5,983 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

    Tourism and heritage in the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone

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    Tourism and Heritage in the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ) uses an ethnographic lens to explore the dissonances associated with the commodification of Chornobyl's heritage. The book considers the role of the guides as experience brokers, focusing on the synergy between tourists and guides in the performance of heritage interpretation. Banaszkiewicz proposes to perceive tour guides as important actors in the bottom-up construction of heritage discourse contributing to more inclusive and participatory approach to heritage management. Demonstrating that the CEZ has been going through a dynamic transformation into a mass tourism attraction, the book offers a critical reflection on heritagisation as a meaning-making process in which the resources of the past are interpreted, negotiated, and recognised as a valuable legacy. Applying the concepts of dissonant heritage to describe the heterogeneous character of the CEZ, the book broadens the interpretative scope of dark tourism which takes on a new dimension in the context of the war in Ukraine. Tourism and Heritage in the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone argues that post-disaster sites such as Chornobyl can teach us a great deal about the importance of preserving cultural and natural heritage for future generations. The book will be of interest to academics and students who are engaged in the study of heritage, tourism, memory, disasters and Eastern Europe

    Enhancing Scotland’s Childsmile programme through Community Linking to address child oral health inequalities

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    Dental caries in primary teeth affects over 530 million children globally, and outcomes are significantly associated with social circumstances. Scotland’s national child oral health improvement programme Childsmile has in part been responsible for improvements in oral health over the past decade, but inequality based on socioeconomic factors persists. Community Linking/Social Prescribing aims to reduce inequality through addressing the social determinants of health by engaging patients with community services/third-sector support. The Childsmile programme employs Dental Health Support Workers who provide targeted and tailored interventions to families most in need. Part of the role of Dental Health Support Workers is to link families experiencing wider social and economic problems to external community services/resources where tailored support can be offered. This thesis describes research which aims to optimise Childsmile’s Community Linking/Social Prescribing pathway for families of young children to improve oral health and tackle the social determinants of health to reduce inequalities. Methodology: A mixed methods approach was employed, and three studies were conducted. Study one used secondary analysis of population-wide individuallevel linked routine administrative data and health data to investigate Community Linking practice within Childsmile. The second study was a Systematic Overview of systematic reviews and guidelines to assess best practices for Community Linking, drawing from literature across Primary Care health services and using the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) model to guide analysis and reporting. The third study was an online national survey of Dental Health Support Workers to assess the feasibility and acceptability of Community Linking. The first and the second study informed the survey content, and again the CFIR guided survey design. IBM SPSS v26 was used to describe quantitative data, and QRS NVivo v12 was used for qualitative thematic analysis. Results: Secondary analysis of linked data showed just over a fifth of families were referred to a Dental Health Support Worker for additional support over the study years, reflecting the targeted nature of this Childsmile intervention. Among these families, the percentages who were linked to external community services/resources increased from 1.8% (219/12169) in 2011 to 21.0% (1227/5833) in 2015, with the main support services being related to nutrition/diet and parent/baby support groups. Families living in the most deprived areas of Scotland and those determined by their Health Visitor to have greater support needs were more likely to be linked to wider community services by Dental Health Support Workers; however, there was significant variation in linking rates. The Systematic Overview key findings highlight several programme delivery aspects associated with best practice, such as basing programmes on high-quality evidence, obtaining resources, and being flexible in approach, developing trust among partners and assessing participants' needs to provide a tailored pathway. An optimum level of training, mentoring, and feedback is required for Community Health Workers. The Community Health Workers' characteristics should be such that they are perceived as leaders in the community and are respected. The services should be accessible and perceived by the participants as beneficial. Inter-sectoral working is also key. Partners should have enough time to develop understanding, communicate, network, and implement and evaluate the Community Linking implementation. The Systematic Overview showed a need for a multilevel pragmatic approach. The Online Survey of Dental Health Support Workers had a response rate of 58% (59/102) from 13/14 geographical health boards. Results demonstrated high awareness of Community Linking: 88% (52/59) of respondents agreed that this is a good way to improve child oral health, and 72% (42/59) had some experience of Community Linking in their current role. Feedback from community services and families was lacking. More than three quarters, 85% (50/59), said they would be able to identify appropriate community organisations for Community Linking. Thematic illustrations of open-ended responses showed: workload and time barriers when working with families; the importance of collaborative working, for example, with social services and education; training of staff to overcome these barriers, such as local area knowledge; the importance of building trust with families; and the importance of actively facilitating and supporting access to services. Conclusion: Community Linking is a relatively new concept in dental public health. It is implemented within the Childsmile programme via Dental Health Support Workers and is considered a route to help families in need of support and address socio-economic inequalities in oral health. According to our findings, future implementation work in Childsmile is broadly supported by moderate quality evidence and perceptions on acceptability and feasibility. Programme theory is articulated in Chapter 7, which shows the need to tailor links to need and foster integrated working, with clear communication routes between referrers and community organisations, including those for monitoring and evaluation. Staff are supportive of this as a route to a range of positive health outcomes. Nevertheless, workload/resource barriers need to be considered, and support and training are required in terms of available community resources and building sustainable links

