Why wastelands matter for rural livelihoods in south India

LSE’s Jennifer Baka argues that India’s wastelands are political constructions, and the political processes to define them are reshaping rural livelihoods in unanticipated ways

CALCULATION OF THE HYDRODYNAMIC LOAD CARRYING CAPACITY OF POROUS JOURNAL BEARINGS

This paper is about the calculation of hydrodynamic load carrying capacity of porous journal bearings. Pressure functions were determined and compared to each other to show the differences of several simplifications, assumptions and boundary conditions. The porous material was assumed to be isotropic and homogeneous. Four pressure functions were analysed using the short bearing approximation and one pressure distribution with the infinitely long bearing assumption. The load carrying capacity and the coefficient of friction were calculated and compared to one another

The becoming of social media: the role of rating, ranking and performativity in organizational reputation-making

This thesis explores the concept of reputation-making with the aim of explaining how the rise of user-generated content websites has influenced organizational reputationmaking practices in the travel sector. The findings are based upon a corpus of data including: a field study at the offices of the largest travel user-generated website operator, TripAdvisor and an adaptation of virtual ethnography called “netnography”. Rating and ranking of hotels on social media websites has not only disturbed the established reputation-making practices of professionals in the travel sector and contributed to a significant redirection of reservation revenue but has performative consequences for tourist encounters. In other words, it is argued that if key assumptions underpinning the rating and ranking of travel change, the enactment of travel itself is reconfiguring and this has important implications for how reputationmaking occurs. The reconfigurations documented in the study are theorized using the lens of Process Theory. Originally inspired by philosophers such as Bergson and Whitehead and adopted in the work of organizational theorists such as Tsoukas, Chia, Langley, and Nayak, the choice of Process Theory to inform the conduct of this study resonates with key streams of existing reputation research that view it as a dynamic phenomenon. Core concepts within Process Theory, such as “becoming” enable further investigation into the precise nature of this dynamism by focusing on relations as always fluid and on the move. The challenge, even for literature that acknowledges phenomena as dynamic, is how to temporarily pause the flow for the purpose of analysis and thereby approach becoming without disturbing its inherent nature. This is taken up in the first analysis chapter which uses the notion of place to illustrate and analyze reputation-making using the process of becoming. The chapter argues the importance of recognizing the temporary pauses produced by rating and ranking mechanisms as generative rather than merely reductive algorithmically produced representations. In this way, we get closer to understanding the performativity of phenomena such as TripAdvisor and produce fundamental insights informing organizational reputation-making. It is argued that the organizational devices through which travellers’ engage with the places they visit are not only “making” reputations but are also making formative differences to the practice of travelling. In the second analysis chapter, a key issue associated with these changes - the intensification in focus on service – is explored further and in-depth examination of the field data is used to highlight ways in which TripAdvisor amplifies attention given to the specific characteristics of practices when they are performed. This provides evidence to ground Tsoukas and Chia’s (2002) proposal that organizational change is achieved through ‘microscopic changes’ thus reinforcing the processual nature of change. In so doing, key insights are generated to inform organizational reputation-making. Returning to the tenet of becoming in the third analysis chapter, the “circle of (il)legitimacy” embraces processual principles - for the nature of the circle is to have no beginning or end – but acknowledges the cumulative outcome of configuring practices for hoteliers through a discussion of key issues emerging in the travel sector. The relationship between reputation-making and legitimation is highlighted with examples of the additional processes through which reputation can now be made vulnerable within multiple jurisdictional contexts. The thesis concludes with the assertion that if we aim to understand the phenomenon of reputation-making, we have to develop a more nuanced and sophisticated way to conceptualize its formativeness. It is suggested that this extends beyond snap shot assessments or post-hoc crisis management to on-going maintenance of its emergence and development as well as processual changes across time and space

The Challenges Facing Co-operative Societies In Kenya A Case Study: Kenya Planter Co-operative Union (KPCU)

Co-operative societies sector in kenya play a very important role to the members by giving them affordable financial credit and investment advisory services which help in improving the economic life of the members and the development of the country at large.  However, these co-operative societies suffer common problems associated with weak legislation, poor financial management, leadership, governance and political interferance among many  others. Specifically this study will be looking at the challenges that are facing Co-operative societies, a case study of Kenya Planters Co-operative Union (KPCU).  This study will mainly focus on the leadership as the main challenge that is affecting Co-operative Societies in Kenya.   This project is a review study of whether KPCU could have been saved if the above mentioned issue was well monitored.  The beneficiaries of this case study will be stakeholders including: Directors, management of Co-operative societies, employees, suppliers, consumers and the Government. This proposal aims at enlightening those that are managing Co-operative societies to improve in ways they conduct the affairs of the co-operative societies.  The anticipated challenges include time and resources.  Other challenges anticipated are securing interviews with senior staff and unwillingness of staff to fill questionnaires due to fear of victimization. The study uses descriptive method which involves the collection of information by interviewing some respondents and administering questionnaires. Other sources that will be used for data collection will be text books, journals, magazines and the internet.  Recommendations and conclusions are drawn from the responses  received from the data collected. Data is analyzed from the information collected from the questionnaire and the interviews conducted. The method of analyzing data will be determined using statistics.  Stratified sampling techniques will be used to select samples. This method will allow the researcher to divide the sample into appropriate strata that are mutually exclusive. Data is presented through charts, graphs and tables. Key words: Leadership, Leadership challenges, Co-operatives Performanc

Algorithmic Solutions for Combinatorial Problems in Resource Management of Manufacturing Environments

This thesis studies the use of heuristic algorithms in a number of combinatorial problems that occur in various resource constrained environments. Such problems occur, for example, in manufacturing, where a restricted number of resources (tools, machines, feeder slots) are needed to perform some operations. Many of these problems turn out to be computationally intractable, and heuristic algorithms are used to provide efficient, yet sub-optimal solutions. The main goal of the present study is to build upon existing methods to create new heuristics that provide improved solutions for some of these problems. All of these problems occur in practice, and one of the motivations of our study was the request for improvements from industrial sources. We approach three different resource constrained problems. The first is the tool switching and loading problem, and occurs especially in the assembly of printed circuit boards. This problem has to be solved when an efficient, yet small primary storage is used to access resources (tools) from a less efficient (but unlimited) secondary storage area. We study various forms of the problem and provide improved heuristics for its solution. Second, the nozzle assignment problem is concerned with selecting a suitable set of vacuum nozzles for the arms of a robotic assembly machine. It turns out that this is a specialized formulation of the MINMAX resource allocation formulation of the apportionment problem and it can be solved efficiently and optimally. We construct an exact algorithm specialized for the nozzle selection and provide a proof of its optimality. Third, the problem of feeder assignment and component tape construction occurs when electronic components are inserted and certain component types cause tape movement delays that can significantly impact the efficiency of printed circuit board assembly. Here, careful selection of component slots in the feeder improves the tape movement speed. We provide a formal proof that this problem is of the same complexity as the turnpike problem (a well studied geometric optimization problem), and provide a heuristic algorithm for this problem.Siirretty Doriast