Who's afraid of the dark? Transpower New Zealand Ltd

On 12 June 2006, the lights went out in New Zealand’s largest city and major commercial centre, Auckland. Business was disrupted and many thousands of people inconvenienced. The unscheduled power cut was the latest in a series of electric power problems in New Zealand over the past decade. Attention turned to state-owned enterprise [SOE] Transpower, which was in charge of maintaining and developing New Zealand’s national electricity grid. The problem of 12 June was traced to two shackles in poor condition, small but essential parts of the electricity grid infrastructure. Closer examination of New Zealand’s electricity sector indicated these shackles were merely the tip of a power supply iceberg. Transpower’s Chief Executive, Ralph Craven, was now answerable to the Prime Minister for the issues creating the problems, and a workable solution to fix them. Transpower Chief Executive Ralph Craven needed to produce answers that went well beyond the problem of the two faulty shackles. The power crisis had brought to the fore wider issues of roles, responsibilities, and expectations in relation to the supply of electric power in New Zealand. Transpower was contending with these issues on a daily basis; however, the incident on 12 June publicly highlighted the urgent need for solutions that served the stakeholders in this critical industry.

Optimal allocation strategies for the dark pool problem

We study the problem of allocating stocks to dark pools. We propose and analyze an optimal approach for allocations, if continuous-valued allocations are allowed. We also propose a modification for the case when only integer-valued allocations are possible. We extend the previous work on this problem to adversarial scenarios, while also improving on their results in the iid setup. The resulting algorithms are efficient, and perform well in simulations under stochastic and adversarial inputs.

The motivation and structure of corrupt police networks : theorising the dark side of the ‘thin blue line’

In recent times considerable research attention has been directed to understanding dark networks, especially criminal and terrorist networks. Dark networks are those in which member motivations are self rather than public interested, achievements come at the cost of other individuals, groups or societies and, in addition, their activities are both ‘covert and illegal’ (Raab & Milward, 2003: 415). This ‘darkness’ has implications for the way in which these networks are structured, the strategies adopted and their recruitment methods. Such entities exhibit distinctive operating characteristics including most notably the tension between creating an efficient network structure while retaining the ability to hide from public view while avoiding catastrophic collapse should one member cooperate with authorities (Bouchard 2007). While theoretical emphasis has been on criminal and terrorist networks, recent work has demonstrated that corrupt police networks exhibit some distinctive characteristics. In particular, these entities operate within the shadows of a host organisation - the Police Force and distort the functioning of the ‘Thin Blue Line’ as the interface between the law abiding citizenry and the criminal society. Drawing on data derived from the Queensland Fitzgerald Commission of Enquiry into Police Misconduct and related documents, this paper examines the motivations, structural properties and operational practices of corrupt police networks and compares and contrasts these with other dark networks with ‘bright’ public service networks. The paper confirms the structural differences between dark corrupt police networks and bright networks and suggests. However, structural embeddedness alone is found to be an insufficient theoretical explanation for member involvement in networks and that a set of elements combine to impact decision-making. Although offering important insights into network participation, the paper’s findings are especially pertinent in identifying additional points of intervention for police corruption networks.

ACE research vignette 019 : exploring the "Dark Side" of entrepreneurship

This series of research vignettes is aimed at sharing current and interesting research findings from our team of international Entrepreneurhsip researchers. In this vignette, Dr Rene Bakker explores "the dark side" of entrepreneurship.

Parking, parties and pets : disputes - the dark side of community living

In the last decade community living, in master planned communities or strata titled complexes, has increased. As land becomes scarcer, the popularity of these schemes is predicted to grow. Offsetting this popularity is the peculiarities of community living, in particular the often unthought-of difficulties arising from living in very close proximity to your neighbour. Such difficulties affect both amenity of life and property value. This paper seeks to inform practitioners of the issues arising from community living. It does this by identifying the more common forms of disputes and considering recent tribunal and court decisions. The paper concludes by identifying the dispute warning signs to assist to practitioners with the valuation process.

Of things in the dark, remembered

Excerpt: "To enter the shadow world cast by each installation of Moule is to enter the waking dream of the half remembered. Each object, in its own pool of light, connected to other objects by fields of the twilit, is evocative of some object from our waking world, but recast into that which cannot be and yet is here, palpably so - insistent. All that confronts us is so determinedly derived from some internal gesture and rendered into some partial-reality, without surety of line or contour to combat our internal world of meaning and sense."

