7,725 research outputs found
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The impact of employees' working relations in creating and retaining trust: the case of the Bahrain Olympic Committee
Introduction: This thesis investigates the impact of employees’ working relations in creating, maintaining and retaining trust in the Bahrain Olympic Committee (BOC).
Aim: The main aim of this thesis is to determine how the three groups of Organisational Trust variables, namely Social System Elements (SSE), Factors of Trustworthiness (FoT) and Third-Party Gossip (TPG), affect employees’ Organisational Trust (OTR) in the BOC and promote Organisational Citizenship Behaviour (OCB). To answer this main aim, a conceptual framework was created that focused on exploring the following research aims: (1) the interrelationship between SSE and FoT, (2) the effect of SSE on OTR, (3) the impact of TPG on OTR and (4) the effect of OTR on overall OCB.
Methodology: The study uses a mixed-method case study research style that included in-depth semi-structured interviews with 17 managers, an online questionnaire survey with 320 employees of the BOC and an analysis of the BOC’s Annual Reports from 2015 to 2018.
Results: The qualitative and quantitative findings indicate, firstly, that there is a significant interrelationship between SSE and FoT, establishing that SSE’s perception of organisational justice (OJ), including that FoTs benevolence and integrity as the most important factors in yielding employees’ trust in the BOC. Secondly, it has been established that SSEs have significant direct and indirect effects on OTR. Thirdly, negative and positive TPG concurrently occurred in the BOC and the prevalence of negative TPG poses more impact on OTR. Finally, this study’s findings demonstrated OTR’s effect in generating OCB, including that Civic Virtue was rated as the most preferred of the five OCB themes; this indicates the managers’ and the employees’ strong emotional attachment and support of the activities taking place at the BOC.
Contributions: Overall, this thesis substantially contributes to OTR literature, particularly in the context of the Middle East. It also proposes several insightful recommendations for future research and practical implications for practitioners in the field of Organisational Trust
Urbanised forested landscape: Urbanisation, timber extraction and forest care on the Vișeu Valley, northern Romania
By looking at urbanisation processes from the vantage point of the forest, and the ways in which it both constitutes our living space while having been separated from the bounded space of the urban in modern history, the thesis asks: How can we (re)imagine urbanisation beyond the limits of the urban? How can a feminine line of thinking engage with the forest beyond the capitalist-colonial paradigm and its extractive project? and How can we “think with care” (Puig de la Bellacasa 2017) towards the forest as an inhabitant of our common world, instead of perpetuating the image of the forest as a space outside the delimited boundaries of the city? Through a case study research, introducing the Vișeu Valley in northern Romania as both a site engaged in the circulation of the global timber flow, a part of what Brenner and Schmid (2014) name “planetary urbanisation”, where the extractive logging operations beginning in the late XVIIIth century have constructed it as an extractive landscape, and a more than human landscape inhabited by a multitude of beings (animal, plant, and human) the thesis argues towards the importance of forest care and indigenous knowledge in landscape management understood as a trans-generational transmission of knowledge, that is interdependent with the persistence of the landscape as such. Having a trans-scalar approach, the thesis investigates the ways in which the extractive projects of the capitalist-colonial paradigm have and still are shaping forested landscapes across the globe in order to situate the case as part of a planetary forest landscape and the contemporary debates it is engaged in. By engaging with emerging paradigms within the fields of plant communication, forestry, legal scholarship and landscape urbanism that present trees and forests as intelligent beings, and look at urbanisation as a way of inhabiting the landscape in both indigenous and modern cultures, the thesis argues towards viewing forested landscapes as more than human living spaces. Thinking urbanisation through the case of the Vișeu Valley’s urbanised forested landscape, the thesis aligns with alternate ways of viewing urbanisation as co-habitation with more than human beings, particularly those emerging from interdisciplinary research in the Amazon river basin (Tavares 2017, Heckenberger 2012) and, in light of emerging discourses on the rights of nature, proposes an expanded concept of planetary citizenship, to include non-human personhood
Tourism and heritage in the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone
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
Intelligent computing : the latest advances, challenges and future
Computing is a critical driving force in the development of human civilization. In recent years, we have witnessed the emergence of intelligent computing, a new computing paradigm that is reshaping traditional computing and promoting digital revolution in the era of big data, artificial intelligence and internet-of-things with new computing theories, architectures, methods, systems, and applications. Intelligent computing has greatly broadened the scope of computing, extending it from traditional computing on data to increasingly diverse computing paradigms such as perceptual intelligence, cognitive intelligence, autonomous intelligence, and human computer fusion intelligence. Intelligence and computing have undergone paths of different evolution and development for a long time but have become increasingly intertwined in recent years: intelligent computing is not only intelligence-oriented but also intelligence-driven. Such cross-fertilization has prompted the emergence and rapid advancement of intelligent computing
Attaining climate justice through the adaptation of urban form to climate change: flood risks in Toronto
Empirical evidence points out that entrenched cost-benefit rationales behind urban form adaptations to climate change unequally exacerbate vulnerabilities and hazard exposures, engendering risk inequalities and triggering climate injustice. Specifically, adaptive interventions for managing climate change-induced floods, whether through green and blue infrastructure (GBI), land use planning, or urban design, prioritize the protection of high-value urban assets while excluding vulnerable groups. To redress climate injustice, some have called for the consideration of the three pillars of justice: distributive justice, i.e., the just spatial distribution of adaptation responses; procedural justice, i.e., the equality of decision-making processes; and recognitional justice, i.e., the legitimization of marginalized groups. To assess the extent of these pillars’ integration in the scholarship (theoretically and empirically), this dissertation conducted a systematic review of 136 peer-reviewed papers on urban climate justice vis-à -vis adaptation. The findings reveal a lack of theoretical and empirical connections between the three-pillared justice framework and climate adaptive interventions in urban form.
