Toward a Critical Understanding of the World/Global City Paradigm

In the last few decades, “the city” has emerged as an important entity in our understanding of contemporary globalization, both as a place and as a discourse. As a place, it has become critical in shaping the contours of the world economy leading to a renewed importance of “global cities.” The city (“world/global city”) has also become an important site of discourse. The “world/global city paradigm” has not only become a hegemonic academic discourse, but also a critical policy tool that directs and justifies restructuring of urban space in the global South. Through a synthesis of recent literature on urbanism in the US and the global South, this paper attempts to critically understand the “world/global city paradigm” and its rise within particular socio-historical contexts in the global North. Further, the paper examines the “paradigm’s” effectiveness in understanding urbanism in the South. The paper argues that given the specific contexts within which these urban discourses emerge, they are unable to critically address unique geometries of power and inequality and how they shape urbanism in the South. The paper concludes by offering some alternatives for a culturally and historically rooted analysis of urbanism

Connections and Disconnections: The Making of Bombay/Mumbai as India’s “Global City”

Scholarly literature on “global cities” has been criticized for ignoring the long-term historical context within which cities articulate the relationship between the global and the local. Employing a longue durée globalization perspective, this paper historicizes the unequal and uneven nature of contemporary urban development in Mumbai, India’s “global city.” The paper uses two analytical frames: the “port city” and the “colonial city” to highlight two essential dimensions of Mumbai’s contemporary transformation of interconnectedness and segmentation based on unequal power

A systems thinking approach for modelling supply chain risk propagation

Supply Chain Risk Management (SCRM) is rapidly becoming a most sought after research area due to the influence of recent supply chain disruptions on global economy. The thesis begins with a systematic literature review of the developments within the broad domain of SCRM over the past decade. Thematic and descriptive analysis supported with modern knowledge management techniques brings forward seven distinctive research gaps for future research in SCRM. Overlapping research findings from an industry perspective, coupled with SCRM research gaps from the systematic literature review has helped to define the research problem for this study. The thesis focuses on a holistic and systematic approach to modelling risks within supply chain and logistics networks. The systems thinking approach followed conceptualises the phenomenon of risk propagation utilising several recent case studies, workshop findings and focus studies. Risk propagation is multidimensional and propagates beyond goods, finance and information resource. It cascades into technology, human resource and socio-ecological dimensions. Three risk propagation zones are identified that build the fundamentals for modelling risk behaviour in terms of cost and delay. The development of a structured framework for SCRM, a holistic supply chain risk model and a quantitative research design for risk assessment are the major contributions of this research. The developed risk assessment platform has the ability to capture the fracture points and cascading impact within a supply chain and logistics network. A reputed aerospace and defence organisation in UK was used to test the experimental modelling set up for its viability and for bridging the gap between theory and practice. The combined statistical and simulation modelling approach provides a new perspective to assessing the complex behavioural performance of risks during multiple interactions within network

Analysis of autopsies conducted for deaths due to accidental trauma: a ten years record-based study

Background: Trauma is a largely preventable cause of death. Trauma can be avoided and death can be averted if timely medical services are made available. Hence it is important to know the causes of trauma, the factors associated with it and the types of fatal injuries associated with these causes.Methods: A ten years record based study of the autopsies conducted in the Forensic Medicine department of a rapidly growing metropolitan area was undertaken from the autopsy registers and post mortem records.Results: It was noted that the young age groups of 16 to 30 years and 31 to 40 years are most vulnerable. Major cause of trauma was road traffic accidents, followed by fall from height. Other causes are Rail accidents, domestic accidents, building collapse and industrial accidents. Head injuries and shock with hemorrhage are the major causes of death due to trauma.Conclusions: Overall, males and younger population forms a major proportion of trauma victims. Among female victims the major causes of trauma were domestic accidents and house collapse and among male victims road traffic accidents, fall from height and railway accidents were major causes

Electrochemical Characterization of Cathodized Copper Oxide Thin Films

Cathodic electrodeposited copper oxide thin films were prepared using 0.1 M aqueous (distilled water) copper sulfate solution onto the surface of stainless steel substrates. Deposited samples were characterized by structural and morphological analysis using XRD and SeM. Prepared samples were also analyzed using cyclic voltammetry, charge-discharge, and impedance spectroscopy. electrode shows nearly rectangular capacitive behavior. The highest specific capacitance of 62 F/gm was calculated at a scan rate of 1 mV/sec in 1M Na2SO4 electrolyte. The internal resistance observed from the Nyquist plot which is about 1.95 Ω. Using the ZsimpWin software matched equivalent circuit and circuitry parameters were reported

Devising an economical water purification unit using bio-adsorbent

Number of techniques are available to purify water, it include reduction, precipitation, ion exchange, electrochemical reduction and reverse osmosis. Most of them involve high capital costs with recurring expenses, which are not suitable for small-scale industries. Bio-technique has attracted the attention due to its effectiveness and environmentally benign nature. In bio techniques, agro wastes may be the potential sources for producing bio-adsorbents, which can be used for improving the quality of west water. Banana peel and Orange peel are also used as adsorbents for purification of water. Using natural resources upto it’s extend and making water palatable and is the need of the hour specially in developing and underdeveloped counties. Present work emphasizes use of banana peel as bio adsorbent in water purification unit. The designed water purification unit shows remarkable result in limits of purification of water

Managing risks in next generation supply chains: a systems approach

Supply chain risk management follows three basic processes to manage supply chain risks: Identify, Assess and Mitigate. This paper considers a systems perspective towards managing these risks. It presents variables that may affect Next Generation Supply Chains and applies a System dynamics modelling approach (Oehmen, et. al. 2009) towards depicting the causal linkages of these variables with future supply disruptions. To understand the interdependencies within these factors and the risk propagation on account of these factors it was decided to adopt a systems perspective. This perspective is based upon application of a causal loop diagram which considers the interdependencies between the factors affecting next-generation supply chains. The causal linkages between the variables are then highlighted with regards to the supply chain process and the nodes, and the causes of future risks are identified

An integrated Bayesian-Markovian framework for ascertaining cost of executing quality improvement programs in manufacturing industry

Purpose Typically, the budgetary requirements for executing a supplier’s process quality improvement program are often done in unstructured ways in that quality improvement managers purely use their previous experiences and pertinent historical information. In this backdrop, the purpose of this paper is to ascertain the expected cost of carrying out suppliers’ process quality improvement programs that are driven by original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). Design/methodology/approach Using inputs from experts who had prior experience executing suppliers’ quality improvement programs and employing the Bayesian theory, transition probabilities to various quality levels from an initial quality level are ascertained. Thereafter, the Markov chain concept enables the authors to determine steady-state probabilities. These steady-state probabilities in conjunction with quality level cost coefficients yield the expected cost of quality improvement programs. Findings The novel method devised in this research is a key contribution of the work. Furthermore, various implications related to experts’ inputs, dynamics related to Markov chain, etc., are discussed. The method is illustrated using a real life of automotive industry in India. Originality/value The research contributes to the extant literature in that a new method of determining the expected cost of quality improvement is proposed. Furthermore, the method would be of value to OEMs and suppliers wherein the quality levels at a given time are the function of quality levels in preceding period(s)