Developing Competences Designed to Create Customer Value

This paper focuses on how small, specialized suppliers can gain competitive advantage by acting as a potential for their scale intensive producing customers in achieving competitive advantage. Of special interest is how a shared under-standing of ‘value’ for the customer is obtained, transferred and implemented in the specialized supplier’s production of process equipment. The study draws on theory on networks and specialized suppliers as well as interviews with key in-formants in three specialized supplier companies for the aluminum industry. An important finding is that the constellation of the specialized supplier’s network changes as the project moves from planning to production. With these changes, the role of specialized suppliers in the value creation process also changes. It seems to be an important competence for small, specialized supplier to be able to draw on and manage this network in their value creation process.

Visual Thinking Tools To Enhance Nonfiction Reading Comprehension In The Middle School

This capstone explores the question; How can visual thinking tools be used as a foundation for middle school student’s critical approach to understanding nonfiction texts? Although adolescent learners in the U.S. have greater literacy demands placed on them in the 21st century than ever before, some remain poorly prepared for the rigor of post-secondary education and many content area specific teachers lack instructional techniques to support student literacy in their field. As such, I was drawn towards visual learning tools as avenues to get my students thinking more critically about nonfiction text. Through these understandings, I have assembled a visual thinking toolkit that can be incorporated into instruction by any content-area teacher. Ideally, the student can learn one visible thinking strategy in science one week and apply that same strategy to understand a series of non-fiction texts for a social studies project the following week. The aim is for the instructional practice to center on the students’ needs. In doing so, the student can become the center of the literacy strategy. This project offers suggestions about how visual thinking tools can be the “swiss-army knife” of literacy instructional techniques and additionally a critical piece in supporting adolescent learners reach the ever-increasing literacy demands placed on them

Water level impact on pine seedlings in greenhouse conditions: assessing growth and survival potential in ditched and managed peatlands

Tree establishment on peatlands has various adverse effects on the environment, with one of the most significant being their transformation from carbon sinks to carbon sources. This transformation has largely been instigated by economic-driven ditching initiatives. In this study, 80 peat-rooted pine seedlings were subjected to hydrological scenarios corresponding to natural, ditched, and rewetted conditions to investigate how different management strategies affect tree growth and survival. The study was conducted in a greenhouse where all plants were exposed to identical conditions except for the water level, and focused on factors like stomatal conductance, plant survival, length, biomass, and radial tree growth. Wet conditions, specifically treatments rewetted and natural, resulted in consistently lower stomatal conductance compared to drier treatments. Plant survival was affected, with 15 deaths in the rewetted and 2 in natural groups. Moreover, length, biomass, radial growth, and cell formation were significantly lower for the groups exposed to wet conditions. Rewetting can therefore effectively control tree colonisations, and thereby preventing water consumption, litter fertilisation, and other positive feedback effects for the trees that might be negative for the carbon uptake and biodiversity in peatlands. This study thereby offers valuable insights for rewetting initiatives in tree colonised peatland ecosystems

Mixing Mathematics and Morality: Precarity and Moral Hazard in Employment Insurance and Personal Insolvency Law