Butterfly: the dark fluidity of suburban life

The American Association of Australasian Literary Studies (AAALS) Annual Conference, Forth Worth, Texas, 9–11 April 2015. The dark fluidity of Melbourne suburbia in Sonya Hartnett’s Butterfly Sonya Hartnett’s Butterfly (2009) is a fictional account of the suburban family life of the Coyles in 1980’s outer suburban Melbourne written from the perspective of teenager Plum Coyle. The Coyle family at first glance appear to be living a textbook example of the suburban lifestyle developed from the 19th century and sustained well into the twentieth century, in which housing design and gender roles were clearly defined and “connected with a normative heterosexuality” (Johnson 2000: 94). The Australian suburban space is also well documented as a place where people often have to contend with oppressive rigid social and cultural ideals (ie Rowse 1978, Johnson 1993, Turnbull 2008, and Flew 2011). There is a tendency to group “suburb” as one monolithic space but this paper will argue that Hartnett exposes the dark fluidity and the complexity of the term, just as she reveals that despite or perhaps because of the planned nature of suburbia, the lives that people live are often just as complex.

Frequent (flier) frustration and the dark side of word‐of‐web: exploring online dysfunctional behavior in online feedback forums

Purpose Following the perspective of frustration theory customer frustration incidents lead to frustration behavior such as protest (negative word‐of‐mouth). On the internet customers can express their emotions verbally and non‐verbally in numerous web‐based review platforms. The purpose of this study is to investigate online dysfunctional customer behavior, in particular negative “word‐of‐web” (WOW) in online feedback forums, among customers who participate in frequent‐flier programs in the airline industry. Design/methodology/approach The study employs a variation of the critical incident technique (CIT) referred to as the critical internet feedback technique (CIFT). Qualitative data of customer reviews of 13 different frequent‐flier programs posted on the internet were collected and analyzed with regard to frustration incidents, verbal and non‐verbal emotional effects and types of dysfunctional word‐of‐web customer behavior. The sample includes 141 negative customer reviews based on non‐recommendations and low program ratings. Findings Problems with loyalty programs evoke negative emotions that are expressed in a spectrum of verbal and non‐verbal negative electronic word‐of‐mouth. Online dysfunctional behavior can vary widely from low ratings and non‐recommendations to voicing switching intentions to even stronger forms such as manipulation of others and revenge intentions. Research limitations/implications Results have to be viewed carefully due to methodological challenges with regard to the measurement of emotions, in particular the accuracy of self‐report techniques and the quality of online data. Generalization of the results is limited because the study utilizes data from only one industry. Further research is needed with regard to the exact differentiation of frustration from related constructs. In addition, large‐scale quantitative studies are necessary to specify and test the relationships between frustration incidents and subsequent dysfunctional customer behavior expressed in negative word‐of‐web. Practical implications The study yields important implications for the monitoring of the perceived quality of loyalty programs. Management can obtain valuable information about program‐related and/or relationship‐related frustration incidents that lead to online dysfunctional customer behavior. A proactive response strategy should be developed to deal with severe cases, such as sabotage plans. Originality/value This study contributes to knowledge regarding the limited research of online dysfunctional customer behavior as well as frustration incidents of loyalty programs. Also, the article presents a theoretical “customer frustration‐defection” framework that describes different levels of online dysfunctional behavior in relation to the level of frustration sensation that customers have experienced. The framework extends the existing perspective of the “customer satisfaction‐loyalty” framework developed by Heskett et al.

'The ones with the beastly lives': Gender and textuality in Jean Rhys's Voyage in the Dark

Anna Morgan, the central character of Jean Rhys's Voyage in the Dark, has previously been read as a victim of her own inability to fashion some form of life for herself.1 It is possible, however, to suggest an alternative to such character-based readings and instead examine the systems of oppression which work to ensure that Anna remains an excluded, marginalized subject. Rather than personal failings, it is Anna's gender and colonial status which prevent her from participating fully in the dominant social and economic order of Voyage in the Dark. Anna is textually constrained on three levels, which may be defined as economic, colonialist, and narrative. Imbricated within these is the question of gender, which functions to place Anna in a position of double-exclusion within the text. These forms of exclusion function at the levels of discourse and narrative; I would argue that Anna's position is not, therefore, a product of realist character 'flaws' but rather that her discursive placement within the novel offers insight into the ways in which colonialism and sexism function in terms of textuality.

Institutional designs to face the dark side of total allowable catches

Setting total allowable catches (TACs) is an endogenous process in which different agents and institutions, often with conflicting interests and opportunistic behaviour, try to influence policy-makers. Such policy-makers, far from being the benevolent social planners many would wish them to be, may also pursue self-interest when making final decisions. Although restricted knowledge of stock abundance and population dynamics, and weakness in enforcement, have effects, these other factors may explain the reason why TAC management has failed to guarantee sustainable exploitation of fish resources. Rejecting the exogeneity of the TAC and taking advantage of fruitful debate on economic policy (i.e. the rules vs. discretion debate, and that surrounding the independence of central banks), two institutional developments are analysed as potential mechanisms to face up to misconceptions about TACs: long-term harvest control rules, and a central bank of fish.