Supply Chain Management in the Hospitality Industry: A research agenda

Supply Chain Management is at the heart of competitive advantage for any organisation. Without Supply Chains, the Hospitality Industry would quickly grind to a halt. There would be no fruit or vegetables in our restaurants, no beer or wine in our bars and no beds or toilets in our hotels. There would be no recycling of glass or the disposal of food products. There would be no customers. Given the importance of Supply Chains to the Hospitality Industry it is perhaps surprising that so little is published about Supply Chains and how Supply Chains can be managed. The aim of this working paper is to define SCM and establish an agenda for undertaking research into this important but neglected topic

Synthetic Data and Public Policy: supporting real-world policymakers with algorithmically generated data

Good policy is best developed by drawing on a wide array of high-quality evidence. The rapid growth of data science and the emergence of big datasets has materially advanced the supply and use of quantitative evidence. However, some key constraints remain, including that available datasets are still not big enough for some analytical purposes. There are also privacy and data security risks. Synthetic data is an emerging area of data science that can potentially support policy decision making through enabling research to work faster and with fewer errors while also ensuring privacy and security

Cissexism and Precarity Perform Trans Subjectivities

Precarity is not experienced by all. Rather, as Judith Butler (2009) notes, it is the extreme state of precariousness—a heightened exposure to institutional and social violence imposed on marginalized populations such as people of color, non-white immigrants, people of non-Christian faiths, and LGBTQ+ people. Nor does precarity impact the people in these groups evenly. The three digital artworks in this series highlight some of the ways in which trans people navigate precarity and are performed by it. The lifetime suicide attempt rate for trans and gender non-conforming people averages at 41% with the highest rate at 46% reported by trans men (Haas, Rodgers, & Herman, 2014). I am one of the 46%. However, my suicidal ideation and attempts were not caused by being transgender in and of itself but rather due to systemic cissexism that heightens precarity in legal, medical, economic, and social structures aimed at reducing the conditions for trans people to lead what Butler (2009) calls a livable life. It is systemic cissexism that also places trans people at risk of physical violence from others. Two of the artworks are photographic self-portraits with text. Humor and History speaks back to accusations of oversensitivity to social media posts, often viral, that serve to mock and demean trans people and their lived experiences. Inconvenient Truth comments as well on the dismissiveness by some and aggression by others who refuse trans-affirming protocols such as respecting new names and pronoun usage. Such refusals also expose trans people to ill treatment by others who witness these acts. Unlikely Hero is a digital image with a short autobiographical tale depicting the empathy and kindness given the artist by a member of the most vulnerable of trans communities, trans women of color working in the sex trade, both holding a tension between trust and hypervigilance during the encounter. Each work marks the conscious recognition of precarity that trans people must perform through and how that precarity permits some actions and denies others as we empathize and reach out, speak back as well as speak up, hide ourselves in isolation or present ourselves through the vulnerability of visibility in solidarity with one another. References Butler, J. (2009). Frames of war: When is life grievable? New York, NY: Verso. Haas, A. P., Rodgers, P. L., & Herman, J. L. (2014). Suicide attempts among transgender and gender non-conforming adults: Findings of the national transgender discrimination survey. Los Angeles, CA: Williams Institute, UCLA. Retrieved from https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/AFSP-Williams-Suicide-Report-Final.pd

Remember the Flicking Tail of the Lizard: how matauranga Maori is being woven into place-based regulatory decisions in Aotearoa

Te Mana Rauhï Taiao, the Environmental Protection Authority, is adopting a new and comprehensive approach to bringing mätauranga – the Mäori knowledge system – into its regulatory practice. This will potentially have an impact on decision-making on environmental protection in your local area

"Can I see your social license please?"

The concept of a ‘social licence to operate’ has become ubiquitous in recent years, but there is no agreed definition, and its meaning continues to mutate as it spreads to ever more domains. The concept was first floated by a mining company executive after a disaster at a mine in the Philippines in 1995, and it spread exponentially. A small but growing body of academic research and commentary is bringing some rigour, but is not keeping pace with its rate of mutation. The narrative around the term is now more valuable than the term itself, which should be retired

Blockchain in Aotearoa: are distributed ledgers the future for our regulators and policymakers?

Blockchain technology has been moving beyond cryptocurrency into new areas internationally, with substantial investment from both the private sector and government, including private sector projects in Aotearoa. However, there is not yet clear evidence of successful use cases at scale. The technology offers important benefits through creating tamper-proof records of transactions, and major drawbacks of public networks like bitcoin, such as massive power consumption, do not seem to apply to regulatory uses based on private blockchain networks. But there is debate over whether the technology is as secure as its proponents claim. In exploring blockchain’s potential, regulatory designers will want to carefully consider more conventional alternatives such as distributed databases

Developing Walvis Bay Port into a logistics gateway for southern Africa: Issues, challenges and the potential implications for Namibia’s future

Many developing countries wish to become the ‘gateway’ to a region or part of a continent.One strategy involves encouraging logistics cluster development. These hubs support global supply chains and may enable the economic growth of the host country through the resulting trade, as well as providing direct and indirect employment opportunities during the build and subsequent operation of the hub. Namibia intends to develop the Port of Walvis Bay to be come the preferred gateway to southern Africa and the Southern African Development Community region. This article builds on research on Caribbean cluster potential and Namibian logistics to identify the potential benefits and impact on development, as well as the drawbacks and risks of such a strategy