Resolving future fire management conflicts using multicriteria decision making

Management strategies to reduce the risks to human life and property from wildfire commonly involve burning native vegetation. However, planned burning can conflict with other societal objectives such as human health and biodiversity conservation. These conflicts are likely to intensify as fire regimes change under future climates and as growing human populations encroach farther into fire-prone ecosystems. Decisions about managing fire risks are therefore complex and warrant more sophisticated approaches than are typically used. We applied a multicriteria decision making approach (MCDA) with the potential to improve fire management outcomes to the case of a highly populated, biodiverse, and flammable wildland-urban interface. We considered the effects of 22 planned burning options on 8 objectives: house protection, maximizing water quality, minimizing carbon emissions and impacts on human health, and minimizing declines of 5 distinct species types. The MCDA identified a small number of management options (burning forest adjacent to houses) that performed well for most objectives, but not for one species type (arboreal mammal) or for water quality. Although MCDA made the conflict between objectives explicit, resolution of the problem depended on the weighting assigned to each objective. Additive weighting of criteria traded off the arboreal mammal and water quality objectives for other objectives. Multiplicative weighting identified scenarios that avoided poor outcomes for any objective, which is important for avoiding potentially irreversible biodiversity losses. To distinguish reliably among management options, future work should focus on reducing uncertainty in outcomes across a range of objectives. Considering management actions that have more predictable outcomes than landscape fuel management will be important. We found that, where data were adequate, an MCDA can support decision making in the complex and often conflicted area of fire management.

Conflicts at the bottom of the pyramid: profitability, poverty alleviation, and neoliberal governmentality

This article adopts the concept of neoliberal governmentality to critically analyze public policy failures in a bottom-of-the-pyramid (BOP) marketing initiative. This research shows that e-Choupal, an Indian BOP initiative, is hampered by a divide between poverty alleviation and profit seeking, which is inadequately reconciled by the neoliberal government policies that dominate contemporary India. The initiative sounds good, even noble, but becomes mired in divergent discourses and practices that ultimately fail to help the poor whom it targets. This research helps explicate the problems with BOP policy interventions that encourage profit seeking as a way to alleviate poverty.

Segregation-of-duties conflicts in the insider threat landscape: an overview and case study

Many insider attacks originate from misuse of privileges granted by organizations to their internal employees, contractors or third-party service providers. A fundamental means of ensuring that conflicts of privilege cannot occur is to segregate role allocations in order to ensure that no individual can perform a task from beginning to end. In this paper, we provide background on insider attacks in connection with conflicts in Segregation of Duties, and present the current strategies for preventing and detecting such conflicts. To illustrate how a conflict can occur and what can result, we present an in-depth case study demonstrating a conflict in Segregation of Dutiesin an organization, along with the consequent fraud, and we discuss how it might have been prevented.

Managing intragroup conflicts in construction project teams : case studies in Sri Lanka

Conflict is intrinsic to individuals, teams and organisations. Due to the unique and complex nature with various parties, conflict is inevitable in most construction projects. According to the general management literature, three distinct types of intragroup conflicts can be identified: task, process and relationship conflicts. However, very little consideration has been given in the literature addressing the three types individually in a construction project team setting. Therefore, this study has explored the existence of types of intragroup conflicts and their management in this context. This research was approached through case studies of six construction projects, which were operating under the traditional procurement method in Sri Lanka. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with three distinct participants from each team. The findings revealed that both process and relationship conflicts offer disruptive effects to construction projects and teams, while task conflicts offer positive effects when they exist at low levels. Based on the most critical sources identified within the cases, suggestions are offered here to construction project team managers on how to manage intergroup conflicts proactively. Since the research is based on six case studies on traditional procurement arrangement in Sri Lanka, further research is required to generalise the findings across different contexts.