UKCES: Understanding Human Centred Management

The Understanding Human Centred Management Project is a research project funded by the UK Commission for Employment and Skills to investigate the effectiveness of a behavioural framework on the communication and decision making of supply chains.The Human Centred Management project was required to solve the problem of supply chain inefficiencies brought about by unproductive human behaviours. Specifically, the project sought to used Behavioural Economics to improve the decisions made by making people aware of their illogical ‘Biases’ and ‘Heuristics’. Use of Transactional Analysis to make people more aware of their impressions and their audience to reduce antagonism in communication. Combine these methods using Behavioural Management Theory to create one unified approach which will create a 21st century solution to behavioural inefficiencies. The project primarily targeted two supply chains, led by two larger or ‘Prime’ organisations that had SME’s feeding the production process. The two supply chains underwent a number of interventions in the form of one-to-one sessions, workshops, master classes and simulations, in order to understand and influence the behavioural inefficiencies they were suffering. An Action Research methodology was used to both provide a flexible approach and also generate qualitative data. Before each intervention, questionnaire data and in some cases a behavioural health check was carried out in order to gain baseline data. Once complete the same questionnaires were completed and interviews with key participants were carried out. The interventions were a success producing a large amount of positive change and behavioural insights for analysis. Such improvements included dramatically improving the supply chain communication leading to claims of improved supply chain effectiveness over all, development of closer ties between supply chains in a geographically separated area and improved logical decision making where managers are aware of their biases and take the time to reflect on all the options. The three areas of psychology introduced proved to combine extremely well, complimenting one another’s weaker areas in order to produce the unified approach envisaged. Behavioural Economics was found to be an excellent analytical tool capable of deconstructing the root causes of behaviours. Transactional Analysis provided a suite of easily implementable and practical techniques for improving communication. Behavioural Management Theory provided a flexible approach to implementing the changes required. From the experience of the project and analysis of the data a Behavioural Framework was generated in order to allow other supply chains to benefit from this effective 21st century solution to behavioural inefficiencies.UK Commission for Employment and Skill

The role of anaerobic digestion in achieving soil conservation and sustainable agricultural development in the UK.

Anaerobic digestion represents one form of renewable energy technology but has many wider benefits. This paper reviews the processes involved in anaerobic digestion, the type of systems in place and the use of digestate to improve soil quality. A case is made for the technology in the UK in the context of soil conservation and sustainable agricultural production. Its broader contribution to sustainable development in the United Kingdom is also considered. Low levels of awareness of the benefits of anaerobic digestion, poor access to funds, inadequate incentives, an unfavourable legislative and policy framework for the technology, limited application of digestate for agricultural purposes and the need for further research on digestate use are identified as key factors hindering uptake of the technology. Anaerobic digestion is presented as a technology that can support soil conservation and sustainable agricultural development while also generating both energy and income, enhancing waste and nutrient recycling and promoting environmental protection

Raising awareness of anaerobic digestion in the UK - Views of key stakeholders

This is the open access PDF version of an article published in Journal of Environmental and Ecology© 2014.Meeting rising energy demand and sustainable development goals at the same time is a major challenge for policy makers in the 21st century. The situation is further stressed by a rising world population, climate change, natural disasters and food security concerns. Renewable energy technologies such as anaerobic digestion (AD) proffer one solution for policy makers to overcome some of the challenges to sustainable development. The technology has been widely adopted in some parts of Europe (e.g. Germany, Denmark, Austria and Sweden), the United States and also parts of Asia and Africa. However in the United Kingdom (UK), the technology is under-developed, as was recognised in its anaerobic digestion strategy and action plan of 2011. This study focused on identifying options for raising awareness of AD technology in the UK. 21 key stakeholders divided into groups according to their expertise, were interviewed to explore their views on the areas of focus in the UK strategy and action plan regarding raising awareness of the technology. The results revealed that aligning AD with sustainable development goals, community AD and localism, small AD plants, provision of an available market for AD products, building UK skills and diversifying biogas use from AD are positive options for raising awareness of AD in the UK. Challenges to these options and possible solutions to the challenges were also identified and discussed

Obituaries of George Washington Walker, Tasmania 1859

Newspaper obituaries of George Washington Walker including a letter to the editor of 'The Christian Times' by James Bonwick. From Walker Family Scrapbook compiled by Peter Benson Walker. Private collection

Letters from James Bonwick to George Washington Walker

Letters from James Bonwick to George Washington Walker, dated 1847 and 1849-1858 concerning general matters, spiritual, land from Henry Bilton, state of his accounts, Adelaide (1850), school, Victoria: gold digging and effects on school (March 1852), Gold Diggers Magazine, debts, Boroondar Boarding School (1855), book on the Black War of V.D.L. (1856). James Bonwick (1817–1906), was a teacher and historian, taught in England and was recruited to Tasmania, arriving in 1841. He left the government system after two years and ran his own school, where he pioneered new teaching methods which avoided rote learning, and produced textbooks. He also worked for temperance. - 24 documents - W7/3-2

Multiversion Concurrency with Bounded Delay and Precise Garbage Collection

In this paper we are interested in bounding the number of instructions taken to process transactions. The main result is a multiversion transactional system that supports constant delay (extra instructions beyond running in isolation) for all read-only transactions, delay equal to the number of processes for writing transactions that are not concurrent with other writers, and lock-freedom for concurrent writers. The system supports precise garbage collection in that versions are identified for collection as soon as the last transaction releases them. As far as we know these are first results that bound delays for multiple readers and even a single writer. The approach is particularly useful in situations where read-transactions dominate write transactions, or where write transactions come in as streams or batches and can be processed by a single writer (possibly in parallel). The approach is based on using functional data structures to support multiple versions, and an efficient solution to the Version Maintenance (VM) problem for acquiring, updating and releasing versions. Our solution to the VM problem is precise, safe and wait-free (PSWF). We experimentally validate our approach by applying it to balanced tree data structures for maintaining ordered maps. We test the transactional system using multiple algorithms for the VM problem, including our PSWF VM algorithm, and implementations with weaker guarantees based on epochs, hazard pointers, and read-copy-update. To evaluate the functional data structure for concurrency and multi-versioning, we implement batched updates for functional tree structures and compare the performance with state-of-the-art concurrent data structures for balanced trees. The experiments indicate our approach works well in practice over a broad set of criteria

Farmers’ perception of soil: Implications for soil conservation and sustainable agriculture in the UK

This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of a published work that appeared in final form in Global Journal of Agricultural Research. To access the final edited and published work see http://www.eajournals.org/journals/global-journal-of-agricultural-research-gjar/We identify UK farmers' perception of soil, awareness of soil in terms of how they describe it, their awareness of its benefits other than for crop production,their familiarity with soil conservation and their opinions on soil protection and the value of organic fertilizers. Data were collected with the aid of social media using both Twitter and electronic mail to deistribute a survey link to farmers,UK yellow pages, Natural England directory and Twitter were used to search for farms. Data were analysed using SPSS and Wordle. Results showed that farmers' describe soils in abstract, scientific, physical attribute and functional terms. Awareness of soil benefits other than crop production was significantly related to age, and farm ownership. Educational level was significantly related to familiarity with soil conservation and opinion on whether soil should be protected like other natural resources. The implications of these results for soil conservation and sustainable agriculture are discussed and used as the basis for policy recommendations