Business Commons^™

Managing People And Technology: The Challenges In Csr And Energy Efficient Shipping, Momoko Kitada, Aykut Ölçer

Aykut Ölçer

This paper addresses the challenges of managers in the shipping industry to implement energy efficient measures in ship operations and their roles of managing both people and technology under the fulfilment of their corporate social responsibility (CSR). An increasing pressure on shipping companies to concern about marine environment, including energy efficiency, has led managers to consider CSR as their ethical business practices. It is an accepted norm that shipping is generally the most environmentally friendly mode of transport in terms of CO2 produced per ton nautical mile. Despite an extensive amount of research available to improve energy efficiency in shipping, …

Workshop | Body Worn Video Recorders: The Socio-Technical Implications Of Gathering Direct Evidence, Katina Michael, Alexander Hayes

Alexander Hayes Mr.

- From in-car video recording to body-worn video recording

- Exploring available technologies: how do they work, pros and cons

- Storing direct evidence in secure storage: factors to consider

- Citizens “shooting” back with POV tech – what are their rights?

- Crowdsourced sousveillance- harnessing public data for forensic profiling

- Police force policies and practices on the application of new media

The Handbook Of Manufacturing Industries In The World Economy

Jennifer Clark

Financing Asean Connectivity, Fauziah Zen, Michael Regan

Michael Regan

In line with the globalisation trend, it becomes inevitable for the South East Asian economies to prepare themselves to move towards the path of a more border-less and well-connected world. Evidence has shown that countries can gain a lot from internationalisation, especially from trade, knowledge and information exchanges, and flows of people and goods. One of the key targets of ASEAN in achieving a dynamic, vibrant, globally connected and strong region is to fully realise ASEAN Connectivity which consists of three pillars, namely, physical connectivity, people-to-people connectivity, and institutional connectivity. Physical connectivity is especially important because it is not only …

The Move From Protectionism To Outward-Looking Industrial Development: A Critical Juncture In Irish Industrial Policy?, Paul Donnelly, John Hogan

John Hogan

This paper utilises a new framework for examining critical junctures to help us understand whether the changes to Irish industrial policy at the end of the 1950s constituted a critical juncture, breaking cleanly with what came before, or were a continuation of policy pathways previously established. The framework is made up of three elements, which must be identified in sequence, for us to be able to declare a critical juncture. Irish industrial policy is examined here, as it constitutes a core tenet of wider economic policy.

Location-Allocation Planning Of Stockpiles For Effective Disaster Mitigation, Jomon Aliyas Paul, Govind Hariharan

Jomon Aliyas Paul

In the existing framework for receiving and allocating Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) assistance, there are three noticeable delays: the delay by the state in requesting federal assets, the delay in the federal process which releases assets only upon the declaration of a disaster and lastly the time it takes to reach supplies rapidly from the SNS stockpile to where it is needed. The most efficient disaster preparedness plan is one that addresses all three delays taking into account the unique nature of each disaster. In this paper, we propose appropriate changes to the existing framework to address the first two …

Reaching For The Brass Ring: The U.S. News & World Report Rankings And Competition, Ronald Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] The behavior of academic institutions, including the extent to which they collaborate on academic and nonacademic matters, is shaped by many factors. This paper focuses on one of these factors, the U.S. News & World Report (USNWR) annual ranking of the nation’s colleges and universities as undergraduate institutions, exploring how this ranking exacerbates the competitiveness among American higher education institutions. After presenting some evidence on the importance of the USNWR rankings to both public and private institutions at all levels along the selectivity spectrum, I describe how the rankings actually are calculated, then discuss how academic institutions alter their …

The 1995 Nrc Ratings Of Doctoral Programs: A Hedonic Model, Ronald Ehrenberg, Peter Hurst

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

We describe how one can use multivariate regression models and data collected by the National Research Council as part of its recent ranking of doctoral programs (Research-Doctorate Programs in the United States: Continuity and Change) to analyze how measures of program size, faculty seniority, faculty research productivity, and faculty productivity in producing doctoral degrees influence subjective ratings of doctoral programs in 35 academic fields. Using data for one of the fields, economics, we illustrate how university administrators can use the models to compute the impact of changing the number of faculty positions they allocate to the field on …

