Integrated assessment of water conservation practices for sustainable management strategies

Miami-Dade County implemented a series of water conservation programs, which included rebate/exchange incentives to encourage the use of high efficiency aerators (AR), showerheads (SH), toilets (HET) and clothes washers (HEW), to respond to the environmental sustainability issue in urban areas. This study first used panel data analysis of water consumption to evaluate the performance and actual water savings of individual programs. Integrated water demand model has also been developed for incorporating property’s physical characteristics into the water consumption profiles. Life cycle assessment (with emphasis on end-use stage in water system) of water intense appliances was conducted to determine the environmental impacts brought by each practice. Approximately 6 to 10 % of water has been saved in the first and second year of implementation of high efficiency appliances, and with continuing savings in the third and fourth years. Water savings (gallons per household per day) for water efficiency appliances were observed at 28 (11.1%) for SH, 34.7 (13.3%) for HET, and 39.7 (14.5%) for HEW. Furthermore, the estimated contributions of high efficiency appliances for reducing water demand in the integrated water demand model were between 5 and 19% (highest in the AR program). Results indicated that adoption of more than one type of water efficiency appliance could significantly reduce residential water demand. For the sustainable water management strategies, the appropriate water conservation rate was projected to be 1 to 2 million gallons per day (MGD) through 2030. With 2 MGD of water savings, the estimated per capita water use (GPCD) could be reduced from approximately 140 to 122 GPCD. Additional efforts are needed to reduce the water demand to US EPA’s “Water Sense” conservation levels of 70 GPCD by 2030. Life cycle assessment results showed that environmental impacts (water and energy demands and greenhouse gas emissions) from end-use and demand phases are most significant within the water system, particularly due to water heating (73% for clothes washer and 93% for showerhead). Estimations of optimal lifespan for appliances (8 to 21 years) implied that earlier replacement with efficiency models is encouraged in order to minimize the environmental impacts brought by current practice.

Impact of Employee Management on Hospitality Innovation Success

The author report on a survey of 185 hospitality manager to examine which employee management practices are associated with success in hospitality innovations. The result suggest that successful new hospitality projects are guided by a strategic human resource management approach, have higher level of training, implement behavior- bared evaluation of their front-line staff and empower their employees.

Marketing Approaches to Human Resources Management In the Hospitality Industry

Now that baby boomers are older and pursuing more career-oriented jobs, managers of the hospitality industry are experiencing the effects of the pre- sent labor crisis; they now know that those vacant hourly jobs are going to be tough to fill with quality personnel. The companies able to attract quality personnel by offering employees what they need and want will be the successful ones in the next decade. The authors explain how the labor crisis is currently affecting the hospitality industry and make suggestions about how firms may survive the "labor crash” of the 1990s with the application of marketing technology to human resource management.

Chinese and British Hotels: Cultural Differences and Management

Rapid tourism development in China has led to an influx of hotels invested in and operated by multi-national hotel companies. The authors examine the impact of cultural differences on employee behavior in China and UK hotels and offer recommendations for expatriate hotel managers to effectively develop human resource management styles while operating properties in China.

Small-scale Fisheries and the Global Economy: Understanding Common-pool Resource Governance in the Context of Market Pressures, Neoliberal Policies, and Transnational Institutions

The purpose of this dissertation is to contribute to a better understanding of how global seafood trade interacts with the governance of small-scale fisheries (SSFs). As global seafood trade expands, SSFs have the potential to experience significant economic, social, and political benefits from participation in export markets. At the same time, market connections that place increasing pressures on resources pose risks to both the ecological and social integrity of SSFs. This dissertation seeks to explore the factors that mediate between the potential benefits and risks of global seafood markets for SSFs, with the goal of developing hypotheses regarding these relationships.

The empirical investigation consists of a series of case studies from the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico. This is a particularly rich context in which to study global market connections with SSFs because the SSFs in this region engage in a variety of market-oriented harvests, most notably for octopus, groupers and snappers, lobster, and sea cucumber. Variation in market forms and the institutional diversity of local-level governance arrangements allows the dissertation to explore a number of examples.

The analysis is guided primarily by common-pool resource (CPR) theory because of the insights it provides regarding the conditions that facilitate collective action and the factors that promote long-lasting resource governance arrangements. Theory from institutional economics and political ecology contribute to the elaboration of a multi-faceted conceptualization of markets for CPR theory, with the aim of facilitating the identification of mechanisms through which markets and CPR governance actually interact. This dissertation conceptualizes markets as sets of institutions that structure the exchange of property rights over fisheries resources, affect the material incentives to harvest resources, and transmit ideas and values about fisheries resources and governance.

