Diversity and local democracy. The case of Republic of Macedonia - implications of ethnic diversity on municipal decision making and organizational performance

This research seeks to review the level of knowledge achieved in interpreting the relationship between the ethnic diversity at the workplace in the public sector and the organizational performance; as well as seeks to contribute in understanding the implications of this relationship. The study commenced with investigating the academic research in the relevant area addressing the following research questions: (a) How are diversity management and organizational performance conceptualized? (b) What are the existing findings of research concerning diversity at the workplace in the public organizations and organizational performance? (c) What factors intervene the relationship between the diversity and organizational performance? Based on the findings from the review of the academic research, this study seeks to contribute in understanding the ethnic diversity – performance relationship and its mplications at the local level in the Macedonian context. The reform process in Macedonia as a multicultural society, where for many years, inter-ethnic relations have been one of the most sensitive political issues, affecting both the stability of the country and the progress, focused mainly on the implementation of the decentralization and inclusion of ethnic minorities in the decision making process. With the implementation of the Ohrid Framework Agreement workforce at the units of local self-government in Republic of Macedonia is becoming more balanced with respect to ethnic minorities, with more workforce participation than ever by Albanians, Turks, Roma and other minorities. As public organizations at local level become more diverse along ethnic lines, it makes sense to pay more attention to how different ethnic groups interact with one another at work. Thus it gives additional importance on the research question addressed in the study and gives significance of the research in a broader scope.

Life Cycle Assessment of Peach Nectar: a comparative analysis between conventional and bioenergy-from-waste integrated food chains

Modern food systems are characterized by a high energy intensity as well as by the production of large amounts of waste, residuals and food losses. This inefficiency presents major consequences, in terms of GHG emissions, waste disposal, and natural resource depletion. The research hypothesis is that residual biomass material could contribute to the energetic needs of food systems, if recovered as an integrated renewable energy source (RES), leading to a sensitive reduction of the impacts of food systems, primarily in terms of fossil fuel consumption and GHG emissions. In order to assess these effects, a comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) has been conducted to compare two different food systems: a fossil fuel-based system and an integrated system with the use of residual as RES for self-consumption. The food product under analysis has been the peach nectar, from cultivation to end-of-life. The aim of this LCA is twofold. On one hand, it allows an evaluation of the energy inefficiencies related to agro-food waste. On the other hand, it illustrates how the integration of bioenergy into food systems could effectively contribute to reduce this inefficiency. Data about inputs and waste generated has been collected mainly through literature review and databases. Energy balance, GHG emissions (Global Warming Potential) and waste generation have been analyzed in order to identify the relative requirements and contribution of the different segments. An evaluation of the energy “loss” through the different categories of waste allowed to provide details about the consequences associated with its management and/or disposal. Results should provide an insight of the impacts associated with inefficiencies within food systems. The comparison provides a measure of the potential reuse of wasted biomass and the amount of energy recoverable, that could represent a first step for the formulation of specific policies on the integration of bioenergies for self-consumption.

The Right to Voice: Its Realization by Estonian and American Parents in Public Schools

Investigating parents’ formal engagement opportunities in public schools serves well to characterize the relationship between states and societies. While the relationship between parental involvement and students’ academic success has been thoroughly investigated, rarely has it been seen to indicate countries’ governing regimes. The researcher was curious to see whether and how does parents’ voice differ in different democracies. The hypothesis was that in mature regimes, institutional opportunities for formal parental engagement are plenty and parents are actively involved; while in young democracies there are less opportunities and the engagement is lower. The assumption was also that parental deliberation in expressing their dissatisfaction with schools differs across democracies: where it is more intense, there it translates to higher engagement. Parents’ informedness on relevant regulations and agendas was assumed to be equally average, and their demographic background to have similar effects on engagement. The comparative, most different systems design was employed where public middle schools last graders’ parents in Tartu, Estonia and in Huntsville, Alabama the United States served as a sample. The multidimensional study includes the theoretical review, country and community analyses, institutional analysis in terms of formal parental involvement, and parents’ survey. The findings revealed sizeable differences between parents’ engagement levels in Huntsville and Tartu. The results indicate passivity in both communities, while in Tartu the engagement seems to be alarmingly low. Furthermore, Tartu parents have much less institutional opportunities to engage. In the United States, multilevel efforts to engage parents are visible from local to federal level, in Estonia similar intentions seem to be missing and meaningful parental organizations do not exist. In terms of civic education there is much room for development in both countries. The road will be longer for a young democracy Estonia in transforming its institutional systems from formally democratic to inherently inclusive.