Advance Notice Provisions In Plant Closing Legislation: Do They Matter?, Ronald Ehrenberg, George Jakubson

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

This paper evaluates the cases for and against plant closing legislation. In spite of the growth of legislative efforts in the area, there has been surprisingly little effort devoted to analyzing what the effects are of existing plant closing legislation, of provisions in privately negotiated collective bargaining agreements that provide for advance notice in case of plant shutdowns and/or layoffs, and of voluntary employer provision of advance notice. The paper summarizes the results of previous research, and our own empirical analyses that used the January 1984 Bureau of Labor Statistics Survey of Displaced Workers, on the effects of advance notice …

Did Teachers’ Race And Verbal Ability Matter In The 1960’S? Coleman Revisited, Ronald Ehrenberg, Dominic Brewer

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Our paper reanalyzes data from the classic 1966 study Equality of Educational Opportunity, or Coleman Report. It addresses whether teacher characteristics, including race and verbal ability, influenced "synthetic gain scores" of students (mean test scores of upper grade students in a school minus mean test scores of lower grade students in a school), in the context of an econometric model that allows for the possibility that teacher characteristics in a school are endogenously determined. We find that verbal aptitude scores of teachers influenced synthetic gain scores for both black and white students. Verbal aptitude mattered as much for black teachers …

Generation X: Redefining The Norms Of The Academy, Ronald Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] The members of Generation X are the young faculty members of today and the immediate future. The panelists at this session of the conference were asked to discuss the effects of this generation on academic norms and institutional governance and the types of new models that may be emerging for academia as a result of them. More specifically, they were asked if the attitudes and loyalties of these young faculty members really do differ from that of the Baby Boom Generation, how their attitudes and behavior affect graduate programs, what academic institutions will need to do to attract the …

Unequal Progress: The Annual Report On The Economic Status Of The Profession 2002-03, Ronald Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] Most colleges and universities adopted budgets for the 2002-03 academic year in the spring and early summer of 2002. At that time, a pessimist might have cited several factors – negative rates of return from institutional endowments, a rising unemployment rate, an economic recession, and large increases in college and university enrollments, for example - to predict that faculty members would not see their earnings increase substantially in real terms in the coming year. The good news is that, overall and on average, the pessimists' worst fears proved incorrect. The bad news is that the overall aver-ages don't tell …

Unemployment Insurance, Duration Of Unemployment, And Subsequent Wage Gain, Ronald Ehrenberg, Ronald Oaxaca

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] In order to evaluate what the "optimal" level of UI benefits is, one must therefore first estimate the magnitude of the relationships between UI benefits levels and unemployed workers' durations of unemployment and post-unemployment wages. There have been several previous studies of the impact of UI benefits on duration of spells of unemployment, however none have been completely satisfactory methodologically. To our knowledge, there have been no previous studies of the system's impact on subsequent wage rates. We attempt to fill these gaps, utilizing data from the National Longitudinal Survey (NLS) to estimate both relationships. The plan of our …

Information Workers In The Academy: The Case Of Librarians And Archivists At The University Of Western Ontario, Melanie Mills

Melanie Mills

For much of its history, the organizational culture for academic librarians and archivists at The University of Western Ontario was primarily a culture of the practitioner. While librarians and archivists supported teaching, research and service at Western, they did not directly engage in it. As a result of grassroots efforts undertaken by members of Western’s academic community in the mid-2000s however, the potential contributions of information workers to the teaching, research and service mandate of University began to garner recognition. Born out of this collective awakening, a successful union drive and shortly thereafter an inaugural Collective Agreement for The University …

With Reckless Abandon: Haneef And Ul-Haque In Australia's 'War On Terror', Mark Rix

Mark Rix

This brief paper considers the political and social implications of the manner in which Australia has prosecuted the so-called ‘war on terror’. It does this by investigating relevant aspects of Australia’s anti-terrorism legislation and the performance of Australian security and law enforcement agencies, namely, the Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) and the Australian Federal Police (AFP). Focusing on the Haneef and Ul-Haque cases, the paper will consider how the political climate created by the former Federal Government’s legislative approach to the war on terror has influenced the performance of these organisations. By focusing on these two cases, the paper …

Library Sector Leadership: Bridging Theory And Practice, Melanie Mills, Charlotte Innerd

Melanie Mills

Explore the issue of leadership in libraries with one current student and one graduate of The University of Victoria's Professional Graduate Certificate in Library Sector Leadership. Looking specifically at Kouzes and Posner's 'Five Practices of Exemplary Leaders' and Quinn et al.'s 'Competing Values Framework', we hope to share our own discoveries and insights and add to the important discussion of leadership in Libraries.

