Reshaping the project manager's project story: an adoption study of 'best practice' project management

Organisations frequently procure project management training as part of their initiatives to improve project management practices. The research problem is that current learning and teaching imperatives continue to produce project management practitioners who are unable to deal with the realities of complex and dynamic environments. This research is a longitudinal study over two and a half years which reports on the adoption of the PRINCE2 project management methodology by sixteen employees of the same organisation who manage projects following the successful completion of a PRINCE2 training course. The use of the Actor-Network Theory (ANT) approach permits the study of adoption of the innovation (PRINCE2 methodology) and investigates the networks that support the PRINCE2 project methodology to be adopted as two different translations. These have been called the Knowing Translation (KT) and the Performing Translation (PT). The characteristics of the PT and the KT are described together with four moments of translation that were identified. The nature of the PT is that the individual will continue to develop their interest in PRINCE2 and will look for a stable network that will support that translation, even if they resign from the organisation. The significance of the KT is that the individual will cease using PRINCE2 for their projects if there is no imperative given by the organisation to use it and no example set by others in using it. Differences between PT and KT were found to emerge about five months after the training course. Each participant brings to a training course their own ‘world view’ and conception of being on a project. This is their ‘personal story’. Translations are not people but different paths that help describe outcomes of personal stories. A participants’ ‘personal story’ affects how they see themselves in the role and ultimately how effectively they will perform in the workplace. The practical significance of this study is that it is practice-oriented and assists organisations to support project management improvement initiatives

Changing lifestyles and consumption patterns in developing countries: A scenario analysis for China and India

China and India are the world's largest developing economies and also two of the most populous countries. China, which now has more than 1.3 billion people, is expected to grow to more than 1.4 billion by 2050, and India with a population of 1 billion will overtake China to be the most populous country with about 1.6 billion population. These two countries are home to 37% of the world's population today. In addition, China and India have achieved notable success in their economic development characterised by a high rate of gross domestic product (GDP) growth in the last two decades. Together the two countries account already for almost a fifth of world GDP. The most direct and significant result of economic growth in India and China is the amazing improvement in quality of life (or at least spending power) for an increasing share of the population. The populations of both the countries have experienced a transition from ‘poverty’ to ‘adequate food and clothing’; today growing parts of the population are getting closer to ‘well to do lifestyles’. These segments of the society are not satisfied any more with enough food and clothes, but are also eager to obtain a quality life of high nutrient food, comfortable living, health care and other quality services. The theme of this paper is to analyse how the major drivers contributed to the environmental consequences in the past, and to take a forward look at the environmental impacts of these driving forces in China and India. The paper identifies population, affluence and technology to be the major driving forces in environmental pollution for these two countries then applies the simple equation of Impact=Population×Affluence×Technology, or I=PAT to evaluate the effects of changes in these drivers on CO2 emissions

Trade, Balance of Payments and Growth

Reviews the book Trade, Balance of Payments and Growth, edited by J. Bhagwati, R.W. Jones, R.A. Mundell and J. Vanek

POSE : A mathematical and visual modelling tool to guide energy aware code optimisation

Performance engineers are beginning to explore software-level optimisation as a means to reduce the energy consumed when running their codes. This paper presents POSE, a mathematical and visual modelling tool which highlights the relationship between runtime and power consumption. POSE allows developers to assess whether power optimisation is worth pursuing for their codes. We demonstrate POSE by studying the power optimisation characteristics of applications from the Mantevo and Rodinia benchmark suites. We show that LavaMD has the most scope for CPU power optimisation, with improvements in Energy Delay Squared Product (ED2P) of up to 30.59%. Conversely, MiniMD offers the least scope, with improvements to the same metric limited to 7.60%. We also show that no power optimised version of MiniMD operating below 2.3 GHz can match the ED2P performance of the original code running at 3.2 GHz. For LavaMD this limit is marginally less restrictive at 2.2 GHz

Building bridges: toward alternative theory of sustainable supply chain management

We contend that the development of sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) theory has been impaired by a lack of paradigmatic dive rsityin the field. The contested nature of the concept of sustainability has been repressed in SSCM theory, which has led to SSCM cutting itself off from debates that could be the source of inspiration for the development of interesting theory. We adopt the problematization approach proposed by Alvesson and Sandberg (2011) in order to unveil some of SSCM’s unquestioned assumptions, propose an alternative assumption ground, and in this way move toward stronger theory in SSCM. We use paradoxical framing to make sense of the inherent tensions between the different levels of sustainability and between the different types of theory being produced in response to the challenges of sustainability. We articulate a number of foundational assumptions for an alternative theory of SSCM that emerge from the various tensions identified between the different paradigms of sustainability. Finally, we identify a number of ideas for future research that would enable researchers to empirically explore the alternative assumptions

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288 p. ; 24 cm