Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationWhy and how has the U.S.-Japan alliance survived the end of the Cold War? More generally what happens to an alliance when the international security environment changes? The present dissertation aims at developing a new model of alliance politics that explains the continuity of an alliance by focusing on cultural factors of international security. Building on the constructivist theory of international relations, the present dissertation argues that the U.S.-Japan alliance has survived even after the demise of the Soviet Union, against which the alliance was originally formed, because the two allies have interdependent national security cultures that are deeply institutionalized in their defense policies. The two allies not only share identity as capitalist democracies, but also embrace complementary norms of national security. Namely, to secure its longstanding norm of homeland protection, the United States needs Japan's assistance in maintaining its military presence in Asia so that it can minimize threats from the region. For its part, Japan, in an Asian regional security environment full of threats, needs the United Sates' assistance in maintaining the antimilitarist national security norm that grew from the bitter experience and memory of World War II. By analyzing domestic processes of revising basic defense policies after the Cold War in Washington and Tokyo, as well as the bilateral negotiations for the New Guidelines for Defense Cooperation between the United Sates and Japan, the present dissertation demonstrates that institutionalized national security cultures in both countries provided ideational bases for their post-Cold War national security policies. These ideational constructs established the foundation for defense policies that the two countries developed to deal with new sources of national security threats in the Asia Pacific region

The rise of East and Southeast Asians tourists in Europe: the case of Vienna

Travelers from Asia have become a potential alternative for some of the traditional European tourist markets that have stagnated due to the economic crisis. The remarkable recovery of the Japanese market, the exponential growth of Chinese and Korean markets in addition to the high spending power of Thai and Chinese tourists have painted a highly positive scenario for the tourism industry in Vienna. This paper utilizes Vienna as a case study to explore the rise of Asian tourists in Europe. Tourism statistics, media reports and materials of destination marketing organization were analyzed for evaluation of the trends and growth of Asian outbound market to Vienna. The current study contributes to the tourism industry of Austria by highlighting the fragmentations in tourist consumption patterns of tourists from East and Southeast Asia

The effect of Total Productive Management practices on manufacturing performance through SECS/GEM Standard for electronic contract manufacturing companies (TOC, Abstract, chapter 1 and Reference only)

In an environment of intense global competition, it pays to consider both creative and proven systems that can be used to bring about effective and efficient manufacturing operation. Many electronic contract manufacturing companies have put forth huge amounts of effort and resources to achieve precise and reliable measurement of equipment performance. The objective of a concise measurement is to optimise this piece of asset for every dollar invested. However, it has failed on numerous attempts to achieve the desirable result due to hardware limitations, low degrees of data accuracy and the need for manual intervention. Integrating Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) methodology with SEMI Equipment Communication Standard (SECS) with Generic Equipment Model (GEM) enables data acquisition in a concise manner and keeps track of all real-time transactions that have taken place between the operator and the equipment. To achieve this integration process, a fast-track TPM implementation approach is required by re-engineering the TPM implementation process. The Re-Engineered TPM approach comprises of three TPM pillars (Asset Productivity (AP), Autonomous Maintenance (AM) and Planned Maintenance (PM)) instead of the original eight pillars. Apart from three TPM pillars, also included are SECS/GEM standard, direct and indirect labour utilisation hours, material and overhead cost. The main objective of this study is to determine whether the re-engineering effort, based on these three TPM pillars, SECS/GEM standard together with labour and cost, are able to minimise losses in production process and have positive impact on Output (Manufacturing Performance). The study also aims at evaluating whether the SECS/GEM standard integration with Autonomous Maintenance has the capability of real-time monitoring equipment performance on the production floor. Furthermore, the study aims to assess the impact on productivity, namely, the Output (Manufacturing Performance). The three years, monthly data for the study was collected from ten Electronic Contract Manufacturing (ECM) companies in Johor, Malaysia. The data was analysed through descriptive statistics, regression analysis and panel data analysis. Based on the panel data analysis, the Hausman Test revealed that the Fixed Effects model was found to be the optimal model for this study. The result shows that six independent variables were significant, while one independent variable was not. The insignificant independent variable was SECS/GEM standard integration with Autonomous Maintenance. Further analysis was conducted through a qualitative study. The additional analysis shows that ECM companies do not fully understand the possible application of the SECS/GEM standard integration with Autonomous Maintenance in their manufacturing environment. Therefore, minimum effort was deployed by ECM companies in incorporating this standard into their equipment maintenance platform. However, these days many ECM companies have started to purchase equipment with SECS/GEM standard in order to facilitate smoother future integration with Autonomous Maintenance or with other TPM pillars. This total integration of TPM (three pillars), SECS/GEM standard, labour and cost provides an avenue to monitor and address the operational losses in the production equipment in a timely manner. This system paves the way to improving Output (Manufacturing Performance)