    Myanmar higher education in transition: the interplay between state authority, student politics and international actors.

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    The Myanmar “period of transition” (2011-2021) has often been described as a puzzle. Various scholars have begun to engage with the Myanmar context in an effort to grasp the essence of the transition it underwent during President Thein Sein’s USPD and Aung San Suu Kyi’s NLD governments. My work focuses on a specific policy sector, higher education, with a view to contributing to this scholarly debate regarding what was actually happening inside this complex country “transition”, especially in terms of collective participation in the process of political and social change. Reviewing existing scholarly literature on the politics of higher education, my study employs a triangle of analysis in which higher education reform is framed as the interplay of action on the part of “state authority”, “student politics” and “international actors”. What does this interplay lens reveal if we consider Myanmar’s “period of transition”? I argue that it shows the ambiguity and contradiction of tangible pushes for progressive social change that coexisted with authoritarian currents and the reinforcement of the societal position of dominant elites. At the policy level, ultimately, a convergence of interests between international actors and state authority served as the force driving the new higher education reform towards a neo-liberal model of governance and autonomy. This work unpacks the higher education reform process thanks to qualitative data gathered through extensive participant observation, in-depth interviewing and critical discourse analysis, shedding light on the rich narratives of those involved in the politics of higher education in Myanmar

    Covid-19 and Capitalism

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    This open access book provides a comprehensive analysis of the socioeconomic determinants of Covid-19. From the end of 2019 until presently, the world has been ravaged by the Covid-19 pandemic. Although the cause of this is (obviously) a virus, the extent to which this virus spread, and therefore the number of infections and deaths, was largely determined by socio-economic factors. From this, it follows that the course of the pandemic varies greatly from one country to another. This observation applies both to countries’ resilience to such a pandemic (which is mainly rooted in the period preceding the outbreak of the virus) and to the way in which countries have reacted to the virus (including the political choices on how to respond). Meanwhile, research has made it clear that the nature of this response (e.g., elimination policy, mitigation policy, and proceeding herd immunity) was, on the one hand, strongly determined by political and ideological factors and, on the other hand, was highly influential in the factors of success or failure in combating the pandemic. The book focuses on the situation in a number of Western regions (notably the USA, the UK, and the EU and its Member States). The author addresses the reasons why in many Western countries both pandemic prevention and response policies to Covid-19 have failed. The book concludes with recommendations concerning the rearrangement of the socio-economic order that could increase the resilience of (Western) societies against such pandemics

    Performing Sustainability in West Africa

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    This book discusses the role of cultural practices and policy for sustainable development in West Africa across different artistic disciplines, including performance, video, theatre, community arts and cultural heritage. Based on ethnographic field research in local communities, the book presents findings on current debates of cultural sustainability in Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon and Benin. It provides a unique perspective connecting cultural studies, conflict studies and practical peacebuilding approaches through the arts. The first part pays particular attention to aspects of social cohesion and the circumstances of internally displaced persons e. g. caused by the Boko Haram insurgency in Northeast Nigeria. The second part focuses on cultural policy issues and challenges in the context of sustainable development, investigating participatory approaches and bottom-up processes, the role of governments and civil society, as well as performing arts organizations and universities in policy making and implementation processes. Performing Sustainability in West Africa presents research results and new methods on the role of artistic and cultural practices in conflict situations as well as current debates in cultural policy for researchers, academics, NGOs and students in cultural studies, sustainable development studies and African studies