Labour, LGBT* rights, and Europe. Discourses in Italy and Serbia

At the time of writing, all three elements that are evoked in the title – emancipation and social inclusion of sexual minorities, labour and labour activism, and the idea and substance of “Europe” – are being invested by deep, long-term, and – to varied degrees – radical processes of social transformation. The meaning of words like “equality”, “rights”, “inclusion”, and even “democracy” is as precarious and uncertain as are the lives of those European citizens who are marginalised by intersecting conditions of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and class – in a constellation of precarities that is both unifying and fragmented (fragmenting). Conflicts are played, in hidden or explicit ways, over material processes of redistribution as well as discursive practices that revolve around these words. Against this backdrop, and roughly ten years after the European Union provided an input for institutional commitment to the protection of LGBT* workers' rights with the Council Directive 2000/78/EC, the dissertation contrasts discourses on workplace equality for LGBT* persons produced by a plurality of actors, seeking to identify values, semantics, and agendas framing and informing organisations’ views and showing how each actor has incorporated LGBT* rights into its own discourse, each time in a way that is functional to the construction and/or confirmation of its organisational identity: transnational union networks, by presenting LGBT* rights as a natural, neutral commitment within the framework of universal human rights protection; left-wing organisations, by collocating activism for LGBT* rights within a wider project of social emancipation that is for all the marginalised, yet is not neutral, but attached to specific values and opposed to specific political adversaries (the right-wing, the nationalists); business networks, by acknowledging diversity as a path to better performance and profits, thus encouraging inclusion and non-discrimination of “deserving” LGBT* workers.

Building Peace and/or Gender Equality. Changing Attitudes around Peace, Development and Security in International Cooperation in Rwanda.

The times following international or civil conflicts but also violent revolutions often come with unequal share of the peace dividend for men and women. Delusions for women who gained freedom of movement and of roles during conflict but had to step back during reconstruction and peace have been recorded in all regions of the world. The emergence of peacebuilding as a modality for the international community to ensure peace and security has slowly incorporated gender sensitivity at the level of legal and policy instruments. Focusing on Rwanda, a country that has obtained significant gender advancement in the years after the genocide while also obtaining to not relapse into conflict, this research explores to what extent the international community has contributed to this transformation. From a review of evaluations, findings are that many of the interventions did not purse gender equality, and overall the majority understood gender and designed actions is a quite superficial way which would hardly account for the significative advancement in combating gender discrimination that the Government, for its inner political will, is conducting. Then, after a critique from a feminist standpoint to the concept of human security, departing from the assumption (sustained by the Governemnt of Rwanda as well) that domestic violence is a variable influencing level of security relevant at the national level, a review of available secondary data on GBV is conducted an trends over the years analysed. The emerging trends signal a steep increase in prevalence of GBV and in domestic violence in particular. Although no conclusive interpretation can be formulated on these data, there are elements suggesting the increase might be due to augmented reporting. The research concludes outlining possible further research pathways to better understand the link in Rwanda between the changing gender norms and the GBV.

Conflict affected peoples’ access to education: IDP pupils in Georgia

This work seeks to understand what kind of impact educational policies have had on the secondary school students among internally displaced persons (IDPs) and their identity reconstruction in Georgia. The study offers a snapshot of the current situation based on desk study and interviews conducted among a sample of secondary school IDP pupils. In the final chapter, the findings will be reflected against the broader political context in Georgia and beyond. The study is interdisciplinary and its methodology is based on social identity theory. I shall compare two groups of IDPs who were displaced as a result of two separate conflicts. The IDPs displaced as a result of conflict in Abkhazia in 1992–1994 are named as old caseload IDPs. The second group of IDPs were displaced after a conflict in South Ossetia in 2008. Additionally, I shall touch upon the situation of the pupils among the returnees, a group of Georgian old caseload IDPs, who have spontaneously returned to de facto Abkhazia. According to the interviews, the secondary school student IDPs identify themselves strongly with the Georgian state, but their group identities are less prevailing. Particularly the old case load IDP students are fully integrated in local communities. Moreover, there seems not to be any tangible bond between the old and new caseload IDP students. The schools have neither tried nor managed to preserve IDP identities which would, for instance, make political mobilisation likely along these lines. Right to education is a human right enshrined in a number of international conventions to which the IDPs are also entitled. Access to education or its denial has a deep impact on individual and societal development. Furthermore, education has a major role in (re)constructing personal as well as national identity.