The case studies explore four different mechanisms through which markets potentially influence resource governance: 1) Markets can contribute to costly resource governance activities by offsetting costs through profits, 2) markets can undermine resource governance by generating incentives for noncompliance and lead to overharvesting resources, 3) markets can increase the costs of resource governance, for example by augmenting monitoring and enforcement burdens, and 4) markets can alter values and norms underpinning resource governance by transmitting ideas between local resource users and a variety of market actors.

Data collected using participant observation, survey, informal and structured interviews contributed to the elaboration of the following hypotheses relevant to interactions between global seafood trade and SSFs governance. 1) Roll-back neoliberalization of fisheries policies has undermined cooperatives’ ability to achieve financial success through engagement with markets and thus their potential role as key actors in resource governance (chapter two). 2) Different relations of production influence whether local governance institutions will erode or strengthen when faced with market pressures. In particular, relations of production in which fishers own their own means of production and share the collective costs of governance are more likely to strengthen resource governance while relations of production in which a single entrepreneur controls capital and access to the fishery are more likely to contribute to the erosion of resource governance institutions in the face of market pressures (chapter three). 3) By serving as a new discursive framework within which to conceive of and talk about fisheries resources, markets can influence norms and values that shape and constitute governance arrangements.

In sum, the dissertation demonstrates that global seafood trade manifests in a diversity of local forms and effects. Whether SSFs moderate risks and take advantage of benefits depends on a variety of factors, and resource users themselves have the potential to influence the outcomes of seafood market connections through local forms of collective action.

Freshwater Resource Supply Modeling for Developed and Undeveloped Watersheds

Globally, the current state of freshwater resource management is insufficient and impeding the chance at a sustainable future. Human interference within the natural hydrologic cycle is becoming dangerously irreversible and the need to redefine resource managerial approaches is imminent. This research involves the development of a coupled natural-human freshwater resource supply model using a System Dynamics approach. The model was applied to two case studies, Somalia, Africa and the Phoenix Active Management Area in Arizona, USA. It is suggested that System Dynamic modeling would be an invaluable tool for achieving sustainable freshwater resource management in individual watersheds. Through a series of thought experiments, a thorough understanding of the systems’ dynamic behaviors is obtainable for freshwater resource managers and policy-makers to examine various courses of action for alleviating freshwater supply concerns. This thesis reviews the model, its development and an analysis of several thought experiments applied to the case studies.

An Institutional, Socio-economic, and Legal Analysis of Fisheries Co-management and Regulation in the Gulf of Nicoya, Costa Rica

Marine Areas for Responsible Artisanal Fishing (AMPR) have emerged as a new model for co-managing small-scale fisheries in Costa Rica, one that involves collaboration between fishers, government agencies and NGOs. This thesis aims to examine the context for collective action and co-management by small-scale fishers; evaluate the design, implementation, and enforcement of AMPRs; and conduct a linguistic analysis of fisheries legislation. The present work relies on the analysis of several types of qualitative data, including interviews with 23 key informants, rapid rural assessments, and legal documents. Findings demonstrate the strong influence of economic factors for sustaining collective action, as well as the importance of certain types of external organizations for community development and co-management. Additionally, significant enforcement gaps and institutional deficiencies were identified in the work of regulating agencies. Legal analysis suggests that mechanisms for government accountability are unavailable and that legal discourse reflects some of the most salient problems in management.

The management of workplace conflict: Contrasting pathways in the HRM literature.

This paper reviews the human resource management literature on the management of workplace conflict. It suggests that workplace conflict is commonly viewed in the literature as a symptom of management failure: the notion that conflict may be intrinsic to the nature of work because employees and managers have hard-to-reconcile competing interests is given short-shrift. At the same time, the paper identifies important differences in the literature, which the authors call ‘pathways’, about the best methods to manage problems at the workplace. It is argued that four contrasting pathways can be detected in the literature with regard to how organizations approach workplace conflict management practices. Each pathway is examined fully and their respective strengths and weaknesses are assessed.

An appraisal of adaptive management planning and implementation in ecological restoration: case studies from the San Francisco Bay Delta, USA

Adaptive management has been defined and redefined in the context of natural resource management, yet there are few examples of its successful application in ecological restoration. Although the 2009 Delta Reform Act now legally requires adaptive management for all restoration efforts in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, in California, USA, projects in this region still encounter problems with implementation. We used a comparative case study analysis to examine adaptive management planning and implementation both in and around the Delta, assessing not only why adaptive management is not yet well implemented, but also what changes can be made to facilitate the adaptive management approach without sacrificing scientific rigor. Adaptive management seems to be directly and indirectly affected by a variety of challenges and convoluted by ambiguity in both planning documents and practitioner’s interpretations of the concept. Addressing these challenges and ambiguities at the project level may facilitate the adaptive management process and help make it more accessible to practitioners.