The Transition to a Low Carbon Economy: The Dynamics of Environmental Stakeholder Networks

The transition to a low carbon economy demands new strategies for maintaining competitiveness and benefiting from ‘green growth’. A network of stakeholders offers opportunities for, as well as constraints to, organisational growth and successful low carbon strategies. This multiple-case study explores the relational dynamics between the case organisations and a range of stakeholders. We find that stakeholders with institutional power bases are seen as the most influential. Top management is also a critical stakeholder in providing stewardship for the organisation’s low carbon initiatives. The study highlights the growing influence of customers upon the success of business strategies aimed at exploiting low carbon opportunities. Intra- and inter-organisational strategy-making practices are emergent arenas for stakeholder management in the context of the low carbon economy

Beam combining using Orientational Stimulated Scattering in Liquid Crystals

Possibility of beam combining and clean-up using Orientational Stimulated Scattering in a Nematic Liquid Crystal is considered. We numerically study the dynamics of the process and find that back-conversion process tends to limit the effective interaction strength. Instability of the steady state of cross-phase modulation is demonstrated, when both waves have the same frequency. We show that high conversion efficiency can be achieved, and that the shape and wave-front of the amplified output signal are robust with respect to amplitude and phase distortions of the input pump.Comment: 24 pages, 6 figures, will be published in JOSA

Understanding the customer journey through the prism of service design methodology.

Purpose: This chapter explores how use of the service design methodology can contribute to in-depth understanding of the customer journey and to the design of service improvement interventions aimed at enhancing customer experience. Context: The notion of customer journey is becoming increasingly important for both private and public sector organisations. Understanding customer experience and interactions that take place during service delivery is critical to the service design, delivery and improvements where the quality of customer experience take a strategic priority. Learning outcomes: At the end of this chapter you will be able to confidently use the service design methodology in order to understand customer experience, develop a service blueprint, design-in service improvements to enhance service user experience or redesign and reengineer existing services in order to respond to changes in organisational environment.N/

Environmental capability of SMEs: Capability building towards a low carbon economy.

The transition to a low carbon economy demands new strategies for maintaining competitiveness and benefiting from the ‘green’ growth. A study of the regional SMEs confirms that the main focus of the SMEs, when considering the sustainability and the carbon-reduction initiatives, is limited to a cost cutting. This paper argues for a broader remit of the sustainability initiatives at SMEs, including the environmental capability development in the areas of environmental management, access to green supply chains and eco-innovation. Such a growth-enabling and strategic approach at a firm and regional levels is vital for SMEs to take advantages presented by the green growth and the transition to a low carbon economy.N/

The student experience initiatives in higher education: an occupational perspective.

The student experience initiatives are firmly placed onto the strategic agenda for the majority of the UK higher education institutions. This study considers how the three main occupational groupings, namely: academics, manager-academics and non-academics, view the focus and the direction of the student experience initiatives in a context of a post-92 university. One of the similarities identified is a view of student experience initiatives as university responses to the increasing marketisation of higher education. A number of significant differences in relation to the ownership, focus and management of the initiatives are discussed. The study highlights the tensions emerging from the differences in the views of the occupational groupings studied. The implications for the management of the student experience initiatives in universities are developed outlining the need for a deeper understanding about the tensions amongst the various occupational groupings and the strengthening of the collaborative working practices in universities.N/

A typology of environmental capabilities of SMEs: uncovering capabilities for a transition towards sustainability.

The transition to a low carbon economy demands new business strategies for maintaining competitiveness, benefiting from and contributing towards the ‘clean’ growth. An ongoing study of the regional SMEs operating in the East Midlands reveals the patterns in which SMEs approach capability building towards sustainability. This developmental paper presents a conceptual view of how these patterns can be theorised and empirically tested further. The paper outlines a theoretical avenue aiming to further our understanding about environmental capabilities. The paper concludes with a number of practical recommendations towards developing environmental capabilities of SMEs in the context of a transition towards sustainability.N/

To the problem of word group classifications

There is no communication without syntax [1, p.146]. The most concrete syntactic unit is a word group. It was the subject matter of many linguistic investigations. Its structure, components and meanings have been studied. So there are a lot of approaches to the classification of word groups. In the report under consideration the attention is focused on the taxonomy of word groups according to the morphological expression of the adjunct

Other-initiated repair in Russian

This article describes the interactional patterns and linguistic structures associated with otherinitiated repair, as observed in a corpus of video-recorded conversations in Russian. In the discussion of various repair cases special attention is given to the modifications that the trouble source turn undergoes in response to an open versus a restricted repair initiation. Speakers often modify their problematic turn in multiple ways at ones when responding to an open repair initiation. They can alter the word order of the problematic turn, change prosodic contour of the utterance, omit redundant elements and add more specific ones. By contrast, restricted repair initiations usually receive specific repair solutions that target only one problem at a tim

Beyond Plastic. An exploration of potato peels as an alternative biomaterial to single-use conventional plastic.

More than 60% of plastic produced in recent decades has been discarded into the natural environment or landfills. At the same time, the major segments of overall plastic production are single-use items and packaging, which were designed to be disposed of immediately. Due to their small size and insufficient waste management, these items often leak from the collection systems into nature. As a means of addressing single-use plastic issues, bioplastics were introduced as a replacement for conventional plastics. However, many of these polymers do not biodegrade or require special conditions to fully degrade, which makes the degradation in the natural environment or landfills non-efficient. This thesis investigates and demonstrates the potential of potato peels as an alternative biomaterial to conventional plastics. As a general approach, this thesis employed a methodology that combined practice-led research and research-led practice within iteration cycles, in order to examine material properties and its processing methods. The primary tangible outcomes of the study were obtained through empirical research and material development; these include numerous material samples that represent different processing techniques, recipe variations, and operation complexity. The resulting application concept is presented as part of the material exploration. All of these research outcomes are further introduced as an open source knowledge. This study determined that potato peels are a potentially valuable raw resource, due to its low cost, abundance, and interesting material characteristics. Such biodegradable, compostable materials are the most appropriate in certain short-term applications, where biodegradability and compostability are among the core properties