The decisive reset: attainable governance for revitalising democracy

To improve democratic legitimacy, successful resolution of public policy challenges has to emerge from highly pressurised political predicaments. Increasing civic functionality requires integrative Civil Service practice, building trust in adaptive oversight. With the task of effective governance stretching out-of-reach in straining institutional arrangements, a proposition is developed for an “Attainable Governance” reset to revitalise democracy. Motivated by the need for progress that is sensitive to the reality and risks of the present and embodying requirements to hold open unforeseen possibilities for future action, the groundwork is laid for a new “decision architecture” that improves policy-framing and decision-making. With a mission to compose a conceptual framework for “facing the future” in the United Kingdom, I make the case for refreshing democratic arrangements, including a proposed structural intervention to the policy-making system with a correlative cultural step-change in leadership. Laying out a novel framework, the analysis draws widely on strands of thinking in social theory and political philosophy, public administration and policy-making, systems thinking and design, planning and strategic management, anticipation and futures, economics, and sociology. Taking an “integral” methodological orientation, in three parts I: (1) diagnose the converging Predicament, (2) develop a conceptual Proposition, and 3) sketch-out an approach to leadership that facilitates operational adaption in Procedures for applied practice. Positing that we have to deal with systems-of-problems (“messes”) and system-of-systems (“systemic messes”) with an analytic primacy on expanding temporal considerations to factor in more anticipative insights, I take a Complex Adaptive Systems-informed stance. The need for a “Decisive Reset” to refresh democracy, featuring phased systemic reordering and tactical modularity to produce better public decision-making that is responsive and agile in the short-run, while actively gauging medium-term realities and future-proofing for long-run uncertainties, results in a new decision architecture and methodology

Corporate social and environmental disclosure practices : an international comparison of UK, Indian and Egyptian corporations

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

A Phenomenological Study of the Online Education Experiences of College Students with Learning Disabilities

The body of research concerning college students with learning disabilities is sparse relative to the percentage of college students with learning disabilities who attend college. Further, the majority of existing research fails to capture the student voice and the lived experiences of the students themselves. The purpose of this study was to explore the experiences of college students with learning disabilities who utilized online education at a public university centrally located in the United States, resembling numerous comprehensive regional universities. Using a qualitative, phenomenological research framework, this study uses in-depth individual interviews to collect data from eight participants. Interviews were recorded, transcribed, and thematically analyzed. Four categories emerged as central to their experiences as college students with learning disabilities: (1) faculty engagement, (2) student engagement, (3) course organization, and (4) needed resources. These four categories and their interconnections resulted in five major themes determined to be the results of this study: (1) students with learning disabilities like the convenience and flexibility of schedule afforded by online classes, (2) online structure and organization affords students with learning disabilities more time to process and understand information (3) students with learning disabilities feel more independent and confident with the structure and organization of online courses, (4) students with learning disabilities perceive a lack of interaction in online classes, and (5) instructors lack understanding and support of accommodations and students with learning disabilities. This study provides numerous opportunities for future research related to the topic and findings. The findings from this study may also provide context and insights for postsecondary institutions, faculty, student services personnel, and family of students with learning disabilities, as well as the students themselves

Shanzhai Online Videos in China: Governance and Resistance through Media

This dissertation explores the production, circulation, and regulation of Shanzhai online videos in order to understand how people's everyday lives are governed and how the governing power is resisted through the media system in contemporary China. This research is situated in the specific socio-cultural and historical context where Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) have proliferated among various social strata, where the media are both the propagandistic mouthpiece and a profit-oriented industry, and where people are encouraged to pursue their life goals under a neoliberal rationality that is pervasive in media. I use a Foucauldian framework to examine the power modalities and power relationships manifested in the Shanzhai practices. I argue that both disciplinary power and the power of governmentality are found in this cultural practice. It is through the production, circulation and regulation of Shanzhai videos that power is exercised on different parties involved in this process as governance and resistance. This power relationship, I argue, is explicated through a ritualistic view of the reality presented in the trans-media, trans-genre narratives that people internalize in order to develop specific ways of using media to pursue their life goals. Meanwhile, people also employ various strategies to negotiate for resources to achieve these goals. In these negotiations, power relationships manifested themselves as their actions upon each other. Ordinary people are disciplined through patterned uses of media to live their lives and governed by a neoliberal mentality to pursue their life projects on the Internet. However, there is more than one set of discourses with a claim to the "truth" about Shanzhai in Chinese media. Thus, people are also empowered to take advantage of this discrepancy to gain symbolic as well as material favors. This study examined a nuanced and dialectic power relationship in contemporary Chinese society. First, it is found that people are both empowered and subjected to the ways they use media to pursue personal goals. Second, the resistance in the Shanzhai practices not only brought them symbolic power as much previous literature suggests, but also material resources such as media access and sponsorship. Last, the holistic view of the media system helps us situate Shanzhai online videos in the convergent media environment and draw a better picture of the web of power relationships

Factors Influencing Customer Satisfaction towards E-shopping in Malaysia

Online shopping or e-shopping has changed the world of business and quite a few people have decided to work with these features. What their primary concerns precisely and the responses from the globalisation are the competency of incorporation while doing their businesses. E-shopping has also increased substantially in Malaysia in recent years. The rapid increase in the e-commerce industry in Malaysia has created the demand to emphasize on how to increase customer satisfaction while operating in the e-retailing environment. It is very important that customers are satisfied with the website, or else, they would not return. Therefore, a crucial fact to look into is that companies must ensure that their customers are satisfied with their purchases that are really essential from the ecommerce’s point of view. With is in mind, this study aimed at investigating customer satisfaction towards e-shopping in Malaysia. A total of 400 questionnaires were distributed among students randomly selected from various public and private universities located within Klang valley area. Total 369 questionnaires were returned, out of which 341 questionnaires were found usable for further analysis. Finally, SEM was employed to test the hypotheses. This study found that customer satisfaction towards e-shopping in Malaysia is to a great extent influenced by ease of use, trust, design of the website, online security and e-service quality. Finally, recommendations and future study direction is provided. Keywords: E-shopping, Customer satisfaction, Trust, Online security, E-service quality, Malaysia

Towards a Legal end Ethical Framework for Personal Care Robots. Analysis of Person Carrier, Physical Assistant and Mobile Servant Robots.

Technology is rapidly developing, and regulators and robot creators inevitably have to come to terms with new and unexpected scenarios. A thorough analysis of this new and continuosuly evolving reality could be useful to better understand the current situation and pave the way to the future creation of a legal and ethical framework. This is clearly a wide and complex goal, considering the variety of new technologies available today and those under development. Therefore, this thesis focuses on the evaluation of the impacts of personal care robots. In particular, it analyzes how roboticists adjust their creations to the existing regulatory framework for legal compliance purposes. By carrying out an impact assessment analysis, existing regulatory gaps and lack of regulatory clarity can be highlighted. These gaps should of course be considered further on by lawmakers for a future legal framework for personal care robot. This assessment should be made first against regulations. If the creators of the robot do not encounter any limitations, they can then proceed with its development. On the contrary, if there are some limitations, robot creators will either (1) adjust the robot to comply with the existing regulatory framework; (2) start a negotiation with the regulators to change the law; or (3) carry out the original plan and risk to be non-compliant. The regulator can discuss existing (or lacking) regulations with robot developers and give a legal response accordingly. In an ideal world, robots are clear of impacts and therefore threats can be responded in terms of prevention and opportunities in form of facilitation. In reality, the impacts of robots are often uncertain and less clear, especially when they are inserted in care applications. Therefore, regulators will have to address uncertain risks, ambiguous impacts and yet unkown effects