Building long-term vision for rural areas through multiactor platforms: a preliminary study in the Emilia-Romagna region

Developing long-term visions through participatory approaches can be very useful to explore different possible scenarios and pathways to reach desirable futures. This brief report describes a participatory process carried out in the Emilia-Romagna region (Italy) to develop a long-term vision for rural areas by 2040. This approach consisted of: (i) interviews and a focus group carried out with a multi-actor platform (MAP) composed of experts from science-society-policy sectors, and (ii) an on-line questionnaire addressing a larger number of rural stakeholders of the region. Mixing expert-based consultation through the MAP with a more inclusive consultation approach resulted in an effective method to build long-term visions in the very heterogeneous rural context of the Emilia-Romagna. However, this study only constitutes a preliminary step into a more laborated backcasting approach

Putting Teeth into Open Architectures: Infrastructure for Reducing the Need for Retesting

Proceedings Paper (for Acquisition Research Program)The Navy is currently implementing the open-architecture framework for developing joint interoperable systems that adapt and exploit open-system design principles and architectures. This raises concerns about how to practically achieve dependability in software-intensive systems with many possible configurations when: 1) the actual configuration of the system is subject to frequent and possibly rapid change, and 2) the environment of typical reusable subsystems is variable and unpredictable. Our preliminary investigations indicate that current methods for achieving dependability in open architectures are insufficient. Conventional methods for testing are suited for stovepipe systems and depend strongly on the assumptions that the environment of a typical system is fixed and known in detail to the quality-assurance team at test and evaluation time. This paper outlines new approaches to quality assurance and testing that are better suited for providing affordable reliability in open architectures, and explains some of the additional technical features that an Open Architecture must have in order to become a Dependable Open Architecture.Naval Postgraduate School Acquisition Research ProgramApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Annual report of the selectmen, treasurer, road agents, and trustees of trust funds and other officers of the town of Sunapee, New Hampshire together with the report of the school board and the vital statistics for the year 1964.

This is an annual report containing vital statistics for a town/city in the state of New Hampshire

Företagsperspektiv på utvärdering av hållbarhet : en interdisciplinär ansats

Today, there is an increasing awareness of problems related to aspects of sustainability in the world. These problems are addressed in various forms, from an economic, environmental and socio-cultural perspective. From a corporate point of view it would be ideal if all of these perspectives were included in assessment that serves as grounds for policies, plans and programs. The existing assessment tools are argued to be inappropriate as they do not cover all of the aspects of sustainability. Thus, there is a need for better sustainability assessment tools to help corporate ex-ante decision-making. This thesis explores sustainability aspects in ex-ante assessment tools for assessing sustainability from the corporate perspective. The approach is based on notion that sustainability objectives require interdisciplinary thinking. These different disciplines and their contribution to sustainability objectives serve as a basis in a discourse analysis. The results of these analyses are then compared to selected assessment tools (Cost-Benefit Analysis, Environmental-Impact Assessment, social-Impact Assessment) and to newer sustainability assessment tools (Sustainability Impact Assessment, Integrated Sustainability Assessment), to evaluate to what degree they cover sustainability objectives. Any of these tools could serve as a starting point for a development of a corporate ex-ante assessment tool box. Over time, a useful 'toolbox' may even become the main stream corporate tool in a standardization process. Findings show that short-term profit-maximization thinking at the expense of other sustainability aspects is a key problem. None of the existing assessment tools alone adequately include all of the aspects of sustainability in their assessments. Newer sustainability assessment tools are found to better ensure a holistic approach for assessing sustainability. These are, however, not well-developed and they are also rather time consuming as well as resource intensive in practical use. As each of the discussed assessment tools provided some positive aspects it might be useful to integrate some of the attributes that these tools provide. In general, corporations should consider economic, environmental, socio-cultural, spatial and temporal aspects of sustainability in their assessment processes.En allmän samhällelig medvetenhet om hållbarhetsfrågor och problem ökar världen över. Problemen och utmaningarna som är relaterade till hållbarhet kan uppfattas från olika vinklar: i ekonomiska, miljörelaterade och sociokulturella aspekter där varje vinkel i sin tur har vokabulärer, modeller och mål för olika verksamheter. Ur ett företagsperspektiv vore det ideal om alla dessa perspektiv utgjorde grunden för strategisk planering och operativ verksamhet. Existerande verktyg som används med hållbarhetsambitioner idag kritiseras för att de inte täcker hela hållbarhetsbegreppet, är komplicerade att använda och att de just inte ger det operativa stöd företagen önskar i ex ante beslutssituationer. I examensarbetet presenteras ett antal vanliga företags-”verktyg”, utvärderingsmetoder som används som ex ante beslutsunderlag (Cost-Benefit Analysis, Environmental-Impact Assessment & social-Impact Assessment). De jämförs med två nya verktyg som är under utveckling (Sustainability Impact Assessment & Integrated Sustainability Assessment). Dessa analyseras med avseende på hur väl de täcker in vedertagna hållbarhetsmål. Av dessa verktyg kan vilket som helst av dem utgöra en startpunkt för en fortsatt standardiseringsprocess, i vilket allt fler företag använder, förväntas använda och till slut avkrävs att använda just det redskapet. Då vill det till att utvecklingen har givit utrymme för öppna jämförelser längs vägen. Resultaten visar att korta tidsperspektiv med vinstmaximeringsmål utgör en motsats till långsiktiga hållbarhetsmål. Ingen av de redskap som företag idag använder i sina ex ante bedömningar inkluderar alla aspekter på hållbarhet. De nyare hållbarhetsredskapen för analys utgör grunder för en lovande utveckling. I skrivande stund är de tyvärr inte utvecklade och anpassade för praktisk användning i företag. De är för tids- och resurskrävande. Var och en av de analyserade redskapen bidrog med värdefull information som är relaterad till hållbarhet. I realiteten är det en fin balansgång för företag att maximera vinst på både lång och kort sikt utan att göra avkall på miljörelaterade, sociala, geografiska och kulturella mål