Patent use exception for user-generated inventions

The high-tech corner of the user-innovation scene is dominated by makers. The expansion of the maker movement embraced fields such as robotics, electronics, and 3D printing, where makers are not only hobbyists, but true contributors to technological progress. By contesting the classical paradigm of innovation incentivized by IP protection, they question the established principles of patent law. In consequence, we observe friction between two discrepant approaches and philosophies: open communal workings (making) and closed proprietary operations (patents). In addition to that, changes in IP practice and the dynamic of making provokes concerns about the free use of the patented ideas. The fact of public sharing, even in a form of one “innocent” Internet post, e.g. suggesting (instructing) certain patent improvements, can be sufficient to claim indirect patent infringement or inducement to infringe. The research addressed the question of the applicability of patent excpetions (limitations of the patent exclusivity) that enable defence in patent infringement cases. It also examined those measures with regard to the scope of the freedom-to-operate they provide. In the course of the project it was demonstrated that the communitarian profile of the movement and the uncontrollable dissemination of information do not allow for the movement to fit under the protective umbrella of patent limitations. The study proposes a novel solution within the framework of patent limitations to address free tinkering and the public dissemination of information. Its objective is plain and simple: to free makers from infringing patent rights, from being involved in patent puzzles and from decoding patent claims

Climate change adaptation and health in Southeast Asia: What do regional organisations contribute?

Around the world climate change is already impacting on health, via more frequent and intense extreme weather events, as well as by altering the prevalence and distributions of vector- and water-borne diseases. The high and rapidly growing population in Southeast Asia is heavily reliant on agriculture for livelihoods, which makes it vulnerable to climate change impacts such as sea level rise and typhoons. In this context, regional organisations are playing an increasingly important role in climate change adaptation and health. For example, the Asian Development Bank and the Asia-Pacific Regional Forum on Health and Environment are both involved in adaptation and health initiatives. Despite this, however, there is a lack of empirical research on the value added by regional organisations to adaptation and health actions and initiatives. Prepared as a thesis by compilation, this research helps fill this gap by examining the effectiveness of regional organisations supporting national level adaptation and health in Southeast Asia. A three-step process was used for this examination. Firstly, three national case studies were conducted in Southeast Asia, focussing on adaptation and health. These individual pieces of research used an open-ended research methodology to limit researcher bias, with the goal of identifying similarities and differences in governance-related adaptation and health challenges across the case-study countries. Secondly, a systematic framework was developed for assessing regional organisations supporting climate change adaptation. So as to be applicable across sectors and geographies, the framework was developed outside of Southeast Asia and outside the health sector. Thirdly, the resultant framework was used to guide the research examining regional organisations supporting adaptation and health initiatives in Southeast Asia, to both determine their strengths and weaknesses, and to identify pathways to improve their effectiveness. The main findings of this research were that, first, coordination challenges exist between organisations, sectors and scales, as well as across sub-national boundaries. In all cases, poor coordination is limiting and constraining adaptation and health. Further, coordination challenges are limiting adaptation and health in all three case study countries, despite different levels of development and different governance arrangements. Second, regional organisations are not necessarily well-placed for direct project implementation, but maymore effectively support adaptation through creating enabling environments at the national level. This may be done through supporting national level capacity building, and acting as specialised knowledge banks, such as for climate-modelling data. Third, where there is a lack of coordination, mandate overlaps for regional organisations working in the same region have negative impacts on climate change adaptation, including adaptation and health. A final finding is that institutionalised and incentivised coordination between such regional organisations would benefit adaptation and health initiatives in two key ways. Firstly, both the administrative workload on developing country government agencies and redundancies in the work of regional organisations would be reduced. Secondly, better inter-organisation coordination would provide regional organisations with a stronger foundation for supporting countries to coordinate across scales, sectors and boundaries. The findings outlined in the paragraph above are the basis for the five primary contributions to the academic literature that this thesis makes. Firstly, coordination is a major adaptation and health constraint, regardless of governance arrangements, ideologies or scales. Secondly, a framework for assessing regional organisations coordinating climate change adaptation was developed. Thirdly, the utility of the developed framework was demonstrated across three regions, as well as across sectors. Fourth, integrating the strengths of project and governance approaches provides an avenue for improving adaptation and health results. The final theoretical contribution of this thesis is that integrating the strengths of these two approaches, by coordinating collaboratively, will enable better regional organisation support for coordination within countries. This body of work will provide insights for national governments as well as regional and international organisations on how they can improve their interactions to better support adaptation and health outcomes

