Ties and Tiers: Decentralisation and Ethno-Communal Mobilisation in Post-Suharto Indonesia

Decentralisation of governance responsibilities to sub-national authorities has been one of the most significant trends in state-reform since the 1980s. Debate continues, however, regarding the consequences of the expansion of local/district government for ethno-communal relations. This study develops a strategic-relational theory of decentralisation and ethno-communal voter mobilisation, testing it in relation to electoral processes in two ethno-religiously diverse districts in Indonesia. It finds that in the context of city or district politics, outcomes of voter mobilisation can only be accounted for via the interaction between institutional incentives and candidates’ mobilisation of diverse personal, group and associational ties. This study has implications for analysing and theorising the impacts of decentralisation- especially the expansion of local and district government- upon patterns of ethno-communal mobilisation in other ethnically and religiously diverse societies undergoing transitions to democratic rule

Knowledge management within a multinational knowledge led company

The semiconductor industry relies on knowledge sharing and collaboration between its employees and amongst subsidiary companies to remain competitive in an ever changing, market driven environment. Practise has changed from workers supplying labour to workers supplying knowledge. Technology improvements and investment in automation have provided companies the platform to generate, codify, harness and exploit knowledge as a means of improving organisational performance. This research explores knowledge dynamics in the organisation and specifically looks at knowledge sharing within a subsidiary and among subsidiaries in a multinational corporation. The corporation in question operates its manufacturing facilities as competing business units. The purpose of the research was to establish if this method of organising business units provides the overall corporation with a competitive advantage, or if competing business units inhibits performance preventing or restricting the potential for a competitive advantage for the corporation. To determine how knowledge is shared within the organisation a series of semi-structured interviews were conducted. Senior managers and professional staff across a number of disciplines were interviewed. Knowledge sharing within functional area departments, collaboration between functional area departments, knowledge systems and compliance to knowledge systems were used as determinants to establish the extent of the knowledge dynamic in the subsidiary. The relationship between knowledge sharing and how it impacted the “bottom line” performance of the subsidiary was also considered in an attempt to quantify the impact knowledge sharing has on performance. To determine how knowledge is shared between subsidiaries, two case studies were conducted. The first case study involved a benchmarking visit to allow two of the corporation’s subsidiaries to compare best practice cost systems with multi-disciplines involved. The second case study involved a cross functional team of technical staff to define a manufacturing facility technical yield roadmap. Significant cost, productivity and yield improvement at the site was attributed to the success of collaborative units established at site. Establishing collaborative units was a precursor to setting up a network within the site to promote knowledge sharing in the organisation. The site was cognisant of the impact of effective knowledge sharing and receptive to sharing knowledge on an informal or formal basis. The site put great stock in codified knowledge and invested heavily in automating knowledge based systems. Many barriers to knowledge sharing were identified including compliance to codified procedures, departmental conflicts, viewing knowledge sharing as a burden, variation across automated systems, conflicts caused by the internet as a knowledge source and logistics due to geographical dispersion. Knowledge-led teams overcame many of these barriers. Success bred success to the extent knowledge sharing has become a business process in the organisation. Knowledge sharing is a two way process. It can be a vehicle for trust, respect and improvement. This research has shown knowledge sharing even within competing business units can produce a competitive advantage. An organisation is an accumulation of knowledge. A knowledge-led collaborative approach provides many benefits: it will advance the company, engage staff at all levels and favourably impact the “bottom line”. Knowledge management differentiated the local site from other corporate subsidiaries with the local site demonstrating “best in class” results on its key performance indicators. Encouragingly, there is ample opportunity to improve performance further once knowledge management is fully embedded as a business process across the organisation

Health System Performance for the High-Need Patient: A Look at Access to Care and Patient Care Experiences

Achieving a high-performing health system will require improving outcomes and reducing costs for high-need, high-cost patients—those who use the most health care services and account for a disproportionately large share of health care spending. Goal: To compare the health care experiences of adults with high needs—those with three or more chronic diseases and a functional limitation in the ability to care for themselves or perform routine daily tasks—to all adults and to those with multiple chronic diseases but no functional limitations. Methods: Analysis of data from the 2009–2011 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey. Key findings: High-need adults were more likely to report having an unmet medical need and less likely to report having good patient–provider communication. High-need adults reported roughly similar ease of obtaining specialist referrals as other adults and greater likelihood of having a medical home. While adults with private health insurance reported the fewest unmet needs overall, privately insured highneed adults reported the greatest difficulties having their needs met. Conclusion: The health care system needs to work better for the highest-need, most-complex patients. This study's findings highlight the importance of tailoring interventions to address their need

