150 research outputs found
Recommended from our members
Looking elsewhere : migration, risk, and decision-making in rural Cambodia
textInternational labor migration has become an increasingly common livelihood strategy in rural Cambodia, in some villages becoming a defining and normative part of community life. This dissertation is an ethnographic study of one such rural community, where migration to Thailand has become a primary livelihood strategy over the past decade. Drawing on three years of fieldwork in Chanleas Dai, a commune (khum) in Northwest Cambodia, my research explores the complexities of the migration decision-making process, and the meanings of migration for rural households. This work is motivated by debates within the dialogues of migration and development, most of which seek to understand the potential for migration to promote development by focusing on the impacts of migration. My work departs from previous studies by focusing explicitly on decision-making, seeking to understand how and why families make developmentally important migration decisions. This is a critical area of inquiry, as the potential that migration has to promote or sustain development rests on a series of individual choices, for example who migrates, or how households invest remittances. Yet research tends to focus on the outcomes of these choices, neglecting a sufficient understanding of why they were made. In Chanleas Dai individuals are deeply ambivalent about migration, understanding it as both a constituent cause of insecurity and also the best path to security, mobility, and status. Whereas migration is perceived as low-risk and high-reward, village-based livelihoods are widely perceived as insufficient, impossible, or too financially risky to be meaningful. These perceptions are strongly linked to the recent history of environmental distress in the area. As a result, households often prioritize investment in further migrations, rather than using wages earned abroad for local investment or production. This is particularly true among youth, who see few potential worthwhile strategies to "make it" at home. Credit and agriculture programs theorized to curb migration, and/or promote local investment have not substantively challenged these perceptions. My conclusions discuss these findings in terms of their implications for the migration and development dialogues, definitions and understandings of development, and rural development policies both within and outside of Cambodia.Sociolog
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
Management of socio-economic transformations of business processes: current realities, global challenges, forecast scenarios and development prospects
The authors of the scientific monograph have come to the conclusion that мanagement of socio-economic transformations of business processes requires the use of mechanisms to support of entrepreneurship, sectors of the national economy, the financial system, and critical infrastructure. Basic research focuses on assessment the state of social service provision, analysing economic security, implementing innovation and introducing digital technologies. The research results have been implemented in the different models of costing, credit risk and capital management, tax control, use of artificial intelligence and blockchain. The results of the study can be used in the developing of policies, programmes and strategies for economic security, development of the agricultural sector, transformation of industrial policy, implementation of employment policy in decision-making at the level of ministries and agencies that regulate the management of socio-economic and European integration processes. The results can also be used by students and young scientists in the educational process and conducting scientific research on global challenges and creation scenarios for the development of socio-economic processes
GOING ON OTOR: DISASTER, MOBILITY, AND THE POLITICAL ECOLOGY OF VULNERABILITY IN UGUUMUR, MONGOLIA
Post-socialist states have increasingly adopted rural governance and resource management policies framed around the concepts of decentralization, devolution, and de-concentration in which formerly central state powers are transferred to lower, more local levels of governance. In more recent incarnations, these policies have become inspired by neo-liberal discourses of minimal government, self-rule, and personal responsibility. Increasingly, the social science literature has argued that such forms of neo-liberal governance lead to a variety of unforeseen and diverse consequences. This dissertation attempts to understand the impact of these political transformations on household vulnerability in the context of hazardous events called zud. I do this through an ethnographic study of institution-building and risk management in a pastoral district of eastern Mongolia where I explore contemporary transformations in the management of critical resources such as livestock, labor, and land.
As this dissertation shows, differential mobility practices are strongly correlated to zud-based livestock mortality rates. In particular, households that are more capable of practicing otor, a kind of non-customary and irregular migration strategy, are less susceptible to the conditions that threaten herd loss. Households with a greater capacity for conducting otor are able to move greater distances, in shorter time spans, and to regions with less severe conditions, thereby escaping the possibility of facing high loss rates. Differential capacity to mitigate the risk of zud conditions also was found to be deeply affected by previously under-studied institutional transformations surrounding rights and access to livestock, labor, and land.