The role of farmers groups in Thai politics : a case study of domestic and global pressure on rice, sugarcane, and potato farmers

The thesis studies the political participation of Thai farmers and focuses on two main factors, namely the domestic and the external impacts, which inform the case studies of rice, sugarcane, and potato farmers groups. Overall, the research has established that farmers groups have felt the impacts of domestic factors far more strongly than external factors. Furthermore, through comparative studies in relation to the case studies of rice, sugarcane, and potato farmers groups in Thailand, differences emerged between these three Thai farmers groups, in terms of the degree to which domestic factors impacted on their political participation. The theories of Western interest groups are reviewed, in order to examine their applicability to explaining farmers groups formation in Thailand. The concepts of 'collective benefits' and 'selective incentives', which were used by Mancur Olson have been adopted as the main theoretical framework. With reference to this, the research has established that selective incentives have played a highly significant role in Thai farmers groups formation, and concludes that the problems of mobilisation, which relate to rice, sugarcane, and potato farmers groups, have been solved primarily through the provision of a range of selective incentives by the farmers groups themselves. In order to classify the differing levels of political participation of Thai farmers groups, the analytical framework provided by Grant Jordan, Darren Halpin, and William Maloney has been utilised. Accordingly, the rice and potato farmers groups are classified as 'potential pressure participants', whilst the sugarcane farmers group is classified as an 'interest group', which has enabled an examination of their political participation through the Western concept of the policy network/community framework. In order to make the Western policy network/community framework more applicable to the policy-making process in Thailand, the specific, dominant characteristics of the Thai political culture, namely the patronage system and the operation of both vote-buying and corruption are included in the analysis. This conceptual stretching does not significantly affect the original concept of the framework and the way in which it was intended to be applicable, because it already includes informal relationships such as those, which exist within the policy network/community framework. This understanding is an important aspect, which forms a part of the theoretical contribution to the discipline of international political economy and to the arena of Thai political studies. The policy network/community framework provides a new conceptual lens in the study of the political participation of Thai farmers groups. Accordingly, these arguments promote the opportunity to consider alternative frameworks in the analysis of the political participation of Thai farmers groups, and group participation across civil society more generally. The study of the political participation of Thai farmers has utilised empirical evidence, which illustrates the successes of farmers' interest groups in both Japan and the United Kingdom, in order to explain the relative successes and failures of Thai farmers. In contrast to the experiences of Western and notably Japanese farmers groups, in many respects Thai farmers are largely excluded from the policy-making process, with the only exception in Thailand being certain sugarcane farmers groups. The thesis concludes that the political participation of farmers groups in Thailand has generally been affected by domestic impacts rather than by external impacts, and that their influence in domestic policy-making has been, and is likely to remain for the foreseeable future at least, somewhat limited

Engineering Education Reform for the Japanese Consulting Engineer

高知工科大学博士(学術) 平成17年9月30日授与 (甲第59号