Negotiating a turnkey system: The vendor's viewpoint

My talk today will be from the viewpoint of a business manager responsible for product development, product marketing and product service, while at the same time meeting established goals for profitability. It is not my intention to give a highly technical or legalistic presentation. First, I am not qualified to do so, and second, you are more likely to benefit from understanding the general concepts involved in contracting and leaving the legal details to counsel.published or submitted for publicatio

Horizontal Inequalities and Ethnonationalist Civil War: A Global Comparison

Contemporary research on civil war has largely dismissed the role of political and economic grievances, focusing instead on opportunities for conflict. However, these strong claims rest on questionable theoretical and empirical grounds. Whereas scholars have examined primarily the relationship between individual inequality and conflict, we argue that horizontal inequalities between politically relevant ethnic groups and states at large can promote ethnonationalist conflict. Extending the empirical scope to the entire world, this article introduces a new spatial method that combines our newly geocoded data on ethnic groups’ settlement areas with spatial wealth estimates. Based on these methodological advances, we find that, in highly unequal societies, both rich and poor groups fight more often than those groups whose wealth lies closer to the country average. Our results remain robust to a number of alternative sample definitions and specifications.</jats:p

Beacons of Excellence in Stress Prevention

NoThis report describes the work of Robertson Cooper Ltd and UMIST to identify good practice in stress prevention and then identify organisations within the UK that could be called beacons of excellence in comparison to this model. Part one of this report summarises and draws conclusions from all of the substantive academic studies on stress prevention over the last decade and uses this information, as well as advice gained from a panel of international experts, to develop a comprehensive stress prevention model. Part two of the report uses this model to describe examples of stress prevention practices that Robertson Cooper Ltd has identified within a wide range of UK organisations. Case studies are presented for each aspect of the good practice model. Examples of real documentation and organisational practice are presented.Health and Safety Executive (HSE

Limits of Liberation: Youth and Politics in Brazil\u27s Landless Rural Workers\u27 Movement

This thesis examines the forces that strengthen and weaken young people’s involvement in Brazil’s Landless Rural Workers’ Movement, the MST, during the twilight of the PT years, 2012-2014. The MST responds to displacement, environmental devastation, and capital- intensive development by fighting for land reform and socialist transformation. Although the MST’s politics of redistribution have attracted significant attention from activists and academics worldwide, little ethnographic attention had yet been paid to the experiences and subjectivities of rural youth affiliated with the movement. By attending to structural conditions, dynamics of family, sexuality, and gender, and political socialization in three regions of Brazil, this study deepens understandings of youth and agrarian change, as well as the challenges of sustaining intergenerational activism. Bringing scholarly attention to such innovative examples is important, as the future of food and farming depends on the willingness of youth to engage in agriculture as a cultural way of life. Moreover, given the increasingly regressive, authoritarian, and exclusionary national politics that are deepening inequalities and unraveling social protections in Brazil; ethnographic analysis of how political alternatives are generated and sustained by youth, is crucial to understanding emerging inclusionary political projects in Latin America

The Effects of Positive and Negative Environmental Responsibility on Financial Performance

As environmental responsibility (ER) gains momentum in the corporate and stakeholder world, it is imperative to understand the relationship between ER and financial performance. While there is prior research looking at this relationship, this study provides further insight into the specific effects of negative and positive ER. In addition, it looks over the years 2008-2011 having implications for companies about the effects of their ER even through financial hardships. This study uses a widely respected corporate social responsibility database, in which ER scores were separated from. In this study, 287 firms in the S&P 500 are examined through times-series regression analyses. The results reveal that positive ER had a negative relationship with financial performance indicators Tobin’s q and ROA. However, negative ER had such strong positive relationship with financial performance in both measures, that when looking at the effect of net ER, the relationship was tipped back to positive. This indicates that negative ER worsens a company’s financial position more than spending on positive ER initiatives

Innovative Pollutant Load Monitoring

Modern streamflow measuring equipment, water quality sampling techniques and a better understanding of pollutant washoff are continuously being developed as today\u27s society is in critical need of improving water management, minimizing developmental impacts and preventing environmental hazards. In particular, the study of the spatial, temporal and volumetric characteristics of annual pollutant loading caused by variations in precipitation, land use and other anthropogenic factors is of great significance due to their relation to future global water demands. The research presented here falls in three parts. In the first part of the dissertation, an acoustical Doppler velocity profiler installed in a submerged concrete channel is proposed to continually measure the annual fluctuation in streamflow levels down to dry channel conditions. The tailwater influenced, intermittent streamflow conditions for the City of Kissimmee, Florida were selected for the evaluation of this approach under a 3-year study from 2006 to 2008. The performance of these concrete channels were systematically evaluated by comparisons with established field measurement techniques over various stream configurations and flow conditions. The second part of this research investigates the dynamics of flood wave detection with respect to enabling an automatic water quality sampler to start collecting samples. The main focus was on the accurate detection of flood waves in the absence of rainfall and the presence of fluctuating baseflows and stream stages. In the 3-year study, it was shown that a dual parameter trigger, utilizing independent measuring equipment, resulted in accurate flood wave detection with minimal false triggering of the autosampler. In addition, an incremental or percent deviation from a moving average of stage or flow proved to be a more consistent indicator for the presence of a flood wave. In the third part of this work, the frequency of water quality sampling and the associated level of detail for sampling of rainfall events were investigated with respect to accurately depicting annual pollutant loads. It was found that the seasonal variations in baseflow pollutant loads are not accurately represented by current 4-quarter grab sampling. Also, significant pollutant loading within rainfall events may not be captured by only performing grab sampling during baseflow conditions. In addition, although increased pollutant concentrations were observed within the initial 30 minutes of the flood wave, their actual loadings did not represent a significant impact on the annual pollutant loads. A biweekly grab sampling frequency was found to be adequate in many cases to depict the annual pollutant loads, but depending upon the targeted constituent and particular streamflow condition, rainfall event sampling might also be necessary. The results of this research complemented with other studies will promote better understanding of intermittent streamflows, accurate flood wave detection, and assessment of annual pollutant loads to our nation\u27s waterbodies