7,886 research outputs found

    Central-provincial Politics and Industrial Policy-making in the Electric Power Sector in China

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    In addition to the studies that provide meaningful insights into the complexity of technical and economic issues, increasing studies have focused on the political process of market transition in network industries such as the electric power sector. This dissertation studies the central–provincial interactions in industrial policy-making and implementation, and attempts to evaluate the roles of Chinese provinces in the market reform process of the electric power sector. Market reforms of this sector are used as an illustrative case because the new round of market reforms had achieved some significant breakthroughs in areas such as pricing reform and wholesale market trading. Other policy measures, such as the liberalization of the distribution market and cross-regional market-building, are still at a nascent stage and have only scored moderate progress. It is important to investigate why some policy areas make greater progress in market reforms than others. It is also interesting to examine the impacts of Chinese central-provincial politics on producing the different market reform outcomes. Guangdong and Xinjiang are two provinces being analyzed in this dissertation. The progress of market reforms in these two provinces showed similarities although the provinces are very different in terms of local conditions such as the stages of their economic development and energy structures. The actual reform can be understood as the outcomes of certain modes of interactions between the central and provincial actors in the context of their particular capabilities and preferences in different policy areas. This dissertation argues that market reform is more successful in policy areas where the central and provincial authorities are able to engage mainly in integrative negotiations than in areas where they engage mainly in distributive negotiations

    Animating potential for intensities and becoming in writing: challenging discursively constructed structures and writing conventions in academia through the use of storying and other post qualitative inquiries

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    Written for everyone ever denied the opportunity of fulfilling their academic potential, this is ‘Chloe’s story’. Using composite selves, a phrase chosen to indicate multiplicities and movement, to story both the initial event leading to ‘Chloe’s’ immediate withdrawal from a Further Education college and an imaginary second chance to support her whilst at university, this Deleuzo-Guattarian (2015a) ‘assemblage’ of post qualitative inquiries offers challenge to discursively constructed structures and writing conventions in academia. Adopting a posthuman approach to theorising to shift attention towards affects and intensities always relationally in action in multiple ‘assemblages’, these inquiries aim to decentre individual ‘lecturer’ and ‘student’ identities. Illuminating movements and moments quivering with potential for change, then, hoping thereby to generate second chances for all, different approaches to writing are exemplified which trouble those academic constraints by fostering inquiry and speculation: moving away from ‘what is’ towards ‘what if’. With the formatting of this thesis itself also always troubling the rigid Deleuzo-Guattarian (2015a) ‘segmentary lines’ structuring orthodox academic practice, imbricated in these inquiries are attempts to exemplify Manning’s (2015; 2016) ‘artfulness’ through shifts in thinking within and around an emerging PhD thesis. As writing resists organising, the verb thesisising comes into play to describe the processes involved in creating this always-moving thesis. Using ‘landing sites’ (Arakawa and Gins, 2009) as a landscaping device, freely creating emerging ‘lines of flight’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 2015a) so often denied to students forced to adhere to strict academic conventions, this ‘movement-moving’ (Manning, 2014) opens up opportunities for change as in Manning’s (2016) ‘research-creation’. Arguing for a moving away from writing-representing towards writing-inquiring, towards a writing ‘that does’ (Wyatt and Gale, 2018: 127), and toward writing as immanent doing, it is hoped to animate potential for intensities and becoming in writing, offering opportunities and glimmerings of the not-yet-known

    INVESTIGATING THE PERCEPTION OF EXPATRIATES TOWARDS IMMIGRATION SERVICE QUALITY IN SHARJAH, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES THROUGH MIXED METHOD APPROACH