Asset management of wastewater networks

Asset Management (AM) is a set of procedures operable at the strategic-tacticaloperational level, for the management of the physical asset’s performance, associated risks and costs within its whole life-cycle. AM combines the engineering, managerial and informatics points of view. In addition to internal drivers, AM is driven by the demands of customers (social pull) and regulators (environmental mandates and economic considerations). AM can follow either a top-down or a bottom-up approach. Considering rehabilitation planning at the bottom-up level, the main issue would be to rehabilitate the right pipe at the right time with the right technique. Finding the right pipe may be possible and practicable, but determining the timeliness of the rehabilitation and the choice of the techniques adopted to rehabilitate is a bit abstruse. It is a truism that rehabilitating an asset too early is unwise, just as doing it late may have entailed extra expenses en route, in addition to the cost of the exercise of rehabilitation per se. One is confronted with a typical ‘Hamlet-isque dilemma’ – ‘to repair or not to repair’; or put in another way, ‘to replace or not to replace’. The decision in this case is governed by three factors, not necessarily interrelated – quality of customer service, costs and budget in the life cycle of the asset in question. The goal of replacement planning is to find the juncture in the asset’s life cycle where the cost of replacement is balanced by the rising maintenance costs and the declining level of service. System maintenance aims at improving performance and maintaining the asset in good working condition for as long as possible. Effective planning is used to target maintenance activities to meet these goals and minimize costly exigencies. The main objective of this dissertation is to develop a process-model for asset replacement planning. The aim of the model is to determine the optimal pipe replacement year by comparing, temporally, the annual operating and maintenance costs of the existing asset and the annuity of the investment in a new equivalent pipe, at the best market price. It is proposed that risk cost provide an appropriate framework to decide the balance between investment for replacing or operational expenditures for maintaining an asset. The model describes a practical approach to estimate when an asset should be replaced. A comprehensive list of criteria to be considered is outlined, the main criteria being a visà- vis between maintenance and replacement expenditures. The costs to maintain the assets should be described by a cost function related to the asset type, the risks to the safety of people and property owing to declining condition of asset, and the predicted frequency of failures. The cost functions reflect the condition of the existing asset at the time the decision to maintain or replace is taken: age, level of deterioration, risk of failure. The process model is applied in the wastewater network of Oslo, the capital city of Norway, and uses available real-world information to forecast life-cycle costs of maintenance and rehabilitation strategies and support infrastructure management decisions. The case study provides an insight into the various definitions of ‘asset lifetime’ – service life, economic life and physical life. The results recommend that one common value for lifetime should not be applied to the all the pipelines in the stock for investment planning in the long-term period; rather it would be wiser to define different values for different cohorts of pipelines to reduce the uncertainties associated with generalisations for simplification. It is envisaged that more criteria the municipality is able to include, to estimate maintenance costs for the existing assets, the more precise will the estimation of the expected service life be. The ability to include social costs enables to compute the asset life, not only based on its physical characterisation, but also on the sensitivity of network areas to social impact of failures. The type of economic analysis is very sensitive to model parameters that are difficult to determine accurately. The main value of this approach is the effort to demonstrate that it is possible to include, in decision-making, factors as the cost of the risk associated with a decline in level of performance, the level of this deterioration and the asset’s depreciation rate, without looking at age as the sole criterion for making decisions regarding replacements.

Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS): An evaluation of success factors in the agricultural sector. The case of Italy's Emilia Romagna region.

Different tools have been used to set up and adopt the model for the fulfillment of the objective of this research. 1. The Model The base model that has been used is the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) adapted with the aim to perform a Benefit Cost Analysis. The AHP developed by Thomas Saaty is a multicriteria decision - making technique which decomposes a complex problem into a hierarchy. It is used to derive ratio scales from both discreet and continuous paired comparisons in multilevel hierarchic structures. These comparisons may be taken from actual measurements or from a fundamental scale that reflects the relative strength of preferences and feelings. 2. Tools and methods 2.1. The Expert Choice Software The software Expert Choice is a tool that allows each operator to easily implement the AHP model in every stage of the problem. 2.2. Personal Interviews to the farms For this research, the farms of the region Emilia Romagna certified EMAS have been detected. Information has been given by EMAS center in Wien. Personal interviews have been carried out to each farm in order to have a complete and realistic judgment of each criteria of the hierarchy. 2.3. Questionnaire A supporting questionnaire has also been delivered and used for the interviews . 3. Elaboration of the data After data collection, the data elaboration has taken place. The software support Expert Choice has been used . 4. Results of the Analysis The result of the figures above (vedere altro documento) gives a series of numbers which are fractions of the unit. This has to be interpreted as the relative contribution of each element to the fulfillment of the relative objective. So calculating the Benefits/costs ratio for each alternative the following will be obtained: Alternative One: Implement EMAS Benefits ratio: 0, 877 Costs ratio: 0, 815 Benfit/Cost ratio: 0,877/0,815=1,08 Alternative Two: Not Implement EMAS Benefits ratio: 0,123 Costs ration: 0,185 Benefit/Cost ratio: 0,123/0,185=0,66 As stated above, the alternative with the highest ratio will be the best solution for the organization. This means that the research carried out and the model implemented suggests that EMAS adoption in the agricultural sector is the best alternative. It has to be noted that the ratio is 1,08 which is a relatively low positive value. This shows the fragility of this conclusion and suggests a careful exam of the benefits and costs for each farm before adopting the scheme. On the other part, the result needs to be taken in consideration by the policy makers in order to enhance their intervention regarding the scheme adoption on the agricultural sector. According to the AHP elaboration of judgments we have the following main considerations on Benefits: - Legal compliance seems to be the most important benefit for the agricultural sector since its rank is 0,471 - The next two most important benefits are Improved internal organization (ranking 0,230) followed by Competitive advantage (ranking 0, 221) mostly due to the sub-element Improved image (ranking 0,743) Finally, even though Incentives are not ranked among the most important elements, the financial ones seem to have been decisive on the decision making process. According to the AHP elaboration of judgments we have the following main considerations on Costs: - External costs seem to be largely more important than the internal ones (ranking 0, 857 over 0,143) suggesting that Emas costs over consultancy and verification remain the biggest obstacle. - The implementation of the EMS is the most challenging element regarding the internal costs (ranking 0,750).

