Struggling to 'fit in': On belonging and the ethics of sharing in project teams

This paper explores the links between belonging and ethics, which remain largely underdeveloped in project studies and are overlooked in everyday practice of managing projects. It focuses on belonging as the process articulating identity-construction of an inter-organisational project team from a global management consulting firm that was working in IS design. As the team?s experienced ?sense of place?, belonging becomes the space which highlights preferred affiliations and exposes how ? individually and collectively ? ethics are played out in the context of the management of projects. Four in situ belonging-narratives (of opposition, pragmatism, reflexivity, and the habitual narrative) represent ethics as part of lived action and of a life-world that emerge from deconstructing and reconstructing ?the team? and an ideal worker in projects. The team?s struggles to ?fit in? were experienced both when resisting and when collaborating with the dominant collective narrative of belonging. Modes of belonging are constituted in the relationship between self, others, and ?otherness?, creating a situated ethical imagination of how to ?be professional?. Implications concern the politics of belonging and call for a renewed practical ethics that engages with the social nature of ?being?, to change the current view of professional identities in projects

Poetics of Identity: On entrepreneurial selves of Afghan Migrants in Pakistan

In Peshawar, evenings at tea houses in the ?market of storytellers? or Qissa Khawani Bazaar are busy. Located at the doorsteps of the famous Khyber Pass, Peshawar has historically acted as the main gateway between the Indian subcontinent and Central Asia. Qissa Khawani has always been the major market for traders in this geographical region. Indeed, the British Commissioner to Peshawar, Sir Herbert Benjamin Edwards (1853-1862), called it the Piccadilly of Central Asia (Tikekar, 2004). Every evening, tea houses would be buzzing with traders from all over Asia sipping freshly brewed green tea and relaxing. But the highlight of the evening was the storytellers called Qissa Khawans who would narrate many stories of interest to the traders. They used both prose and poetry to tell stories of traders? expeditions, their valuable items, and of far-away lands of treasures. Today, the same bazaars continue to be full of activity and their small streets have been transformed into a variety of interconnected specialised markets. There is a market for mobile phones, opening into a flower market adjoined by the sweets market, leading to a market for pet birds. One such narrow street is called Jangi Mohallah, ?the fighters? neighbourhood?. Until about three decades ago, the gangsters of Peshawar city used to settle scores there. It was a place for duels which were fought with large handmade folding knives. There is no sign of this today as the ever increasing population has taken over that ground. The u-shaped Jangi Mohallah is the hub of the printing and publishing businesses in the North West Frontier Province (Pakistan) ? the home to the Pashtun tribes. In this paper, the stories narrated by the Pashtun traders of Jangi Mohallah provide a window into their entrepreneurial identities. They stem from Afghan Pashtuns of Qissa Khawani speaking the language of Pashtu and upholding the values of the ?Pashtunwali?- a living and unwritten code of honour that ?regulates? everyday life. This paper thus engages with entrepreneurial life history narratives espousing the ways in which the identities of Afghan entrepreneurs adhere to the main Pashtunwali-tenets, if at all. The latter refer to an ideal self that has been orally transmitted through Pashtu poetry since ancient times. Afghan entrepreneurial identities tend to adhere to the core tenets of Pashtunwali. However, there are multiple uses of poetic tropes expressed in entrepreneurial life history narratives that tell us more about the subtle ambiguity and challenges that might be experienced when relating to the dominant influence of this code of honour. Thus, Pashtunwali values are very much lived and enacted in practice. This paper contends that they are inscribed as poetic tropes in main Afghan poetry shaping the moral compass that becomes central to one?s existence and mode of being an entrepreneur

A Few Problems Arising from the Introduction of Digital PABX Systems

Innerhalb digitaler Nebenstellenanlagen können kurzfristig die verbesserten Kommunikationsmöglichkeiten eines „Integrated Services Digital Network" unabhängig von der Existenz eines nur langfristig realisierbaren, durchgehend digitalen öffentlichen Netzes angeboten werden. Beim Anschluß an die bestehenden öffentlichen Netze ergeben sich jedoch einige Probleme: Z. B. müssen die Bedingungen des bestehenden Dämpfungsplans eingehalten werden, auch im ungünstigsten Fall sind ausreichend hohe Signal-Quantisierungsgeräusch-Abstände sicherzustellen, für die Text- und Datenkommunikation mit den derzeit bestehenden öffentlichen Netzen sind u. U. zusätzliche Einrichtungen in der Nebenstellenanlage erforderlich. Diese Einführungsprobleme werden diskutiert und Lösungsmöglichkeiten hierzu vorgeschlagen.In digital PABX systems the improved communication facilities (offered in the future by an Integrated Services Digital Network) can be obtained in a short term. However a few problems can arise when these systems are connected to the existing public networks. For example: The recommendations of the existing plan of reference equivalents must be adhered to. Even in the most unfavorable case it is necessary to ensure sufficiently high signal to quantization noise ratio. Under certain conditions a PABX system would require additional devices to transmit text and data using the existing public networks. The problems will be discussed and possible solutions put forward

Optimization of hydraulic drives for parabolic troughs

HAWE Hydraulic SE, Munich, engineers and manufactures hydraulic drives (CSP-drives) for parabolic trough plants consisting of a compact power pack, directional and control valves, over-center valves, two cylinders and the fittings/hoses for connecting these components. Optional, but this is depending on the system and the control philosophy, also a hydralic accumulator. An optimized hydraulic drive for a parabolic trough field makes the power plant operator profit from savings at components, higher system efficiency, lower operational energy supply needs, less time spent on commissioning and first start-up, lower maintenance effort and increased life span of the drive and finally also savings on peripheral and safety devices. Many of shown proposals are even combining two or more of above mentioned advantages