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    The public sectors in UAE are under immense pressure to demonstrate that their services are customer-focused and that continuous performance improvement is being delivered. The United Arab Emirates is a favoured destination for expatriates due to its own citizens form a minority of the population and are barely represented in the private sector workforce. These highly unusual demographics confer high importance on the national immigration services. Recently, increased interest in international migration, specifically within the United Arab Emirates, has been shown both by government agencies and by the governments of industrialised countries. Given the importance of the expatriate labour force to economic stability and growth in the Emirates, this research investigates how immigration services are perceived, with the aim of contributing to their improvement, thus ultimately supporting economic growth. It proposes a service quality perception framework to improve understanding within SID of how to raise levels of service delivered to migrants and other persons directly or indirectly affected by SID services. Qualitative data were collected by means of semi-structured interviews and quantitative data by means of a questionnaire survey based on the abovementioned framework. The survey data, on the variables influencing participants’ experiences and perceptions of SID services, were subjected to statistical analysis. The framework was then used to evaluate quality of service in terms of general impressions, delivery, location, response, SID culture and behaviour. Numerical data were analysed using inferential and descriptive statistics. It was found that service quality positively influenced service behaviour and that this relationship was mediated by SID culture. This research makes an original contribution to knowledge as one of the few studies of immigration to the United Arab Emirates. By examining the workings of one immigration department, it adds to the literature on immigration departments and organisational development in developing countries. It illuminates the mechanics of immigration services and demonstrates their increasing importance to the world economy

    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

    Graphical scaffolding for the learning of data wrangling APIs

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    In order for students across the sciences to avail themselves of modern data streams, they must first know how to wrangle data: how to reshape ill-organised, tabular data into another format, and how to do this programmatically, in languages such as Python and R. Despite the cross-departmental demand and the ubiquity of data wrangling in analytical workflows, the research on how to optimise the instruction of it has been minimal. Although data wrangling as a programming domain presents distinctive challenges - characterised by on-the-fly syntax lookup and code example integration - it also presents opportunities. One such opportunity is how tabular data structures are easily visualised. To leverage the inherent visualisability of data wrangling, this dissertation evaluates three types of graphics that could be employed as scaffolding for novices: subgoal graphics, thumbnail graphics, and parameter graphics. Using a specially built e-learning platform, this dissertation documents a multi-institutional, randomised, and controlled experiment that investigates the pedagogical effects of these. Our results indicate that the graphics are well-received, that subgoal graphics boost the completion rate, and that thumbnail graphics improve navigability within a command menu. We also obtained several non-significant results, and indications that parameter graphics are counter-productive. We will discuss these findings in the context of general scaffolding dilemmas, and how they fit into a wider research programme on data wrangling instruction

    The geographies of care and training in the development of assistance dog partnerships

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    Human-assistance-dog partnerships form a significant phenomena that have been overlooked in both animal geographies and disability geographies. By focusing on one Assistance Dogs UK (ADUK) charity, ‘Dog A.I.D’., a charity that helps physically disabled and chronically ill people to train their own pets to be assistance dogs, I detail the intimate entangled lifeworlds that humans and dogs occupy. In doing so, I also dialogue between the sub-disciplinary fields of animal geographies and disability geographies, by exploring two broad thematic areas – embodiment and care. As such, this thesis examines the geographies of assistance dog partnership, the care and training practices involved, the benefits and challenges of sharing a lifeworld with a different species, and the changing relationship from a human-pet bond to a human-assistance-dog partnership. Drawing on lived experience and representations of assistance dog partnerships gathered through qualitative (and quantitative) research methods, including a survey, semi-structured interviews (face-to-face, online, and telephone), video ethnography, and magazine analysis, I contribute to research on the assistance dog partnerships and growing debates around the more-than-human nature of care. The ethnomethodological approach to exploring how training occurs between disabled human and assistance dog is also noteworthy as it centres the lively experiences of practice at work between species. The thesis is organised around interconnected themes: the intimate worlds of assistance dog partnerships, working bodies, and caring relations. These thematics allow for a geographical interpretation into the governance, spatial organisation, and representations of dog assistance partnerships. I also explore the training cultures of Dog A.I.D. whilst also spotlighting the lived experiences of training through the early stages of ‘socialisation’, ‘familiarisation’, ‘life skills training’, through to ‘task work’. Finally, the thesis focuses on the practices of care that characterise the assistance dog partnership, showing how care is provided and received by both human and nonhuman. I pay attention to the complex potentiality of the partnership, illustrating how dogs are trained to assist, but also how dogs appear to embody lively, agentic, moments of care. The thesis contributes original work which speaks to animal and disability geographies and attends to the multiple geographies of care-full cross-species lives

    The Politics of Local Disaster Management in Thailand, A Poststructuralist Discourse Analysis of Earthquake Governance in the Upper Northern Region

