Transport, health and climate change: Deciding on the optimal policy

Transport generates many externalities, some related to atmospheric pollution. In this paper, we focus on two: greenhouse gases, and local pollution. In the search for optimal transport policies, these two externalities have usually been analysed separately. Here, we study them jointly, in a sequential decision-making model. Our model allows for the irreversibility of the policies undertaken, as well as the possibility of a progressive reduction of uncertainties with the arrival of information. We find that when both sources of externalities are analysed jointly, structural measures enabling private transport requirements to be reduced are identified as being more advantageous economically than technological measures to reduce emissions of pollutants. We illustrate the usefulness of a joint analysis of externalities with two examples: tax measures on cars and housing policy.climate change; model of decision-making under uncertainty; irreversibilities; transport policy

Transport, health and global warming: Deciding on the optimal policy

International audienceTransport generates many externalities, some related to atmospheric pollution. In this paper, we focus on two: greenhouse gases, and local pollution. In the search for optimal transport policies, these two externalities have usually been analysed separately. Here, we study them jointly, in a sequential decision-making model. Our model allows for the irreversibility of the policies undertaken, as well as the possibility of a progressive reduction of uncertainties with the arrival of information. We find that when both sources of externalities are analysed jointly, structural measures enabling private transport requirements to be reduced are identified as being more advantageous economically than technological measures to reduce emissions of pollutants. We illustrate the usefulness of a joint analysis of externalities with two examples: tax measures on cars and housing policy

Transport, health and global warming: Deciding on the optimal policy

Transport generates many externalities, some related to atmospheric pollution. In this paper, we focus on two: greenhouse gases, and local pollution. In the search for optimal transport policies, these two externalities have usually been analysed separately. Here, we study them jointly, in a sequential decision-making model. Our model allows for the irreversibility of the policies undertaken, as well as the possibility of a progressive reduction of uncertainties with the arrival of information. We find that when both sources of externalities are analysed jointly, structural measures enabling private transport requirements to be reduced are identified as being more advantageous economically than technological measures to reduce emissions of pollutants. We illustrate the usefulness of a joint analysis of externalities with two examples: tax measures on cars and housing policy.

Beyond borders:charting the changing global reinsurance landscape

This report presents the full results from a two-phase study commissioned by the IICI, looking at the London, Bermuda, Continental European and Asia Pacific reinsurance markets from the perspective of cedents, reinsurers and brokers. An interim report from Phase 1 was released at Monte Carlo in 2010

When decision support systems fail: insights for strategic information systems from Formula

Decision support systems (DSS) are sophisticated tools that increasingly take advantage of big data and are used to design and implement individual - and organization - level strategic decisions . Yet, when organizations excessively rely on their potential the outcome may be decision - making failure, particularly when such tools are applied under high pressure and turbulent conditions. Partial understanding and unidimensional interpretation can prevent learning from failure. Building on a practice perspective, we study an iconic case of strategic failure in Formula 1 racing. Our approach, which integrates the decision maker as well as the organizational and material context , identifies three interrelated sources of strategic failure that are worth investigation for decision - makers using DSS and big data: (1) t he situated nature and affordances of decision - making ; (2) t he distributed nature of cognition in decision - making; and (3) the performativity of the DSS. We outline specific research questions and their implications for firm performance and competitive advantage. Finally, we advance an agenda that can help close timely gaps in strategic IS research

Are individuals more risk and ambiguity averse in a group environment or alone? Results from an experimental study

Most decision-making research in economics focuses on individual decisions. Yet, we know, from psychological research in particular, that individual preferences can be sensitive to social pressures. In this paper, we study the impact of a group environment on individual preferences for risky (i.e., known probabilities) and ambiguous (i.e., unknown probabilities) prospects. In our experiment, each participant was invited to make a series of lottery-choice decisions in two different conditions. In the Alone condition, individuals made private choices, whereas in the Group condition, individuals belonged to a three-person group and group members' choices were aggregated according to either a majority or unanimity rule. This design allows us to study the impact of a group environment on individuals' attitude towards both risky and ambiguous prospects, while controlling for the decision rule used in the group. Our experimental results show that when individuals are in the Group condition, they tend to be less risk averse and more ambiguity averse than when they are not part of a group (Alone condition). Our experiment also suggests that the decision rule matters as it shows that these two trends tend to be stronger when the group implements a unanimity rule. Specifically, we found that individuals who belong to a group implementing a unanimity rule are significantly less risk averse than individuals who belong to a group that relies on the majority rule. We obtained a similar-but non-significant-result under ambiguity

Supporting alternative organizations? Exploring scholars’ involvement in the performativity of worker-recuperated enterprises

This article analyses the role of academics in the production and maintenance of alternative organizations within the capitalist system. Empirically, we focus on academics from the University of Buenos Aires who, through the extension programme Facultad Abierta, have supported worker-recuperated enterprises since their emergence in Argentina in the early 2000s. Conceptually, we build on prior studies on worker-recuperated enterprises as well as the ‘critical performativity’ concept that we define as scholars’ subversive interventions that can involve the production of new subjectivities, the constitution of new organizational models and/or the bridging of these models to current social movements. Our results uncover the multiple roles of academics in relation to these three facets and highlight the key interactions of these roles. In so doing, our analysis advances prior studies of worker-recuperated enterprises by clarifying how academics can support alternative organizations while offering a renewed conceptualization of critical performativity as a multifaceted process through which academics and workers interact

Acting Intuition into Sense: How Film Crews Make Sense with Embodied Ways of Knowing

This study contributes to a holistic understanding of sensemaking by going beyond the mind–body dualism. To do so, we focus analytically on a phenomenon that operates at the nexus of mind and body: intuition. By observing four film crews, we unpack how people act their intuition into sense – that is, how they transform, through action, an initial sense (intuition) that is tacit, intimate, and complex into one that is publicly displayed, simpler, and ordered (i.e., a developed sense). Our model identifies two sensemaking trajectories, each of which involves several bodily actions (e.g., displaying feelings, working hands-on, speaking assertively). These actions enable intuition to express a facet of itself and acquire new properties. This study makes three important contributions. First, it develops the holistic-relational character of sensemaking by locating it in the relations among multiple loci (cognition, language, body, and materiality) rather than in each one disjunctively. Second, it theorizes embodied sensemaking as a transformative process entailing a rich repertoire of bodily actions. Third, it extends sensemaking research by attending to the physicality and materiality of language in embodied sensemaking

How do things become strategic? ‘Strategifying’ corporate social responsibility

How do things become ‘strategic’? Despite the development of strategy-as-practice studies and the recognized institutional importance of strategy as a social practice, little is known about how strategy boundaries change within organizations. This article focuses on this gap by conceptualizing ‘strategifying’ – or making something strategic – as a type of institutional work that builds on the institution of strategy to change the boundaries of what is regarded as strategy within organizations. We empirically investigate how corporate social responsibility has been turned into strategy at a UK electricity company, EnergyCorp. Our findings reveal the practices that constitute three types of strategifying work – cognitive coupling, relational coupling and material coupling – and show how, together and over time, these types of work changed the boundaries of strategy so that corporate social responsibility became included in EnergyCorp’s official strategy, became explicitly attended to by strategists and corporate executives and became inscribed within strategy devices. By disambiguating the notions of strategifying and strategizing, our study introduces new perspectives for analysing the institutional implications of the practice of strategy