China’s dash for gas : local challenges and global consequences

The recent 2017–18 “dash for gas” captured global attention, but also exposed critical failings in China’s gas market. The 2019 lull imposed by the Government reflects the need to address local challenges. This paper analyzes the prospects for demand growth and assesses the various ways in which that demand can be met. There is considerable uncertainty surrounding demand growth, with cost competitiveness being the determining factor. Equally, although China has significant natural gas reserves, they are largely unconventional and present significant geological and technical challenges; with domestic production growth failing to keep pace as demand import dependence increases. China’s gas imports are met by pipeline gas from Central Asia and Myanmar and Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) from avariety of countries. The Power of Siberia pipeline started deliveries of Russian in late 2019. However, plans to expand Central Asian imports have disappointed and China may agree to asecond pipeline from Russia or increase its LNG imports. Asimple “gas balance model” is used in the final discussion and conclusions to explore future developments and their consequences for global gas security

An investigation into the application of QFD in ecommerce

As the nature of business has changed over the last 50 years, with a shift away from manufacturing towards service sector industries, quality management has changed with it. Traditional quality management tools, such as quality function deployment (QFD), which were originally developed within manufacturing, have since become popular in assessing quality in the delivery of a service. Although recent research has highlighted the difference between physical service delivery and service delivery in e-commerce (Parasuraman et al., 2005; Barnes and Vigden, 2002, 2005), there is little documented evidence of these techniques being applied to e-commerce. This study has developed this research further, ultimately demonstrating how organisations can adapt traditional quality management tools to measure quality and guide improvement efforts in an e-commerce environment

Unconventional trade-offs? National oil companies, foreign investment and oil and gas development in Argentina and Brazil

These are turbulent and uncertain times for the global oil and gas industry. This paper examines the industry's emerging new political economy in terms of competition (or a trade-off) both between and within International Oil Companies (IOCs) for rival oil and gas prospects. A qualitative cross-case analysis of Argentinian shale and Brazilian deep-water finds that unconventional and deep-water projects are complementary rather than competing assets of an IOC's portfolio. Further, despite the technical challenges IOCs face in developing these reserves, it is the non-technical risks and uncertainties that are more pressing for these companies and are the greater inhibitors to investment

Use of web mining in studying innovation

As enterprises expand and post increasing information about their business activities on their websites, website data promises to be a valuable source for investigating innovation. This article examines the practicalities and effectiveness of web mining as a research method for innovation studies. We use web mining to explore the R&D activities of 296 UK-based green goods small and mid-size enterprises. We find that website data offers additional insights when compared with other traditional unobtrusive research methods, such as patent and publication analysis. We examine the strengths and limitations of enterprise innovation web mining in terms of a wide range of data quality dimensions, including accuracy, completeness, currency, quantity, flexibility and accessibility. We observe that far more companies in our sample report undertaking R&D activities on their web sites than would be suggested by looking only at conventional data sources. While traditional methods offer information about the early phases of R&D and invention through publications and patents, web mining offers insights that are more downstream in the innovation process. Handling website data is not as easy as alternative data sources, and care needs to be taken in executing search strategies. Website information is also self-reported and companies may vary in their motivations for posting (or not posting) information about their activities on websites. Nonetheless, we find that web mining is a significant and useful complement to current methods, as well as offering novel insights not easily obtained from other unobtrusive sources

The development of an e-commerce failure mode and effects analysis

In the last 50 years, the nature of business has changed, with a shift firstly from manufacturing towards service sector industries, and again more recently towards e-commerce. Traditional quality management techniques, such as failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA), although developed in manufacturing, have since proved effective and popular in measuring quality in the physical delivery of a service. There is, however, little research into the application of such techniques in e-commerce. Parasuraman et al. (2005) highlighted the differences between physical service delivery and online service delivery, resulting in the e-SERVQUAL scale of customer requirements. This study has developed this research further into a practical tool for organisations to measure quality and guide improvement efforts in an e-commerce environment