A Biblical Foundation for Visions and Dreams

This article looks at the biblical foundation that supports the idea that God is still speaking to human beings today through visions and dreams. God has not left communication of his will for humans today totally in the hands of Scripture since he continues to communicate with religious leaders, pastors, the church, unbelievers, and those who hate him through visions and dreams. This article illustrates that God continued to communicate his will through vision and dream experiences from the time of creation until today. Despite widespread skepticism among many toward visions and dreams, God continues to speak by these supernatural manifestations as he did during the Old and New Testament periods

Beyond the crisis

Economic

Participative management in academic information services

M.Inf.Enterprises are in the midst of some revolutionary changes in how people are managed in work situations. The major premise underlying work-force management traditionally has been that efficiency can be achieved best by imposing management control over workers' behaviour. Today, in response to massive evidence that control-oriented management models can produce outcomes that subvert the interest of both enterprises and the people who work in them, a new work-force management model is appearing - that of participative management. The premise of the emerging model is that enterprises must elicit the commitment of their employees if they are to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage in contemporary markets. Rather than relying on a "retain and control" management, enterprises in the future will apply a "share and learn" management where they will heavily rely of member self-management in pursuing collective objectives. This study intends to stress the fact that employee potential needs to be mobilised by management and can only show up as performance when employees are given opportunity to contribute to decision-making with the minimum interference of management. This study calls for a transformation of leadership willing to empower staff to participate fully and freely in the creation of the future. The time has come to transform the way in which leaders work with and provide leadership to staff in academic information services. Leaders in academic information services need to realise that employee participation will enhance commitment and performance for both employees and management. A review of literature revealed that participative management is more than only a willingness to share influence - formal patterns of participation need to be truely implemented where employees have a right to contribute on all levels of decision-making. Participation is not an absolute term - there are various degrees of participation and types of involvement programmes to apply. Participative management is more complex than simply allowing employees to make some of the decisions. It involves formal programmes which need to be effectively implemented. The empirical survey which was done through a twenty-item questionnaire distributed to seven academic information services in Gauteng, revealed that participative management is applied at these institutions but more in low-level decisions. This indicated that participation is still limited and controlled by management and is not yet experienced as a right by employees. This study also clearly showed that self-regulation occurs most effectively through self-managed work-teams. These teams offer the highest degree of decision-making autonomy to all levels of staff and are a unique and viable alternative to traditional forms of work design in academic information services. Directors and leaders of modern academic information services need to encourage and facilitate self-regulation among employees of all levels. This will help to cope more effectively with future challenges of rapid change and technological complexity that now threaten efforts to create more responsive academic information services