Application of wireless technologies to forward predict crop yields in the poultry production chain

Average bird weight is the primary measure of crop yield and is the basis for calculating payment for the grower by the wholesaler. Furthermore the profit per bird is very small. Thus very tight control of growing process is essential to ensure average bird weight is maximised. The important factors (air temperature, air humidity, Carbon Dioxide concentration and Ammonia concentration) that affect the intake of feed and water must be kept at their optimum during the progress of the growing cycle. These factors can be influenced by activating burners and opening the vents on walls of the growing house. It then follows that the burning and venting strategy will be influential on the average bird weight of the crop. Currently the burning and venting strategy is based on notional ideal levels and data from wall mounted sensors. This suffers from two fundamental problems; firstly the strategy is determined by ideals that may not be suitable for all growing houses and secondly the data is not measured from the chickens own airspace. Thus the management strategy is based on a model that may not reflect reality and on data that may not reflect reality  The “BOSCA” project addresses these problems by placing wireless environmental sensors into the chickens own airspace. This provides for direct measurement of the air experienced by the chickens and reports the recorded data in near real-time to a cloud based data management system. The sensor data is merged with the data from the growing house weighing scales in the cloud repository so a predictive model of average bird weight from the measured environmental data can be calibrated and validated. Furthermore, a timeshift can be applied to the environmental data during model calibration and validation so the average bird weight can be forward predicted by 72 hours (r2 up to 0.89 with neural networks). This gives the grower advance notice of a deviation from ideal feeding and watering conditions and the likely consequences of failing to take remedial action such as turning on the burners or venting the house

Observation of a meteotsunami on the south coast of Ireland

At 1440 utc (1540 local time) on Saturday 18 June 2022, when low tide had passed and the tide was due to rise, the water drained from the harbours of Union Hall and nearby Courtmacsherry on the south coast of Ireland (see Figure 1a). Eyewitnesses captured the event on video,1 with observers remarking that it reminded them of reports of the tide receding ahead of the tsunami in Japan in 2011. The event was captured by the Irish Marine Institute’s tide gauge in Union Hall, which recorded a drop in water level of 70cm in 5min. Compared to the normal ebb and flow of tides of ~1cm per minute, this was a dramatic event. The event impacted most of the Irish south coast, from Castletownbere to Dunmore East and onwards to Britain, with reports of unusual tidal behaviour in Pembrokeshire in South Wales (see Sibley, 2022, this issue)

A noisy-input generalised additive model for relative sea-level change along the Atlantic coast of North America

We propose a Bayesian, noisy-input, spatial-temporal generalised additive model to examine regional relative sea-level (RSL) changes over time. The model provides probabilistic estimates of component drivers of regional RSL change via the combination of a univariate spline capturing a common regional signal over time, random slopes and intercepts capturing site-specific (local), long-term linear trends and a spatial-temporal spline capturing residual, non-linear, local variations. Proxy and instrumental records of RSL and corresponding measurement errors inform the model and a noisy-input method accounts for proxy temporal uncertainties. Results focus on the decomposition of RSL over the past 3000 years along the Atlantic coast of North America

One Step Beyond: Is the Public Sector Ready to Let Go of Budgeting?

There have been numerous attempts at reforming public sector budgeting in recent years, with most of these attempting to improve efficiency and effectiveness by switching emphasis from inputs to outputs and outcomes. However, proponents of Beyond Budgeting claim the problems associated with traditional budgeting systems are such that the solution is not to reform budgeting, but to abandon it in its traditional form entirely, advocating the need for a more flexible approach based on the principals of devolved managerial responsibility and adaptive management process. Before attempting to implement such a fundamental change in approach it is necessary to determine firstly, whether the organisation is dissatisfied with the current budget system, secondly, the extent to which the organisation is currently working according to beyond budgeting principles or has the structures and systems capable of supporting the beyond budgeting philosophy, and finally, the extent to which the organisation would be in a position to satisfy the preconditions needed for the successful implementation of beyond budgeting. The focus of this study is to review the current position of a sample of Irish Local Authorities in respect of these three questions. The research targeted twenty two senior and front line managers in three different types of authority using data gathered in the field by means of a structured questionnaire and a series of semistructured interviews administered in tandem. The results suggest considerable dissatisfaction with the current budget process suggesting that it is time consuming , out of touch with reality and largely incremental , but indicate that the structures and systems currently in place in this area of the public sector are not yet conducive to the introduction of an approach based on Beyond Budgeting principals. The research indicates that the biggest obstacle to the introduction of these changes may be a lack of commitment to change and the unwillingness of management and in particular, the finance function, to loosen central control over the budget process