Value creation in capital waterway projects: Application of a transaction cost and transaction benefit framework for the Miami River and the New Orleans Inner Harbour Navigation Canal

Waterways have many more ties with society than as a medium for the transportation of goods alone. Waterway systems offer society many kinds of socio-economic value. Waterway authorities responsible for management and (re)development need to optimize the public benefits for the investments made. However, due to the many trade-offs in the system these agencies have multiple options for achieving this goal. Because they can invest resources in a great many different ways, they need a way to calculate the efficiency of the decisions they make. Transaction cost theory, and the analysis that goes with it, has emerged as an important means of justifying efficiency decisions in the economic arena. To improve our understanding of the value-creating and coordination problems for waterway authorities, such a framework is applied to this sector. This paper describes the findings for two cases, which reflect two common multi trade-off situations for waterway (re)development. Our first case study focuses on the Miami River, an urban revitalized waterway. The second case describes the Inner Harbour Navigation Canal in New Orleans, a canal and lock in an industrialized zone, in need of an upgrade to keep pace with market developments. The transaction cost framework appears to be useful in exposing a wide variety of value-creating opportunities and the resistances that come with it. These insights can offer infrastructure managers guidance on how to seize these opportunities.

Social Media Strategies in the Retail Sector: Analysis and Recommendations for Three Multi-National Retailers

During the last twenty years (1995-2015), the world of commerce has expanded beyond the traditional brick-and-mortar high street to a global shop front accessible to billions of users via the Worldwide Web (WWW). Consumers are now using the web to immerse themselves in virtual shop fronts, using Social Media (SM) to communicate and share product ideas with friends and family. Retail organisations recognise the need to develop and adapt their strategies to respond to the increasing use of SM. New goals must be set in order to identify how companies will integrate social media into current practices. This research aims to suggest an advisable and comprehensive SM strategy for companies operating in the global retail sector, based on an exploratory analysis of three multi-national retail organisations' existing SM strategies. This will be assessed in conjunction with a broader investigation into social media in the retail industry. From this, a strategy will be devised to improve internal and external communication as well as knowledge management through the use of social media. Findings suggest that the use of SM within the retail industry has dramatically improved collaboration and communication processes for organisations as they are now able to converse better with stakeholders and the tools are relatively simple to integrate and implement as they benefit one another.

Controller Time and Delay Costs - a Trade-off Analysis

Air traffic controller shortages remain a significant challenge in European ATM. Comparing different rules, we quantify the cost effectiveness of adding controller hours to Area Control Centre regulations to avert the delay cost impact on airlines. Typically, adding controller hours results in a net benefit. Distributions of delay duration and aircraft weight play an important role in determining the total cost of a regulation. Errors are likely to be incurred when analysing performance based on average delay values, particularly at the disaggregate level.