Theorizing construction industry practice within a disaster risk reduction setting: is it a panacea or an illusion?

Construction industry practice is strongly influenced by the culture surrounding its operations and, with the prevailing emphasis on achieving efficiency, there is a strong focus on outcome metrics such as profitability and employee productivity. With the recent increases in natural hazard events worldwide, and the likelihood that this will worsen still further with anticipated climate changes, the industry is increasingly contributing to building resilience within disaster-affected communities. Existing industry expertise, its educational approaches and the related theoretical frameworks, however, all require adjustment if these changing needs are to be fully addressed. Most importantly, an agenda shift is required from the philosophical side and a more pragmatic approach is needed if community resilience goals and objectives are to be met, rather than the narrower focus of the current metrics-driven management system. A synthesis of the current literature is therefore presented, along with relevant case histories illustrating how such an agenda shift within a disaster management context may influence the development of appropriate theory, as well as impacting upon grass-roots educational requirements. The research concludes by discussing how the ‘mainstreaming’ of disaster management within construction industry practice could drive forward developments in theorizing expertise and educational provisions across the constituent discipline

Comparing national home-keeping and the regulation of translational stem cell applications: an international perspective

A very large grey area exists between translational stem cell research and applications that comply with the ideals of randomised control trials and good laboratory and clinical practice and what is often referred to as snake-oil trade. We identify a discrepancy between international research and ethics regulation and the ways in which regulatory instruments in the stem cell field are developed in practice. We examine this discrepancy using the notion of ‘national home-keeping’, referring to the way governments articulate international standards and regulation with conflicting demands on local players at home. Identifying particular dimensions of regulatory tools – authority, permissions, space and acceleration – as crucial to national home-keeping in Asia, Europe and the USA, we show how local regulation works to enable development of the field, notwithstanding international (i.e. principally ‘western’) regulation. Triangulating regulation with empirical data and archival research between 2012 and 2015 has helped us to shed light on how countries and organisations adapt and resist internationally dominant regulation through the manipulation of regulatory tools (contingent upon country size, the state's ability to accumulate resources, healthcare demands, established traditions of scientific governance, and economic and scientific ambitions)