The Quest for Well-being in Growth Industries: Contexts, Research Design and Methodological Development

This Working Paper reports the background to the first stage of the ongoing research project, The Quest for Well-being in Growth Industries: A Collaborative Study in Finland and Scotland, conducted under the auspices of the Academy of Finland research programme The Future of Work and Well-being (2008-2011). This collaborative project provides national and transnational data, analysis and outputs. The study is being conducted in the Department of Management and Organisation, Hanken School of Economics, Finland, in collaboration with Glasgow Caledonian University, University of East London, Heriot-Watt University and Reading University, UK. The project examines policies and practices towards the enhancement of work-related well-being in growth industries, and contradictory pressures and tensions posed in this situation. The overall aim is to evaluate the development, implementation and use of work-related well-being policies in four selected growth industries. These sectors – electronics, care, finance and accounting, and tourism – have been selected on the basis of European Union and national forecasts, and demographic and socio-economic trends in employment. In this working paper we outline the background to the research study, the initial research plan, and how the survey of employers has been constructed. The working paper concludes with a brief discussion of general ongoing research issues arising in the project.

Inventory Routing - A Strategic Management Accounting Perspective

This dissertation develops a strategic management accounting perspective of inventory routing. The thesis studies the drivers of cost efficiency gains by identifying the role of the underlying cost structure, demand, information sharing, forecasting accuracy, service levels, vehicle fleet, planning horizon and other strategic factors as well as the interaction effects among these factors with respect to performance outcomes. The task is to enhance the knowledge of the strategic situations that favor the implementation of inventory routing systems, understanding cause-and-effect relationships, linkages and gaining a holistic view of the value proposition of inventory routing. The thesis applies an exploratory case study design, which is based on normative quantitative empirical research using optimization, simulation and factor analysis. Data and results are drawn from a real world application to cash supply chains. The first research paper shows that performance gains require a common cost component and cannot be explained by simple linear or affine cost structures. Inventory management and distribution decisions become separable in the absence of a set-dependent cost structure, and neither economies of scope nor coordination problems are present in this case. The second research paper analyzes whether information sharing improves the overall forecasting accuracy. Analysis suggests that the potential for information sharing is limited to coordination of replenishments and that central information do not yield more accurate forecasts based on joint forecasting. The third research paper develops a novel formulation of the stochastic inventory routing model that accounts for minimal service levels and forecasting accuracy. The developed model allows studying the interaction of minimal service levels and forecasting accuracy with the underlying cost structure in inventory routing. Interestingly, results show that the factors minimal service level and forecasting accuracy are not statistically significant, and subsequently not relevant for the strategic decision problem to introduce inventory routing, or in other words, to effectively internalize inventory management and distribution decisions at the supplier. Consequently the main contribution of this thesis is the result that cost benefits of inventory routing are derived from the joint decision model that accounts for the underlying set-dependent cost structure rather than the level of information sharing. This result suggests that the value of information sharing of demand and inventory data is likely to be overstated in prior literature. In other words, cost benefits of inventory routing are primarily determined by the cost structure (i.e. level of fixed costs and transportation costs) rather than the level of information sharing, joint forecasting, forecasting accuracy or service levels.

An Axiom of Military Law : Applicability of National Criminal Law to Military Personnel and Associated Civilians Abroad

States regularly deploy elements of their armed forces abroad. When that happens, the military personnel concerned largely remain governed by the penal law of the State that they serve. This extraterritorial extension of national criminal law, which has been treated as axiomatic in domestic law and ignored by international law scholarship, is the subject of this dissertation. The first part of the study considers the ambit of national criminal law without any special regard to the armed forces. It explores the historical development of the currently prevailing system of territorial law and looks at the ambit that national legal systems claim today. Turning then to international law, the study debunks the oddly persistent belief that States enjoy a freedom to extend their laws to extraterritorial conduct as they please, and that they are in this respect constrained only by some specific prohibitions in international law. Six arguments historical, empirical, ideological, functional, doctrinal and systemic are advanced to support a contrary view: that States are prohibited from extending the reach of their legal systems abroad, unless they can rely on a permissive principle of international law for doing so. The second part of the study deals specifically with State jurisdiction in a military context, that is to say, as applied to military personnel in the strict sense (service members) and various civilians serving with or accompanying the forces (associated civilians). While the status of armed forces on foreign soil has transformed from one encapsulated in the customary concept of extraterritoriality to a modern regulation of immunities granted by treaties, elements of armed forces located abroad usually do enjoy some degree of insulation from the legal system of the host State. As a corollary, they should generally remain covered by the law of their own State. The extent of this extraterritorial extension of national law is revealed in a comparative review of national legislation, paying particular attention to recent legal reforms in the United States and the United Kingdom two states that have sought to extend the scope of their national law to cover the conduct of military contractor personnel. The principal argument of the dissertation is that applying national criminal law to service members and associated civilians abroad is distinct from other extraterritorial claims of jurisdiction (in particular, the nationality principle or the protective principle of jurisdiction). The service jurisdiction over the armed forces has a distinct aim: ensuring the coherence and indivisibility of the forces and maintaining discipline. Furthermore, the exercise of service jurisdiction seeks to reduce the chances of the State itself becoming internationally liable for the conduct of its service members and associated civilians. Critically, the legal system of the troop-deploying State, by extending its reach abroad, seeks to avoid accountability gaps that might result from immunities from host State law.