This article examines how financially precarious Canadians face particular challenges to accessing the benefits of employment insurance and personal insolvency because these two systems include features designed to guard against moral hazard. However, these design features do not adequately account for how an increasing number of Canadians are precariously employed and precariously indebted. This article synthesizes the research on precarious employment in Canada, and uses it to suggest how one might conceptualize precarious indebtedness. It then traces how the Canadian employment insurance and personal insolvency systems treat characteristics of financial precarity as evidence of misconduct. As a result, precariously employed and indebted Canadians have difficulty accessing income supports and debt relief. These cascading barriers compound the economic hardship of financially precarious Canadians—a result that is inhumane, inequitable, economically counterproductive, and politically destabilizing. Cet article examine comment les Canadiens en situation de précarité financière rencontrent des difficultés particulières pour accéder aux prestations de l’assurance emploi et de l’insolvabilité personnelle, car ces deux systèmes comportent des caractéristiques conçues pour se prémunir contre l’aléa moral. Cependant, ces caractéristiques ne tiennent pas compte de la façon dont un nombre croissant de Canadiens ont un emploi précaire et sont endettés de façon précaire. Cet article synthétise les recherches sur l’emploi précaire au Canada et les utilise pour suggérer comment conceptualiser l’endettement précaire. Il retrace ensuite la manière dont les systèmes canadiens d’assurance-emploi et d’insolvabilité personnelle traitent les caractéristiques de la précarité financière comme des preuves de mauvaise conduite. En conséquence, les Canadiens précaires et endettés ont des difficultés à accéder aux aides au revenu et à l’allègement de la dette. Ces obstacles en cascade aggravent les difficultés économiques des Canadiens en situation de précarité financière—un résultat inhumain, inéquitable, économiquement contre-productif et politiquement déstabilisant

“Help Is the Sunny Side of Control”: The Medical Model of Gambling and Social Context Evidence in Canadian Personal Bankruptcy Law

At the start of the twentieth century, people who gambled excessively were viewed as morally deviant. Now, they are viewed as suffering from a medical disorder. Legal actors incorporate this medical approach to gamblers into how they apply the law. This shift from a moral to a medical model reorients actors from punishing gamblers to helping them, and thus can be characterized as a positive, humane development. Yet the medical model has drawbacks too. The medical model can be used to justify paternalistic and potentially harmful interventions in the lives of individuals, and it obscures the social context in which individuals’ behaviour occurs. The drawbacks of the medical model can be illustrated with the example of gamblers who undergo personal bankruptcy proceedings. Many of the legal actors practicing bankruptcy law have adopted a medical approach to gamblers. They have reoriented their practices to serve therapeutic ends. Yet, they may be inadvertently harming the bankrupts they are trying to help. The risk of harms created by the medical model can be mitigated by educating legal actors about the social context in which gambling occurs. This article synthesizes research on the social context of gambling in Canada and illustrates how it can inform the practices of legal actors who implement Canadian personal bankruptcy law. The example of Canadian personal bankruptcy law underlines the importance of incorporating social context evidence into the practice law, especially when a legal issue has been medicalized

Artists’ Autonomy and Professionalization in a New Cultural Policy Landscape

Using literature on the professions, the article explores how a new political model for funding and steering may affect professional autonomy. Professional groups’ efforts to independently practice their profession during times of political change are elaborated. The professional group in questions is artists, the context is Sweden, and the new model is called the Collaborative Cultural Model. This model entails a shift in the funding and realization of cultural policy from the national to the regional level. From a situation in which civil servants with specific culture knowledge were involved, politicians, representatives of civil society, civil servants and artists are now to work together to create a regional culture plan. In the article, two different outcomes of the new model are discussed as possible. It can lead to de-professionalization process, particularly if the policy on keeping outside influences at “arm’s length” weakens. On the other hand, negotiations between different actors could result in artists’ knowledge becoming more prominent and receiving more recognition than previously. This, in turn, could promote professional artists’ status. Keywords: Cultural policy, public funding, autonomy, artistic (de)professionalization, dominated and dominatin

Developing Competences Designed to Create Customer Value

This paper focuses on how small, specialized suppliers can gain competitive advantage by acting as a potential for their scale intensive producing customers in achieving competitive advantage. Of special interest is how a shared under-standing of value for the customer is obtained, transferred and implemented in the specialized suppliers production of process equipment. The study draws on theory on networks and specialized suppliers as well as interviews with key in-formants in three specialized supplier companies for the aluminum industry. An important finding is that the constellation of the specialized suppliers network changes as the project moves from planning to production. With these changes, the role of specialized suppliers in the value creation process also changes. It seems to be an important competence for small, specialized supplier to be able to draw on and manage this network in their value creation process