On land management: landowners' attitudes to land and farming in Valdera, Tuscany

This thesis aims at explaining the intersecting dynamics of structural changes in agriculture and urbanisation, which involves changes in urban-rural relationships. The research questions are: how and why do landowners differ in their attitudes to land and farming? what are the main implications on rural landscapes and the policy implications? Relationships between urbanisation and agriculture are firstly analysed through a critical literature review; the analysis focuses on the 'landowner' as the key actor who actively takes decisions on the rural landscape From the empirical study – which is based on a Tuscan area (Valdera), and addressed through qualitative methods – a great diversity of landowners' attitudes to land and farming emerge, thus contributing to the agricultural restructuring, such as: 1) the emphasis on recreational function of the countryside for urban people 2) contracting out of land management, especially when landowners live or/and have 'urban' employment 3) the active role of hobby farmers in land management 4) agricultural operations simplification and lack of investments (especially in case of property rights expropriation). The thesis is framed in three papers, with the same methods and research questions. It seems evident that rural landscapes is subjected to functional changes (e.g. residential) and structural changes (landscape polarisation), which requires the need 1) to consider that rural landscape management is increasingly less connected to agricultural production as economic activity; 2) to give a coherence to the range of policy interventions (physical planning, landscape, sectoral).

An Input-Process-Output Approach to Interorganizational Teams: The Influence of Work Group Diversity, Trust and Shared Leadership on Communication Network and Team Outputs.

The market’s challenges bring firms to collaborate with other organizations in order to create Joint Ventures, Alliances and Consortia that are defined as “Interorganizational Networks” (IONs) (Provan, Fish and Sydow; 2007). Some of these IONs are managed through a shared partecipant governance (Provan and Kenis, 2008): a team composed by entrepreneurs and/or directors of each firm of an ION. The research is focused on these kind of management teams and it is based on an input-process-output model: some input variables (work group’s diversity, intra-team's friendship network density) have a direct influence on the process (team identification, shared leadership, interorganizational trust, team trust and intra-team's communication network density), which influence some team outputs, individual innovation behaviors and team effectiveness (team performance, work group satisfaction and ION affective commitment). Data was collected on a sample of 101 entrepreneurs grouped in 28 ION’s government teams and the research hypotheses are tested trough the path analysis and the multilevel models. As expected trust in team and shared leadership are positively and directly related to team effectiveness while team identification and interorganizational trust are indirectly related to the team outputs. The friendship network density among the team’s members has got positive effects on the trust in team and on the communication network density, and also, through the communication network density it improves the level of the teammates ION affective commitment. The shared leadership and its effects on the team effectiveness are fostered from higher level of team identification and weakened from higher level of work group diversity, specifically gender diversity. Finally, the communication network density and shared leadership at the individual level are related to the frequency of individual innovative behaviors. The dissertation’s results give a wider and more precise indication about the management of interfirm network through “shared” form of governance.

The use of satellite remote sensing for flood risk management

Over the last decades the impact of natural disasters to the global environment is becoming more and more severe. The number of disasters has dramatically increased, as well as the cost to the global economy and the number of people affected. Among the natural disaster, flood catastrophes are considered to be the most costly, devastating, broad extent and frequent, because of the tremendous fatalities, injuries, property damage, economic and social disruption they cause to the humankind. In the last thirty years, the World has suffered from severe flooding and the huge impact of floods has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, destruction of infrastructures, disruption of economic activity and the loss of property for worth billions of dollars. In this context, satellite remote sensing, along with Geographic Information Systems (GIS), has become a key tool in flood risk management analysis. Remote sensing for supporting various aspects of flood risk management was investigated in the present thesis. In particular, the research focused on the use of satellite images for flood mapping and monitoring, damage assessment and risk assessment. The contribution of satellite remote sensing for the delineation of flood prone zones, the identification of damaged areas and the development of hazard maps was explored referring to selected cases of study.