Primarily, this study demonstrates that decentralization and other neo-liberal models of governance not only open space for significant reconfiguration of the institutional landscape in ways that support social inequality, but also subsequently lead to increased differentiation in vulnerability to disaster. Theoretically, this work contributes to critical understandings of political ecology by uncovering circulations of power through constellations of actors (human and otherwise), institutions, and meanings as well as through bio-physical landscapes. In addition, this study contributes to work in vulnerability studies by shedding light on how administrative governance, local institution-building, and property-making shift the apportionment of entitlements to produce hazardous conditions and unequal distributions of risk and vulnerability
Engines of Growth : Essays in Swedish Economic History
Sweden experienced a remarkable economic transformation between the 18th century and the outbreak of World War I. This dissertation consists of four self-contained papers that uses a quantitative empirical approach to identify key drivers of this transformation by analyzing the contribution of the potato to economic growth, the determinants of the early investments in mass schooling, and how the rollout of the national railroad network shaped rural and urban growth patterns from the mid-19th century to the present day. Together, the findings of this dissertation contribute novel evidence on the causal determinants of Sweden’s acceleration in growth and also shed light on the historical roots of contemporary patterns of regional and urban development
Embedding risk management within new product and service development of an innovation and risk management framework and supporting risk processes, for effective risk mitigation : an action research study within the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Sector
At first glance, innovation and risk management seem like two opposing disciplines with diverse objectives. The former seeks to be flexible and encourages enhanced solutions and new ideas, while the latter can be seen as stifling such innovative thinking. Since there is a failure rate of as many as eight out of every ten products launched, it is perhaps necessary for organisations to consider applying more structured approaches to innovation, in order to better manage risks and to increase the chances of delivering improved goods and services. A risk management approach is well suited to address the challenge of failure, as it focuses not only on the negative impact of risks but also on the opportunities they present. It aligns these with the strategic objectives of the organisation to increase the chances of its success. The research objective of this study was to establish how to embed risk management within the innovation divisions of an organisation to ensure that more efficient products and services are delivered to customers. To achieve this end, action research was conducted in a large organisation operating in a high-technology environment that launches many diverse products and services and rapidly expanding service offerings to other industries. The study took four years to complete and delivered multiple interventions that successfully embedded risk management within the organisation, leading to changed behaviours and double-loop learning. Two main knowledge contributions are offered by the study. Firstly, a generic and empirically validated integrated Innovation and Risk Management Framework (IRMF) is developed and guides new product and service development by considering both best practices and risks. Secondly, a risk dashboard is designed as a design science artefact within the action research cycles, which consolidates all the knowledge that was generated during the study. This is ultimately a visual interface to support stage-gate decision making. Since the context of the study was broad, extensive and complicated, the use of mixed-method research complemented and expanded on the findings by providing another layer of support and validation. This thesis highlights the complexity of innovation and presents the need for an organising framework that will encourage innovation but is sufficiently flexible to cater for diverse needs and risks. The study delivers several other, valuable contributions regarding what, how and why incidents occur within the real-world context of new product and service development. Several generic artefacts, such as risk processes and maturity frameworks, are also developed, which can guide risk and new product and service development practitioners to deliver more efficient product and services. This study offers several novel approaches to evaluating risks and provides practical support and recommendations, addressing shortcomings of fragmented research in similar, but smaller-scale studies that have been conducted in information systems. It is the premise of this research that a much wider number of risks need to be managed as new products and services are developed, than was noted in previous studies. Effective risk management in new product and service development could lead to competitive advantage for organisations by increasing knowledge and facilitating sustainable, informed risk decision-making
Recommended from our members
U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform
The U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform was created by Congress to assess U.S. immigration policy and make recommendations regarding its implementation and effects. Mandated in the Immigration Act of 1990 to submit an interim report in 1994 and a final report in 1997, the Commission has undertaken public hearings, fact-finding missions, and expert consultations to identify the major immigration-related issues facing the United States today.LBJ School of Public Affair
State of the World 2003
If we are going to reverse biodiversity loss, dampen the effects of global warming, and eliminate the scourge of persistent poverty, we need to reinvent ourselves -- as individuals, as societies, as corporations, and as governments. In this 20th anniversary edition of a Worldwatch classic, the Institute's highly respected interdisciplinary research team argues that past successes -- such as the elimination of smallpox and the encouraging drop in birth rates in many countries -- prove that humanity is capable of redirecting itself in positive ways. Most encouraging, the world is sitting on the cusp of similar successes that could usher in a sustainable human civilization. The use of clean, renewable energy technologies, like wind turbines and photovoltaics for example, is growing at over 25 percent per year, and they are increasingly competitive with fossil fuels. Organic farming is the fastest-growing sector of the world agricultural economy, with the potential to rejuvenate rural communities from the Philippines to Sweden. And a quickening of religious interest in humanity's place in the natural environment could awaken a powerful new constituency to the cause of sustainability. The challenges are still immense, of course, as the book also documents, but the building blocks for a historic reinvention of human civilization are now within reach
- …