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    Although disaster management has become an effective approach through which the security of society can be secured, it has produced failure and conflict in some circumstances. The academic approach given to this phenomena has often been criticised, namely in relation to how attention is given predominantly to technical and positivist means and thus how social and political dimensions are not adequately considered. Importantly, these neglected factors play a crucial role in determining the success and/or failure of disaster management. Drawing upon Poststructuralist Discourse Theory, this thesis develops a new conceptual framework to critically explain the politics of disaster management, thus revealing the issues that are embedded in the construction of, and political practices involved in responding to, disaster management. It further analyses the politics of disaster management surrounding the 2014 Chiang Rai Earthquake of Thailand. At the national level, the thesis characterises disaster management via four key logics - security, bureaucracy, managerialism and hybridity - showing how their merging in a hybrid form has caused failure/conflict. The discourses that surfaced in this context are demonstrated to have manifested a political space in which local residents used logics of the community to politicise issues and to challenge the state. Conversely, logics of uncertainty and professionalisation were used as de/re-politicisation mechanisms by provincial agencies to regain authority. This thesis considers such disaster management as contested political terrain where political strategies were implemented through anti- and pro-central disaster management projects. The thesis contributes to Disaster Management Studies in three ways – by offering an alternative means of conducting research as to disaster management politics, exemplifying the benefits of applying a logics approach in explaining the political practices involved in disaster management and calling for further analysis to be given as to the role of subjective desires and the affective register in this field

    STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT IN SUSTAINABILITY REPORTING IN INDONESIA

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    This research aims to understand the ways the preparers of sustainability reports in Indonesia embed stakeholder engagement in sustainability reporting. This research seeks to understand the perceived role of stakeholder engagement in sustainability reporting and examines whether the report preparers decouple their stakeholder engagement disclosures from the actual practices. The neo-institutional theory is used to illuminate the companies’ non-conformity responses to institutional influences. This research utilises mixed methods by deploying questionnaires, sustainability reports and semi-structured interviews. The questionnaire survey was analysed using descriptive statistics. The interviews were conducted face-to-face and analysed using thematic analysis. Content analysis of stakeholder engagement disclosures was also undertaken on the 2007 to 2018 sustainability reports issued by the companies participating in the interviews. The findings of this research reveal that the report preparers attempt to embed stakeholder engagement in the companies’ sustainability reporting in response to coercive, normative and mimetic influences. However, stakeholder engagement is loosely embedded as a result of contextualising the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)’s conception of stakeholder engagement into Indonesia’s local contexts. Stakeholder engagement is perceived as having important roles in mandatory corporate social responsibility (CSR) programmes and materiality assessment to define the report content. External stakeholders are engaged more inclusively in the former whereas internal stakeholders take control of the latter. It is not evident that the report preparers in Indonesia decouple stakeholder engagement disclosures from practices. However, the ways in which the companies practise their stakeholder engagement (means) deviate from the goals of stakeholder engagement suggested by the GRI’s principles for defining the report content (ends), known as the means-ends decoupling. The report preparers in Indonesia accept the GRI’s concept by meeting the suggested indicators, but unintentionally overlook the GRI’s principles that are required to be implemented as a new institution, rather than intentionally avoiding them. The main contribution of this research to the literature is that it provides insights into the need to embed stakeholder engagement in sustainability reporting in an integral way, including by translating the GRI’s global conception into local context. This research also provides insights into the presumption that ‘companies report the practice’ of stakeholder engagement in sustainability reporting—as suggested by the GRI and the extant literature. Just because the companies report the practice (means) by making reference to the GRI, it does not necessarily follow that the companies have conformed to the goals of stakeholder engagement suggested by the GRI’s principles for defining the report content (ends). Taking into full consideration Indonesia’s politicoeconomic, sociocultural and legal contexts, which can be dissimilar to other local contexts, this research contributes to an understanding of decoupling, especially the means-ends decoupling, which tends to be unintentional in the companies’ non-acquiescent response to institutional influences. The decoupling indicates that the report preparers consider the GRI’s stakeholder engagement indicators as technical prescriptions leading to box-ticking activities, rather than being thoroughly understood and implemented as a new institution. Besides, this research offers a practical contribution in that the companies’ sustainability reporting consultants could shepherd their clients’ stakeholder engagement, guided by the GRI standards (previously called guidelines), to go beyond merely meeting the GRI indicators and producing ‘nice to read’ sustainability reports
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