The dissertation’s theoretical framework overcomes these omissions by using different theories/concepts in the literature as nexuses connecting climate justice pillars with urban form. It capitalizes on interconnections distributive justice has with differential vulnerabilities, flood exposures, and the adaptive capacity of urban form to identify areas that unequally experience flood risks and need to be prioritized in adaptation. It, furthermore, combined the three-pillared justice framework with epistemic justice and local experiential knowledge concept to explore how flood-adaptive GBI planning can address the root causes of vulnerabilities, hence facilitating justice-oriented transformative adaptation. Accordingly, the research developed a multi-criteria model including indicators and variables for measuring the spatial distribution of social vulnerabilities, exposure, and the adaptive capacity of urban form, whereby it proposes pathways for justice-oriented transformative adaptation of high-risk priority areas through GBI planning.
The dissertation focuses on Toronto in Ontario, Canada, to test the theoretical framework, which can be applied in any city. The study in Toronto asks: “who” is unequally at-risk of flooding events, “where” are they located, “why” they are unequally vulnerable, and “how” we can engage the high-risk community in adaptive GBI planning to promote justice-oriented transformative adaptation. The methodology started with operationalizing the spatial multi-criteria model through weighted overlay analysis using ArcGIS and an online survey of 120 Toronto-based flooding experts, which yielded the identification of four priority neighborhoods at a disproportionate risk of floods. Focusing on one of the high-risk priority neighborhoods, Thorncliffe Park, I conducted 20 semi-structured interviews with flooding experts and local leaders and an online survey of residents to investigate whether the local experiential knowledge of residents has been recognized in adaptive GBI planning decisions. I furthermore performed an online participatory-mapping activity in this neighborhood during which participants marked, on the neighborhood map, locations that require GBI for socio-cultural benefits. I overlaid the resulting participatory maps with land uses’ run-off coefficients to propose sites for allocating GBI for both socio-cultural benefits and run-off management.
The findings show the effectiveness of the theoretical framework in identifying priority neighborhoods and developing place-based adaptation solutions inside and outside Canada. All four high-risk neighborhoods are inner-city tower communities with old infrastructure and dense low-income, racialized, and migrant populations, typical tower blocks built after the second World War in several cities across North America and Europe. The findings in Thorncliffe Park, as the priority neighborhood, unveil the exclusion of residents from flood-adaptive GBI planning despite their vulnerabilities and exposure. This exclusion, as results indicate, is rooted in technocratic processes based on technical knowledge and cost-benefit rationales. The findings show four epistemic barriers that need to be addressed to facilitate climate justice in adaptation interventions within Thorncliffe Park: lack of social networks, citizenship rights, climate awareness opportunities, and communicational tools. The results also show that the industrial uses around the railway and residential-commercial sites around Overlea Boulevard in this neighborhood are in dire need of GBI for managing run-offs and socio-cultural benefits. I propose adopting inclusive processes to allocate small-scale adaptive GBI in these locations. Building on the findings, the dissertation proposes future theoretical and empirical studies to complement this study by proposing how to design GBI and other urban form adaptive interventions by changing the layout patterns, orientation, and geometry of streets, buildings, and blocks in the high-risk disenfranchised communities to advance climate justice. At the center of this proposition are developing new theories to expand the climate justice triad and devising new forms of inclusive and collaborative design
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Ensuring Access to Safe and Nutritious Food for All Through the Transformation of Food Systems
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
Subsidiary Entrepreneurial Alertness: Antecedents and Outcomes
This thesis brings together concepts from both international business and entrepreneurship to develop a framework of the facilitators of subsidiary innovation and performance. This study proposes that Subsidiary Entrepreneurial Alertness (SEA) facilitates the recognition of opportunities (the origin of subsidiary initiatives). First introduced by Kirzner (1979) in the context of the individual, entrepreneurial alertness (EA) is the ability to notice an opportunity without actively searching. Similarly, to entrepreneurial alertness at the individual level, this study argues that SEA enables the subsidiary to best select opportunities based on resources available. The research further develops our conceptualisation of SEA by drawing on work by Tang et al. (2012) identifying three distinct activities of EA: scanning and search (identifying opportunities unseen by others due to their awareness gaps), association and connection of information, and evaluation and judgement to interpret or anticipate future viability of opportunities. This study then hypothesises that SEA leads to opportunity recognition at the subsidiary level and further hypothesises innovation and performance as outcomes of opportunity recognition. This research brings these arguments together to develop and test a comprehensive theoretical model.
The theoretical model is tested through a mail survey of the CEOs/MDs of foreign subsidiaries within the Republic of Ireland (an innovative hub for foreign subsidiaries). This method was selected as the best method to reach the targeted respondent, and due to the depth of knowledge the target respondent holds, the survey can answer the desired question more substantially. The results were examined using partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM). The study’s findings confirm two critical aspects of subsidiary context, subsidiary brokerage and subsidiary credibility are positively related to SEA. The study establishes a positive link between SEA and both the generation of innovation and the subsidiary’s performance. This thesis makes three significant contributions to the subsidiary literature as it 1) introduces and develops the concept of SEA, 2) identifies the antecedents of SEA, and 3) demonstrates the impact of SEA on subsidiary opportunity recognition. Implications for subsidiaries, headquarters and policy makers are discussed along with the limitations of the study
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