The Quest for Well-being in Growth Industries 2: The Survey

This working paper reports the ongoing research conducted in the research project, The Quest for Well-being in Growth Industries: A Collaborative Study in Finland and Scotland, under the auspices of Academy of Finland research programme, The Future of Work and Well-being. The research project examines the contradictory pressures for policies and practices towards both the inhibition and the enhancement of work-related well-being that are likely in growth industries. The overall aim is to evaluate the development, implementation and use of work-related well-being policies in four selected growth industries. These – electronics, care, finance and accounting, and tourism – have been selected on the basis of EU and national forecasts, and demographic and socio-economic trends in standard and non-standard employment. In this paper we aim to review the survey that constitutes the second main phase of this research.

Policy evaluations for U.S. federal timber sale accounting system development.

XVIII IUFRO World Congress, Ljubljana 1986.

The Tourism-Development Nexus in Namibia : A Study on National Tourism Policy and Local Tourism Enterprises' Policy Knowledge

The tourism development nexus in southern Africa involves highly topical issues related to tourism planning, power relations, community participation, and natural resources. Namibia offers a particularly interesting context for the study of these issues due to its colonial legacy, vast tourism potential, recently adopted tourism policy and community-based approaches to tourism and natural resource management. This study is an interdisciplinary endeavour to analyse the role of tourism in Namibia s post-apartheid transformation process by focusing on Namibian tourism policy and local tourism enterprises' policy knowledge. Major attention is paid to how the tourism policy's national development objectives are understood and conceptualised by the representatives of different tourism enterprises and the ways in which they relate to the practical needs of the enterprises. Through such local policy knowledge the study explores various opportunities, challenges and constraints related to the promotion of tourism as a development strategy. The study utilises a political economy approach to tourism and development through three current and interrelated discourses which are relevant in the Namibian context. These are tourism, power and inequality, tourism and sustainable development, and tourism and poverty reduction. The qualitative research material was gathered in Namibia in 2006-2007 and 2008. This material consists of 34 semi-structured interviews in 16 tourism enterprises, including private trophy hunting farms and private lodges, small tour operators and community-based tourism enterprises. In addition, the research material consists of observations in the enterprises, and 37 informal and 23 expert interviews. The findings indicate that in the light of local tourism enterprises the tourism policy objectives appear more complex and ambiguous. Furthermore, they involve multiple meanings and interpretations which reflect the socio-economic stratification of the informants and Namibian society, together with the professional stratification of the tourism enterprises and restrictions on the capacity of tourism to address the development objectives. In the light of such findings it is obvious that aspects of power and inequality affect the tourism development nexus in Namibia. The study concludes that, as in the case of other southern African countries, in order to promote sustainable development and reduce poverty, Namibia should not only target tourism growth but pay attention to who benefits from that growth and how. From a political economy point of view, it is important that prevailing structural challenges are addressed equally in the planning of tourism, development and natural resource management. Such approach would help the Namibian majority to enjoy the benefits of increasing tourism in the country.

