Benefits management : lost or found in translation

It is now about 25 years since the emergence of Benefits Management (BM), but hitherto it has had limited impact on project management and even less on general management practices. This is despite evidence that a focus on benefits improves the success rate of projects and programmes. One of the areas for research to explain the limited uptake concerns the spread of knowledge on BM and its adoption by organisations. The theoretical lens of translation is used to examine this issue, which focuses on the processes through which management ideas spread and influence management practice. The global development of BM is traced to identify the changes in translation processes over time and the current geographical patterns of usage. This analysis is used in conjunction with the limited evidence available on translation processes at the level of the organisation to identify key factors for the impact of BM in the future

Deweyan Naturalism: A Critique of Epistemic Reductionism

This thesis articulates a critique of scientific naturalism from the perspective of John Dewey. Scientific naturalism can be defined by two explicit, metaphysical commitments, one ontological and one epistemological. Implicit to these commitments is a further commitment concerning the nature of human experience. This understanding of human experience can be described as epistemic reductionism because it reduces the whole of experience and all empiricism to epistemology. Scientific naturalism is the orthodox position for most contemporary, Anglo-American philosophy. Many philosophers within this tradition are dissatisfied with scientific naturalism and attempt to critique scientific naturalism from the perspective of "liberal" naturalism. One major objection from the liberal perspective concerns the ontology and placement of moral qualities: where are moral qualities to be placed in a scientifically naturalistic ontology? However, due to the fact that liberal naturalists share with scientific naturalists a commitment to an epistemically reductionistic understanding of the nature of human experience, liberal naturalism fails to adequately address the placement problem

A unified view of benefits management/benefits realization management to be integrated into PMI standards

This is a funded research to develop a unified definition of benefits management. It is funded by PMI

Late-spring and summertime tropospheric ozone and NO2 in western Siberia and the Russian Arctic : regional model evaluation and sensitivities

We use a regional chemistry transport model (Weather Research and Forecasting model coupled with chemistry, WRF-Chem) in conjunction with surface observations of tropospheric ozone and Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) satellite retrievals of tropospheric column NO2 to evaluate processes controlling the regional distribution of tropospheric ozone over western Siberia for late spring and summer in 2011. This region hosts a range of anthropogenic and natural ozone precursor sources, and it serves as a gateway for near-surface transport of Eurasian pollution to the Arctic. However, there is a severe lack of in situ observations to constrain tropospheric ozone sources and sinks in the region. We show widespread negative bias in WRF-Chem tropospheric column NO2 when compared to OMI satellite observations from May-August, which is reduced when using ECLIPSE (Evaluating the Climate and Air Quality Impacts of Short-Lived Pollutants) v5a emissions (fractional mean bias (FMB) = -0.82 to -0.73) compared with the EDGAR (Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research)-HTAP (Hemispheric Transport of Air Pollution) v2.2 emissions data (FMB = -0.80 to -0.70). Despite the large negative bias, the spatial correlations between model and observed NO2 columns suggest that the spatial pattern of NOx sources in the region is well represented. Scaling trans-port and energy emissions in the ECLIPSE v5a inventory by a factor of 2 reduces column NO2 bias (FMB = -0.66 to -0.35), but with overestimates in some urban regions and little change to a persistent underestimate in background regions. Based on the scaled ECLIPSE v5a emissions, we assess the influence of the two dominant anthropogenic emission sectors (transport and energy) and vegetation fires on surface NOx and ozone over Siberia and the Russian Arctic. Our results suggest regional ozone is more sensitive to anthropogenic emissions, particularly from the transport sector, and the contribution from fire emissions maximises in June and is largely confined to latitudes south of 60 degrees N. Ozone dry deposition fluxes from the model simulations show that the dominant ozone dry deposition sink in the region is to forest vegetation, averaging 8.0 Tg of ozone per month, peaking at 10.3 Tg of ozone deposition during June. The impact of fires on ozone dry deposition within the domain is small compared to anthropogenic emissions and is negligible north of 60 degrees N. Overall, our results suggest that surface ozone in the region is controlled by an interplay between seasonality in atmospheric transport patterns, vegetation dry deposition, and a dominance of transport and energy sector emissions.Peer reviewe

The development and validation of the Healthy Computing Questionnaire for Children (HCQC)

BACKGROUND: School children may be at risk of physical health problems associated with desktop, laptop and tablet computer use. There are some interventions designed to educate children about ergonomic practices when using computers. A common limitation of past intervention studies has been the lack of a valid and reliable questionnaire to determine effectiveness of the intervention. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to develop a valid and reliable self-report measure to assess primary school children’s knowledge, attitudes and behaviours related to healthy computer use. METHODS: A mixed methods approach was used to develop the questionnaire and test its psychometric properties. A convenience sample of 440 primary school children in Year 5 (aged 9–11 years) was used in the development and validation of the questionnaire. RESULTS: The final questionnaire comprised 56 items across the three subscales of knowledge, attitudes and behaviour. The questionnaire was shown to have good content validity and adequate test-retest reliability. Internal consistency was adequate for the attitude items, but low for the knowledge items. CONCLUSIONS: This study produced a valid and reliable tool, using a health promotion framework, for measuring primary school children’s knowledge, attitudes and behaviours related to healthy computing