Adaptability, Transformation and Complex Changes in Namibia and Tanzania: Resilience and Innovation System Development in Local Communities

This thesis is a research about the recent complex spatial changes in Namibia and Tanzania and local communities’ capacity to cope with, adapt to and transform the unpredictability engaged to these processes. I scrutinise the concept of resilience and its potential application to explaining the development of local communities in Southern Africa when facing various social, economic and environmental changes. My research is based on three distinct but overlapping research questions: what are the main spatial changes and their impact on the study areas in Namibia and Tanzania? What are the adaptation, transformation and resilience processes of the studied local communities in Namibia and Tanzania? How are innovation systems developed, and what is their impact on the resilience of the studied local communities in Namibia and Tanzania? I use four ethnographic case studies concerning environmental change, global tourism and innovation system development in Namibia and Tanzania, as well as mixed-methodological approaches, to study these issues. The results of my empirical investigation demonstrate that the spatial changes in the localities within Namibia and Tanzania are unique, loose assemblages, a result of the complex, multisided, relational and evolutional development of human and non-human elements that do not necessarily have linear causalities. Several changes co-exist and are interconnected though uncertain and unstructured and, together with the multiple stressors related to poverty, have made communities more vulnerable to different changes. The communities’ adaptation and transformation measures have been mostly reactive, based on contingency and post hoc learning. Despite various anticipation techniques, coping measures, adaptive learning and self-organisation processes occurring in the localities, the local communities are constrained by their uneven power relationships within the larger assemblages. Thus, communities’ own opportunities to increase their resilience are limited without changing the relations in these multiform entities. Therefore, larger cooperation models are needed, like an innovation system, based on the interactions of different actors to foster cooperation, which require collaboration among and input from a diverse set of stakeholders to combine different sources of knowledge, innovation and learning. Accordingly, both Namibia and Tanzania are developing an innovation system as their key policy to foster transformation towards knowledge-based societies. Finally, the development of an innovation system needs novel bottom-up approaches to increase the resilience of local communities and embed it into local communities. Therefore, innovation policies in Namibia have emphasised the role of indigenous knowledge, and Tanzania has established the Living Lab network.

Development of business processes and sales reporting - Case recovered paper

The purpose of this research is to discover development points for business processes and sales reporting in the recovered paper sourcing organization. The processes under development are both sales and sourcing processes that were determined by the commissioning company. All of these processes have in common that there are used sales orders to organize the money flows correctly. Although the main objective is to source only recovered paper, the sourcing also brings by-products that cannot be utilized and are thus sold. As the purpose of the sales function is to only support the sourcing strategy, it should be organized as efficiently as possible. Investigating the current status of the processes and finding development points help in building proposals for enhanced process descriptions. In order that sales function could be analyzed, should the sales reporting be accurate and present the needed key figures. The current status of the processes as well as the possible problems and development ideas were researched with the help of interviews. Best practices could also be brought from other business lines in the commissioning company. The theory part was build according to relevant literature and scientific articles. The research indicates, that processes have shaped differently in sourcing organization’s business units. Local infrastructure and legislation sets certain limitations to the sourcing of recovered paper, and these circumstances cannot be changed. Customer-supplier power relations also affect to the formulation of business processes. In order to steer the processes, there has to be more internal controls. Still, the enterprise resource planning system also sets boundaries how the processes can be made more efficient.