Whose ETSIP? National and local ownership of Namibia's education and training sector improvement programme

Tämä työ tarkastelee kansallista ja paikallista omistajuutta Namibian opetussektorin kehittämisohjelmassa. Opetussektorin kehittämisohjelma ETSIP on 15-vuotinen sektoriohjelma vuosille 2005-2015 ja sen tavoitteena on edesauttaa Namibian kehittymistä tietoyhteiskunnaksi. Tutkimuksen tarkoituksena on selvittää miten kansallinen ja paikallinen omistajuus on toteutunut ETSIP prosessin aikana. Erityisesti pyritään selvittämään paikallistason opetussektorin virkamiesten näkemyksiä ETSIP prosessista, heidän roolistaan siinä ja siitä millaisia vaikuttamisen ja hallinnan mahdollisuuksia heillä on ollut prosessin aikana. Tutkimuksen lähtökohta on laadullinen ja lähestymistapa konstruktionistinen: tutkimus tarkastelee todellisuutta ihmisten kokemusten, näkemysten ja toiminnan kautta. Tutkimusaineisto koostuu haastatteluista, epävirallisista keskusteluista, lehtiartikkeleista ja ETSIP dokumenteista. Tutkimus osoittaa että kansallinen omistajuus on epämääräinen käsite sillä kansallisia toimijoita ja näkemyksiä on useita. Tutkimus vahvistaa Castel-Brancon huomion siitä, että omistajuutta on tarkasteltava kontekstissaan: muuttuvana ja kilpailtuna. ETSIPin rinnalle ollaan valmistelemassa uutta strategista ohjelmaa opetusministeriölle mikä saattaa muuttaa omistajuutta ETSIPiin. ETSIP dokumenttien omistajuusretoriikka myötäilee kansainvälisiä sitoumuksia avun vaikuttavuuden parantamiseksi mutta niistä puuttuu syvällisempi analyysi siitä, miten kansallinen ja paikallinen omistajuus toteutuisi käytännössä. Avunantajien näkemys omistajuudesta on suppea: omistajuus nähdään lähinnä sitoutumisena ennalta määrättyyn politiikkaohjelmaan. Haastatteluaineistosta nousee esiin Whitfieldin ja Frazerin jaottelu suppeista ja laajoista omistajuuskäsityksistä. Sitoutumista ETSIP ohjelmaan pidetään tärkeänä mutta riittämättömänä määritteenä omistajuudelle. Paikallisella tasolla sitoutuminen ETSIP ohjelman periaatteisiin ja tavoitteisiin on toteutunut melko hyvin mutta jos omistajuutta tarkastellaan laajemmin vaikutusvallan ja hallinnan käsitteiden kautta voidaan todeta että omistajuus on ollut heikkoa. Paikallisella tasolla ei ole ollut juurikaan vaikutusvaltaa ETSIP ohjelman sisältöön eikä mahdollisuutta hallita ohjelman toteutusta ja päättää siitä mitä hankkeita ohjelman kautta rahoitetaan. Tujanin demokraattisen omistajuuden käsite kuvaa tarvetta muuttaa ja laajentaa omistajuusajattelua huomioiden paikallisen tason paremmin. Tämä tutkimus viittaa siihen että omistajuuden toteutuminen paikallisella tasolla edellyttäisi institutionaalisen kulttuurin muutosta ja institutionaalisen legitimiteetin vahvistamista. Omistajuuden mahdollistamiseksi paikallisella tasolla tarvittaisiin poliittista johtajuutta, luottamusta, vastuullisuuden kulttuurin kehittämistä, tehokkaampaa tiedonjakoa, laajaa osallistumista, vuoropuhelua ja yhteistyötä. Ennen kaikkea tarvittaisiin paikallisen tason vaikutusvaltaa päätöksenteossa ja kontrollia resurssien käytöstä. Tälle muutokselle on selvä tarve ja tilaus.

Nature of chemistry in the national frame curricula for upper secondary education in Finland, Norway and Sweden

The aim of this study was to discover how current chemistry syllabi in the frame curricula for up- per secondary education in three Nordic countries (Finland, Norway, and Sweden) take into account topics related to the nature of chemistry. By qualitative content analysis, the statements related to the nature of chemistry were divided into categories. Conclusions and implications for improving the frame curricula under study were made by comparing results with research into the nature of science. Chemistry syllabi from the Nordic frame curricula analyzed take into account the aims related to the nature of chemistry in a very similar manner. The ideas that should be made more explicit in all of the analyzed curricula are: i) the limits of the chemical models and theories, ii) the relationship between chemistry and other natural sciences, iii) the importance of creativity in chemical research, iv) the concepts of evidence in science texts, v) the social nature of chemical research, and vi) chemistry as a technological practice.