Eine kurze Einführung zu Bedienungssystemen

Diese kurze Einführung zu Bedienungssystemen konzentriert sich auf grundlegende Gesetzmäßigkeiten für Bedienungssysteme im stationären Zustand (Flusserhaltung, Little-Theorem), die wesentlichen Kenngrößen (Angebot, Belastung, Restverkehr, Wartebelastung, Wartewahrscheinlichkeit, mittlere Bediendauer, mittlere Wartedauer, mittlere Durchlaufdauer) eines Bedienungssystems werden anschaulich eingeführt. Die Erlang-Formel und die Khintchine-Pollaczek-Formel werden diskutiert. Die Einführung ergänzt das Buch "Digitale Kommunikationssysteme 2 - Grundlagen der Vermittlungstechnik" des Verfassers, ist aber völlig eigenständig lesbar

Optimization of hydraulic drives for parabolic troughs

HAWE Hydraulic SE, Munich, engineers and manufactures hydraulic drives (CSP-drives) for parabolic trough plants consisting of a compact power pack, directional and control valves, over-center valves, two cylinders and the fittings/hoses for connecting these components. Optional, but this is depending on the system and the control philosophy, also a hydralic accumulator. An optimized hydraulic drive for a parabolic trough field makes the power plant operator profit from savings at components, higher system efficiency, lower operational energy supply needs, less time spent on commissioning and first start-up, lower maintenance effort and increased life span of the drive and finally also savings on peripheral and safety devices. Many of shown proposals are even combining two or more of above mentioned advantages

Impact of treated sewage effluent on the microbiology of a small brook using flow cytometry as a diagnostic tool

Flow cytometry was applied to assess the microbiological impact of treated sewage effluent discharge into a small brook carrying surface runoff water. Increases in dissolved organic carbon and soluble reactive phosphorous were accompanied by increases in counts of intact bacteria by up to eightfold. Effluent ingress furthermore resulted in a pronounced shift of bacterial clusters. Whereas brook water upstream of the discharge point was characterised by a bacterial cluster with low nucleic acid (LNA) content, downstream water showed a shift to bacteria with high nucleic acid (HNA) content. Changes in the LNA/HNA ratio were largely maintained along the course of the brook. Results suggest that the LNA/HNA ratio can under certain conditions serve as an indicator of anthropogenic nutrient impact. Measuring impact on this low trophic level might be more sensitive and straightforward than measuring macroindicators. More evidence will however be required to assess the usefulness of LNA/HNA measurements to assess the ecological nutrient status of natural waters and the impact of nutrient pollution

Rechnergesteuerter Signalgenerator : der PC als Meßgerät

Der PC als Meßgerät findet weiter zunehmende Verbreitung und wird als ernstzunehmender Bestandteil des Entwicklungslabors von Firmen wie Siemens, HP usw. angeboten. Dieser Beitrag dringt einmal in das Innere eines rechnergesteuerten Signalgenerators vor und zeigt Hard- und Software

Marginal External Costs of Peak and Non Peak Urban Transport in Belgium

This paper discusses intermediate results of an ongoing research project to estimate all external costs from all transport modes in Belgium. It gives estimates of the marginal external costs of air pollution from urban transport. The evaluation of the environmental impacts is based on the European ExternE accounting framework. This methodology uses the impact pathway analysis for the detailed bottom-up assessment of impacts from air pollutants. It integrates state of the art knowledge in the fields of emission modelling, dispersion modelling, dose-response functions and monetary valuation. This paper focuses on the impact of location (rural areas versus cities), regulation, traffic conditions and congestion on environmental externalities. These case studies for Belgium confirm earlier results of the ExternE project that external environmental costs of car transport are significant and that damage to public health is the dominant impact. In addition, it shows that externalities of urban peak traffic are 2 to 4 times higher than for normal urban driving conditions. Finally, it calculates which occupancy rates are required for urban public transport (trams and diesel buses) to have lower external costs compared to passenger cars.Externalities, Urban transport, Air pollution, Congestion, Sustainable mobility

Evaluation of engineered nanoparticle toxic effect on wastewater microorganisms: current status and challenges

The use of engineered nanoparticles (ENPs) in a wide range of products is associated with an increased concern for environmental safety due to their potential toxicological and adverse effects. ENPs exert antimicrobial properties through different mechanisms such as the formation of reactive oxygen species, disruption of physiological and metabolic processes. Although there are little empirical evidences on environmental fate and transport of ENPs, biosolids in wastewater most likely would be a sink for ENPs. However, there are still many uncertainties in relation to ENPs impact on the biological processes during wastewater treatment. This review provides an overview of the available data on the plausible effects of ENPs on AS and AD processes, two key biologically relevant environments for understanding ENPs–microbial interactions. It indicates that the impact of ENPs is not fully understood and few evidences suggest that ENPs could augment microbial-mediated processes such as AS and AD. Further to this, wastewater components can enhance or attenuate ENPs effects. Meanwhile it is still difficult to determine effective doses and establish toxicological guidelines, which is in part due to variable wastewater composition and inadequacy of current analytical procedures. Challenges associated with toxicity evaluation and data interpretation highlight areas in need for further research studies