The perceptions of SME owner-managers relating to ethics and online business practices : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Management in Management at Massey University

The Internet has created many new opportunities for small-to-medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and many of these firms are encountering external pressure to have an online presence. E-commerce, however, brings a series of ethical challenges for many businesses, notably issues relating to privacy and security. These ethical challenges need to be met by SME owner-managers in order to ensure that their business competes and survives in today's hyper-competitive environment. To date, there is very little research on ethics and online business, and the focus of this study was to investigate ethical perceptions of SME owner-managers relating to online business practices. The study was qualitative in nature and involved semi-structured interviews with twelve owner-managers of Wellington based SMEs that had an online presence. The exploratory nature of the study meant that rich data was obtained from the twelve interviewees and the findings were grouped into three main themes for discussion, the importance of e-commerce, the underlying values and risk-tolerance of the participant owner-manager and, participant perception of ethical online issues such as privacy, security, intellectual property (IP) and online trust. The importance of e-commerce both now and in the future was highlighted by the owner-managers, and there was also a diverse range of ethical concerns that they had with online business. These findings and subsequent discussion allowed for some interesting conclusions to be made. The complex changing nature of online ethics is highlighted, as well the notion that stakeholders have an important influence on the online ethical framework. This study also concludes that there is a gap between current legislation and an awareness of how this impacts on the owner-managers business. There is also a 'disconnect' between thought and action on the part of the owner-manager in terms addressing some of their online ethical concerns

Spectrum Management and Broadcasting: Current Issues

Broadcasting policy has traditionally been supported by a 'command-and-control' system of assigning frequencies for terrestrial transmission, but this link is being eroded by the emergence of other technologies – cable, satellite, IPTV, mobile broadcasting - and by the emergence of multi-channel television, which is facilitated by digital terrestrial television. The switch off of analogue terrestrial transmission is being achieved through significant government intervention, but with diverse intentions relating to the use of the freed spectrum. It is argued, however, that the trend to liberalise spectrum policy is strong, and that this will promote the liberalisation of broadcasting.spectrum management; broadcasting policy; digital switchover

An airborne geophysical survey of part of west Dyfed, South Wales, and some related ground surveys

A detailed airborne geophysical survey has been made of part of west Dyfed at a flying height of 75 m with magnetic, electromagnetic (VLF-EM) and radiometric equipment mounted in a helicopter. The area of 670 km2 includes the Precambrian anticlines of St David’s and Hayscastle, the Fishguard, Sealyham and Trefgarne volcanic groups, and the adjacent Lower Palaeozoic sediments with associated basic intrusions. Ground geophysical surveys were carried out at 33 localities to confirm the nature and the sources of the airborne anomalies, and a geological examination was also made at selected localities. Rock samples were collected for petrographical examination and physical property determinations. A regional gravity survey was also carried out. Some details of the geophysical methods and data presentation are included together with a map at a scale of 1:50 000 summarising the main results obtained from interpretations of the airborne geophysical surveys. The aeromagnetic data clearly show the distribution of the Precambrian rocks, the numerous dolerite intrusions, and some of the pillow lavas associated with the Fishguard Volcanic Group. This distribution generally confirms the outcrop pattern based on geological mapping. The magnetic data are likely to be more reliable for mapping on a more detailed scale, due to the extensive drift cover which hinders geological mapping in many places, and they have also revealed some large scale structures, in- The airborne VLF anomalies are most obvious at lithological boundaries with large resistivity contrasts such as the Precambrian/Lower Palaeozoic sediment and dolerite/sediment contacts. The radiometric data provide little obvious additional information. Although the west Dyfed area has no significant mining history, some exploration activity has taken place there in recent years (Allen, Cooper and others 1985; Cameron and others, 1984; Brown and others, 1987). One of the main restrictions on exploration has been the lack of rock exposure in much of the inland area and the airborne geophysical survey was undertaken as partial compensation for this

Introduction to the Topaz Framework and the Ambra Publishing Platform

4th International Conference on Open RepositoriesThis presentation was part of the session : Conference PresentationsDate: 2009-05-19 03:00 PM – 04:30 PMThis presentation is an introduction to Topaz, an Open Source content modeling and storage framework that uses the Fedora Service Framework and Mulgara semantic technology as the core engine, and Ambra, a publishing application built on the Topaz framework.  We will discuss the architecture of Topaz and some of the semantic technologies created to provide more flexibility with data than relational models. We will review the Ambra publishing platform, the "Web 2.0" features built to foster collaboration and participation, and its new methods for disseminating and sharing scientific information.Moore Foundatio

Regulation and efficiency incentives: evidence from the England and Wales water and sewerage industry

This paper evaluates the impact of the tightening in price cap by OFWAT and of other operational factors on the efficiency of water and sewerage companies in England and Wales using a mixture of data envelopment analysis and stochastic frontier analysis. Previous empirical results suggest that the regulatory system introduced at privatization was lax. The 1999 price review signaled a tightening in regulation which is shown to have led to a significant reduction in technical inefficiency. The new economic environment set by price-cap regulation acted to bring inputs closer to their cost-minimizing levels from both a technical and allocative perspective

European Communications at the Crossroads. Report of the CEPS Working Party on electronic communications. CEPS Task Force Reports No. 39, 1 October 2001

Community institutions are now busy with the second readings of the proposals for a new regime for regulating the European Communications Industry. While many aspects of the proposed new regulatory arrangements are widely accepted, a number of key choices still have to be made. The regulation of European communications is therefore at a crossroads. This CEPS Working Party Report considers the key choices that lie ahead, with the aim of providing the institutions with some fresh input from well placed observers

Kirchberg-Wassermann exactness vs exactness: reduction to the unimodular totally disconnected case

We show that in order to prove that all locally compact groups with exact reduced group C∗-algebras are exact in the dynamical sense (i.e., KW-exact), it suffices to show this for totally disconnected locally compact groups

A Case Study on Logical Relations using Contextual Types

Proofs by logical relations play a key role to establish rich properties such as normalization or contextual equivalence. They are also challenging to mechanize. In this paper, we describe the completeness proof of algorithmic equality for simply typed lambda-terms by Crary where we reason about logically equivalent terms in the proof environment Beluga. There are three key aspects we rely upon: 1) we encode lambda-terms together with their operational semantics and algorithmic equality using higher-order abstract syntax 2) we directly encode the corresponding logical equivalence of well-typed lambda-terms using recursive types and higher-order functions 3) we exploit Beluga's support for contexts and the equational theory of simultaneous substitutions. This leads to a direct and compact mechanization, demonstrating Beluga's strength at formalizing logical relations proofs.Comment: In Proceedings LFMTP 2015, arXiv:1507.0759