Difficult decisions: Migration from Small Island Developing States under climate change

The impacts of climate change on Small Island Developing States (SIDS) are leading to discussions regarding decision-making about the potential need to migrate. Despite the situation being well-documented, with many SIDS aiming to raise the topic to prominence and to take action for them-selves, limited support and interest has been forthcoming from external sources. This paper presents, analyzes, and critiques a decision-making flowchart to support actions for SIDS dealing with climate change-linked migration. The flowchart contributes to identifying the pertinent topics to consider and the potential support needed to implement decision-making. The flowchart has significant limitations and there are topics which it cannot resolve. On-the ground considerations include who decides, finances, implements, monitors, and enforces each decision. Additionally, views within communities differ, hence mechanisms are needed for dealing with differences, while issues to address include moral and legal blame for any climate change-linked migration, the ultimate goal of the decision-making process, the wider role of migration in SIDS communities and the right to judge decision-making and decisions. The conclusions summarize the paper, emphasizing the importance of considering contexts beyond climate change and multiple SIDS voices

Successfully Executing Ambitious Strategies in Government: An Empirical Analysis

How are senior government executives who attempt to execute an ambitious vision requiring significant strategic change in their organizations able to succeed? How do they go about formulating a strategy in the first place? What managerial and leadership techniques do they use to execute their strategy? In this paper, these questions are examined by comparing (so as to avoid the pitfalls of "best practices" research) management and leadership behaviors of a group of agency leaders from the Clinton and Bush administrations identified by independent experts as having been successful at executing an ambitious strategy with a control group consisting of those the experts identified as having tried but failed at significant strategic change, along with counterparts to the successes, who had the same position as they in a different administration. We find a number of differentiators (such as using strategic planning, monitoring performance metrics, reorganizing, and having a smaller number of goals), while other techniques either were not commonly used or failed to differentiate (such as establishing accountability systems or appeals to public service motivation). We find that agencies that the successes led had significantly lower percentages of political appointees than the average agency in the government. One important finding is that failures seem to have used techniques recommended specifically for managing transformation or change as frequently as successes did, so use of such techniques does not differentiate successes from failures. However, failures (and counterparts) used techniques associated with improving general organizational performance less than successes.

The Continuity of Discontinuity: How Young Jews Are Connecting, Creating, and Organizing Their Own Jewish Lives

Based on case studies of four self-initiated ventures in Jewish self-organizing, explores their organizing principles, the limitations of and challenges for conventional institutions, and implications for engaging the new generation

Beyond Distancing: Young Adult American Jews and Their Alienation from Israel

This research reports on a mounting body of evidence that has pointed to a growing distancing from Israel of American Jews, most pronounced among younger Jews, and explores critical questions behind their presumably diminished attachment to Israel

The Next Generation: Creating New Peace Processes in the Middle East

This essay describes how Israeli students in a course on mediation and consensus building taught in an Israeli university law department by and American law professor and an Israeli instructor analyzed and studied the conflict in the Middle East. It describes the suggestions they made for process design for the next stages of whatever peace process might emerge for the region. In light of the students\u27 suggestions, the authors present some ideas as to how different approaches to reconciliation and peace might be used, managed, and coordinated

Market Power Assessment and Mitigation in Hydrothermal Systems

The objective of this work is to investigate market power issues in bid- based hydrothermal scheduling. Initially, market power is simulated with a single stage Nash-Cournot equilibrium model. Market power assessment for multiple stages is then carried through a stochastic dynamic programming scheme. The decision in each stage and state is the equilibrium of a multi-agent game. Thereafter, mitigation measures, specially bilateral contracts, are investigated. Case studies with data taken from the Brazilian system are presented and discussed.Game theory, Hydroelectric-thermal power generation, Power generation economics

Are There Managerial Practices Associated with Service Delivery Collaboration Success?: Evidence from British Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships

Little empirical work exists measuring if interagency collaborations delivering public services produce better outcomes, and none looking inside the black box at collaboration management practices. We examine whether there are collaboration management practices associated with improved performance of Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships, a crossagency collaboration in England and Wales. These exist in every local authority in England and Wales, so there are enough of them to permit quantitative analysis. And their aim is crime reduction, and crime data over time are available, allowing actual results (rather than perceptions or self-reports) to be analyzed longitudinally. We find that there are management practices associated with greater success at reducing crime, mostly exhibited through interaction effects such that the practice in question is effective in some circumstances but not others. Our findings support the arguments of those arguing that effective management of collaborations is associated with tools for managing any organization, not ones unique to managing collaborations: if you want to be a good collaboration manager, you should be a good manager, period.

Disaster Risk Governance for Pacific Island Communities

This article examines disaster risk governance for island case studies, focusing on Pacific Small Island Developing States (SIDS). SIDS examples are used to examine two main areas in line with this special issue’s themes: power and knowledge in disaster risk governance. The interactions between those themes are explored for three SIDS governance scales: regional, national, and sub-national. Linking the theoretical discussion with empirical examples demonstrates how bypassing government can be suitable for disaster risk governance

Governmental duty of care for disaster-related science diplomacy

PURPOSE: The purpose of this paper is to present a first exploration of governmental duty of care towards scientists involved in science diplomacy by focusing on disaster research. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: The method is a conceptual exploration, using specific case studies and potential scenarios within theories and practices of science diplomacy and duty of care, to raise questions and to suggest policy recommendations for government. The focus on disaster research links the analysis to disaster diplomacy, namely, how and why disaster-related activities (in this case, science) do and do not influence peace and conflict. FINDINGS: From examining case studies of, and outputs and outcomes from, disaster-related science diplomacy, governments need to consider duty of care issues in advance and develop a science diplomacy strategy, rather than responding after the fact or developing policy ad hoc. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: Policy recommendations are provided to try to ensure that governments avoid simply reacting after a crisis, instead being ready for a situation before it arises and drawing on others’ experience to improve their own actions. SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS: Improved interaction between science and society is discussed in the context of diplomacy, especially for disaster-related activities. ORIGINALITY/VALUE: Governmental duty of care has not before been applied to science diplomacy. The focus on disaster-related science further provides a comparatively new dimension for science diplomacy