Additionally, fourteen technological, organisational and environmental factors were indicated as being responsible for influencing the development process of e-services in Dubai public organisations. These propositions are to provide concerned academics with some guidance for further investigation into the e-services’ development practices in the region. This study also attempts to assist and guide government reformers, technological innovations’ team leaders and the implementing staff in Dubai in initiating, deploying, and sustaining their technologically integrated initiatives in a systemic and educated manner

    Republic of Korea-small and medium industry project

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    노트 : This document has a restricted distribution and may be used by recipients only in the performance of their official duties. Its contents may not otherwise be disclosed without World Bank authorization

    Can Information in Children’s Drawings Inform Teachers’ Practices? A Study of Singaporean Pre-school Teachers’ “Reading” of 5-6 year olds’ Drawings.

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    Children’s drawings are graphic visual records of learning experiences (e.g. a zoo outing) often displayed on the walls of Singapore preschools to celebrate children’s learning and teachers’ teaching. At best, drawings are pictures to report to parents (e.g. child’s colouring skills or impressions of learning). Drawings are under utilized as representations of learning and thinking to inform teachers’ practices in lesson planning. First of all, a questionnaire survey with 325 teachers was collated to understand factors that influence teaching decisions. While face-to-face interviews with 61 children (5 - 6 years) had provided factors that influence their learning from children’s perspectives. The study aimed to explore with the goal of developing a strategy to teach teachers to read children’s drawings for information to support learning. As a result, the Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives (TEO): cognitive processes (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001) with a focus on learning and cognition was the framework for the “children’s drawing evaluation checklist” designed to deduce information of content-knowledge and cognitive processes. About 140 teacher-respondents evaluated 50 pre-and post-lesson drawings on wild animals and the water cycle by 25 children (5 – 6 years old) from two preschools. The findings showed children’s cognitive processes were directed at Bloom’s “Remember,” “Understand,” “Apply,” and “Analyze,” capturing alongside rich information of children’s spontaneous knowledge. The checklist was later revised and integrated with Biggs and Collis (1982) the Structure of Observed Learning Outcomes (SOLO) taxonomy to reflect the amount of information represented. The revised checklist was tested with 18 mainstream teachers to evaluate wild animals and the water cycle drawings. To test for generalizability, the checklist was tested with 22 special needs teachers to evaluate 17 high functioning special needs children’s (5- 6 years old) drawings. Consequently, implications of the use of information in children’s drawings in this study are discussed

    The Learning Impact of Offshore Outsourcing on Developing Economies Suppliers (DESs)

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    The 9th International Conference on Sustainable Development

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    The International Conference on Sustainable Development (ICSD) was held virtually on September 20-21, 2021, with the conference theme “Research for Impact: A Sustainable and Inclusive Planet.” ICSD provides a forum for academia, government, civil society, UN agencies, and the private sector to come together to share practical solutions to achieve Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The two-day conference hosted 49 different sessions across multiple time zones to accommodate the global audience, with 204 oral presenters, 239 poster presenters, and 977 total authors

    An investigation into the influences upon and determinants of perceived quality achievement in the management of construction projects by multivariate analysis

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    This research concerns a quantitative examination of the influencing factors on the achievement of quality on construction projects. Quality performance on construction projects has been conceived as a function of the design process that occurs before the design of the product, site team collaboration and interpersonal relationships, high work-place-supervision, on-site motivation and role definition. This conception has culminated in postulated determinants of quality achievement on construction based on a theoretical understanding. Aspects of measure of perceived design core job characteristics and site organisationand- management phenomena were factor analysed. The verification of the postulated determinants was accomplished by testing of a network of eight main hypotheses using multivariate analytical technique in multiple regression. Varied results emerged with four main hypotheses supported, two partially supported and the remaining two unsupported by data. The assertion is that manipulative actions on design core job characteristics, team collaboration and consensus with mutual understanding and agreement on project goals, mutual exchange with site supervisory staff and subordinates, and role definitions conducted within an integrated framework would contribute an aggregated beneficiary effect on quality achievement on construction projects

    Rethinking the risk matrix

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    So far risk has been mostly defined as the expected value of a loss, mathematically PL (being P the probability of an adverse event and L the loss incurred as a consequence of the adverse event). The so called risk matrix follows from such definition. This definition of risk is justified in a long term “managerial” perspective, in which it is conceivable to distribute the effects of an adverse event on a large number of subjects or a large number of recurrences. In other words, this definition is mostly justified on frequentist terms. Moreover, according to this definition, in two extreme situations (high-probability/low-consequence and low-probability/high-consequence), the estimated risk is low. This logic is against the principles of sustainability and continuous improvement, which should impose instead both a continuous search for lower probabilities of adverse events (higher and higher reliability) and a continuous search for lower impact of adverse events (in accordance with the fail-safe principle). In this work a different definition of risk is proposed, which stems from the idea of safeguard: (1Risk)=(1P)(1L). According to this definition, the risk levels can be considered low only when both the probability of the adverse event and the loss are small. Such perspective, in which the calculation of safeguard is privileged to the calculation of risk, would possibly avoid exposing the Society to catastrophic consequences, sometimes due to wrong or oversimplified use of probabilistic models. Therefore, it can be seen as the citizen’s perspective to the definition of risk
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