    Advanced Modeling, Control, and Optimization Methods in Power Hybrid Systems - 2021

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    The climate changes that are becoming visible today are a challenge for the global research community. In this context, renewable energy sources, fuel cell systems and other energy generating sources must be optimally combined and connected to the grid system using advanced energy transaction methods. As this reprint presents the latest solutions in the implementation of fuel cell and renewable energy in mobile and stationary applications such as hybrid and microgrid power systems based on the Energy Internet, blockchain technology and smart contracts, we hope that they will be of interest to readers working in the related fields mentioned above

    'Exarcheia doesn't exist': Authenticity, Resistance and Archival Politics in Athens

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    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

    Realising catastrophe: the financial ontology of the Anthropocene

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    This dissertation investigates how the financial risk management practice of catastrophe modelling is redefining the ontology of natural catastrophe. Drawing from and developing the concept of the ‘Anthropocene’, referring to co-production of the ‘social’ and the ‘natural’ on a planetary scale, the dissertation argues that simulation-based risk modelling of future ‘natural’ disasters in insurance and reinsurance markets is not just affecting how catastrophe is interpreted by economic agents, economised and financialised, but is also driving changes in the realisation of actual disasters. The thesis calls this recursive dynamic the ‘financial ontology of Anthropocene catastrophe’. In developing the argument, the thesis extends actor-network theoretical perspectives on the Anthropocene to take fuller account of market devices, performativity and calculative practices in finance. Documentary research, 62 interviews and 14 participant observation episodes serve to reconstruct current practices of catastrophe modelling and its history since it emerged as a boutique risk management practice in the 1980s. Ultimately, it has become embedded in the calculative practices of some of the largest insurance and financial companies in the world and underpinning a specialist disaster securities market. Adding conceptual depth and fine-grained empirical detail to literature on the financialisation-Anthropocene nexus, the dissertation asks us to reconsider the boundaries between economic representations of the world and the meaning and occurrence of catastrophes in market societies. In an age of anthropogenic climate change, the thesis also serves as an analytical and historical underpinning of epistemic practices in climate finance in the emerging, even more encompassing, ‘financial ontology of the Anthropocene’

    Chinese Benteng Women’s Participation in Local Development Affairs in Indonesia: Appropriate means for struggle and a pathway to claim citizen’ right?

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    It had been more than two decades passing by aftermath the devastating Asia’s Financial Crisis in 1997, subsequently followed by Suharto’s step down from his presidential throne which he occupied for more than three decades. The financial turmoil turned to a political disaster furthermore has led to massive looting that severely impacted Indonesians of Chinese descendant, including unresolved mystery of the most atrocious sexual violation against women and covert killings of students and democracy activists in this country. Since then, precisely aftermath May 1998, which publicly known as “Reformasi”1, Indonesia underwent political reform that eventually corresponded positively to its macroeconomic growth. Twenty years later, in 2018, Indonesia captured worldwide attention because it has successfully hosted two internationally renowned events, namely the Asian Games 2018 – the most prestigious sport events in Asia – conducted in Jakarta and Palembang; and the IMF/World Bank Annual Meeting 2018 in Bali. Particularly in the IMF/World Bank Annual Meeting, this event has significantly elevated Indonesia’s credibility and international prestige in the global economic powerplay as one of the nations with promising growth and openness. However, the narrative about poverty and inequality, including increasing racial tension, religious conservatism, and sexual violation against women are superseded by friendly climate for foreign investment and eventually excessive glorification of the nation’s economic growth. By portraying the image of promising new economic power, as rhetorically promised by President Joko Widodo during his presidential terms, Indonesia has swept the growing inequality in this highly stratified society that historically compounded with religious and racial tension under the carpet of digital economy.Arte y Humanidade
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