Ssrn As An Initial Revolution In Academic Knowledge Aggregation And Dissemination, David Bray, Sascha Vitzthum, Benn Konsynski

Sascha Vitzthum

Within this paper we consider our results of using the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) over a period of 18 months to distribute our working papers to the research community. Our experiences have been quite positive, with SSRN serving as a platform both to inform our colleagues about our research as well as inform us about related research (through email and telephoned conversations of colleagues who discovered our paper on SSRN). We then discuss potential future directions for SSRN to consider, and how SSRN might well represent an initial revolution in 21st century academic knowledge aggregation and dissemination. Our paper …

Conteted Heritage In The Ancient City Of Peace, William Feighery

William Feighery

As the imperial capital of thirteen dynasties Xi’an, formerly known as Chang’an (eternal peace), houses a legacy of many of the most important periods of Chinese history and is one of the great archeological centers of the world. This legacy of political and cultural dominance places Xi’an at the forefront of debates on cultural heritage and its role in the evolution of China in the 21st century. Xi’an is currently under a triad of influences from processes of globalization, urban transition and domestic and international tourism. In recent decades and particularly since the dawn on the new millennium, the historic …

Towards Self-Organizing, Smart Business Networks: Let’S Create ‘Life’ From Inert Information, David Bray, Benn Konsynski

David A. Bray

We review three different theories that can inform how researchers can determine the performance of smart business networks, to include: (1) the Theory of Evolution, (2) the Knowledge-Based Theory of the Firm, and (3) research insights into computers and cognition. We suggest that each of these theories demonstrate that to be generally perceived as smart, an organism needs to be self-organizing, communicative, and tool-making. Consequentially, to determine the performance of a smart business network, we suggest that researchers need to determine the degree to which it is self-organizing, communicative, and tool-making. We then relate these findings to the Internet and …

What’S The Problem In Public Sector Workforce Recruitment? A Comparative Analysis Of The Public, Nonprofit, And Private Sectors., Brian Collins

Brian K. Collins

Public sector workforce recruitment is problematic, but the nature of that problem is not clearly defined. Workforce recruitment is essentially a matching problem that requires managers to recruit desired employees in available labor pools. This research asks whether sectoral differences and competition for labor affect whether public managers frame the major problem of workforce recruitment as the size, qualifications, or work ethic of the labor pool. Using survey data from about 2,300 managers from two US states, problem attributions are modeled using multinomial logit. The findings suggest that the public and nonprofit sectors find it more problematic to recruit qualified …

Pathologies Of Accountability: Icann And The Challenge Of “Multiple Accountabilities Disorder”, Jonathan Koppell

Jonathan GS Koppell

Accountability is a core concept of public administration, yet disagreement about its meaning is masked by consensus on its importance and desirability. This article proposes a five-part typology of accountability conceptions. Transparency, liability, controllability, responsibility, and responsiveness are defined as distinct dimensions of accountability, providing an improvement on the current state of conceptual fuzziness. The typology provides a vocabulary for the core argument: that conflicting expectations borne of disparate conceptions of accountability undermine organizational effectiveness. This phenomenon—labeled multiple accountabilities disorder— is illustrated with a case study. ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, is a nascent organization charged …

Hybrid Organizations And The Alignment Of Interests: The Case Of Fannie Mae And Freddie Mac, Jonathan Koppell

Jonathan GS Koppell

This article explores the political influence of government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs). Using Congress's overhaul of the regulatory infrastructure for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as a case study, the article presents two principal findings: (1) The characteristics that distinguish government-sponsored enterprises from traditional government agencies and private companies endow Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with unique political resources; and (2) the alignment of interest groups around Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is subject to strategic manipulation by the GSEs. A triangular model of this alignment is proposed and employed to analyze the legislative outcome. The case has implications for students of …