Evaluating the competitiveness of the tourism industry in Cambodia : self-assessment from professionals

The annual tourism growth rate in Cambodia is among the highest in the world; however, tourist industry impact on Cambodian's economy is quite low. The purpose of our study is to analyse the strengths and weaknesses of the Cambodian tourism market so that a framework can be established to help the country's policy-makers formulate strategies to use its resources effectively to create sustainable tourism competitiveness. This study used the perspective of tourism experts in the industry and Ministry of Tourism in Cambodia, and academia in the tourism field to evaluate Cambodian tourism competitiveness relative to its major competitors in ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) based on nine categories: endowed resources, created resources, supporting factors, destination management, situational conditions, demand condition, technology, openness and market performance indicators benchmarked from previous research. The results showed that Cambodia has a lot of endowed resources, but lacks supporting resources and factors to achieve tourism competitiveness.

Innovation in the Australian Spatial Information Industry

Business literature reveals the importance of generating innovative products and services, but much of the innovation research has been conducted in large firms and not replicated in small firms. These firms are likely to have different perspectives on innovation, which means that they will probably behave differently to large firms. Our study aims to unpack how firms in Spatial Information perceive and engage in innovation as a part of their business operation. To investigate these questions we conduct 20 in depth interviews of top management team members in Spatial Information firms in Australia. We find that small firms define innovation very broadly and measure innovation by its effect on productivity or market success. Innovation is seen as crucial to survival and success in a competitive environment. Most firms engage in product and/or service innovations, while some also mentioned marketing, process and organisational innovations. Most innovations were more exploitative rather than exploratory with only a few being radical innovations. Innovation barriers include time and money constraints, corporate culture and Government tendering practices. Our study sheds a light on our understanding of innovation in an under-researched sector; that is spatial information industry.

Industry in Jarrow

This study was done during 1958-59 as part of a geography major at London Institute of Education, Eastbourne Teachers' Training College, Sussex 1957-59. (Age 19) I visited all factories, industries and wharfs on my bicycle and interviewed managers, owners and supervisors.

Review and future options for computer modelling in the sugar industry

Computer modelling has been used extensively in some processes in the sugar industry to achieve significant gains. This paper reviews the investigations carried out over approximately the last twenty five years,including the successes but also areas where problems and delays have been encountered. In that time the capability of both hardware and software have increased dramatically. For some processes such as cane cleaning, cane billet preparation, and sugar drying, the application of computer modelling towards improved equipment design and operation has been quite limited. A particular problem has been the large number of particles and particle interactions in these applications, which, if modelled individually, is computationally very intensive. Despite the problems, some attempts have already been made and knowledge gained on tackling these issues. Even if the detailed modelling is wanting, a model can provide some useful insights into the processes. Some options to attack these more intensive problems include the use of commercial software packages, which are usually very robust and allow the addition of user-supplied subroutines to adapt the software to particular problems. Suppliers of such software usually charge a fee per CPU licence, which is often problematic for large problems that require the use of many CPUs. Another option to consider is using open source software that has been developed with the capability to access large parallel resources. Such software has the added advantage of access to the full internal coding. This paper identifies and discusses the detail of software options with the potential capability to achieve improvements in the sugar industry.

Reducing bubble defect on the outsole production process in the footwear manufacturing industry

The purpose of this study is to discover the significant factors causing the bubble defect on the outsoles manufactured by the Case Company. The bubble defect occurs approximately 1.5 per cent of the time or in 36 pairs per day. To understand this problem, experimental studies are undertaken to identify various factors such as injector temperature, mould temperature; that affects the production of waste. The work presented in this paper comprises a review of the relevant literature on the Six Sigma DMAIC improvement process, quality control tools, and the design of the experiments. After the experimentation following the Six Sigma process, the results showed that the defect occurred in approximately 0.5 per cent of the products or in 12 pairs per day; this decreased the production cost from 6,120 AUD per month to 2,040 AUD per month. This research aimed to reduce the amount of waste in men’s flat outsoles. Hence, the outcome of research presented in this paper should be used as a guide for applying the appropriate process for each type of outsole.

Alignment and differences between the Australian Water Accounting Standard and the Water Accounting Framework for the Minerals Industry

In 2012, the Bureau of Meteorology under the banner of the Water Accounting Standards Board released the Australian Water Accounting Standard 1 (AWAS 1). This standard has been in development since 2007 with key milestones being the release of the Preliminary Australian Water Accounting Standard in 2009, and the exposure draft of the Australian Water Accounting Standard in 2010. Throughout this period, the Minerals Council of Australia’s Water Accounting Framework has developed concurrently with the Australian standards and the standards have informed elements of the framework. However, the framework is not identical to the standard as the objectives between the two are different. The objective of the Water Accounting Framework is to create consistency in water reporting of the minerals industry and to assist companies reporting to corporate sustainability initiatives. The objective of AWAS 1 is to provide information to water management bodies to facilitate decisions about the allocation of water resources. Companies are to report on an annual basis, not only physical flows of water but contractual requirements to supply and obtain water, regardless of whether the transaction has been fulfilled in the reporting period. In contrast, the Water Accounting Framework only reports on flows that have physically happened. The paper will provide summary information on aspects of AWAS 1 that are most relevant to the minerals industry, show the alignment and differences between AWAS 1 and the Water Accounting Framework and explain how to obtain the information for the AWAS 1 reporting statements.

Editorial : is it the time for railway industry to reinvent itself?

Editorial: is it the time for railway industry to reinvent itself? Railway infrastructure plays a critical role in urban development, mobility, and economic growth of society. This focus issue of the Electronic Journal of Structural Engineering is devoted to a special theme, “Advances in Rail Track Infrastructure and Practice - ARTRP”. It contains articles, which were rigorously peer reviewed and accepted from a list of invited manuscripts that demonstrate significant innovation in the area of the structural engineering aspects of the rail track infrastructure...

Attracting and Retaining Staff : The Role of Branding and Industry Image

In increasingly competitive labour markets, attracting and retaining talent has become a prime concern of organisations. Employers need to understand the range of factors that influence career decision making and the role of employer branding in attracting human capital that best fits and contributes to the strategic aims of an organisation. This chapter identifies the changing factors that attract people to certain employment and industries and discusses the importance of aligning employer branding with employee branding to create a strong, genuine and lasting employer brand. Whilst organisations have long used marketing and branding practices to engender loyalty in customers, they are increasingly expanding this activity to differentiate organisations and make them attractive from an employee perspective. This chapter discusses employer branding and industry image as two important components of attraction strategies and describes ways companies can maximise their brand awareness in the employment market to both current and future employees.

Social licence to operate and the coal seam gas industry : lessons from social issues in established mining operations?

The recent growth of the coal seam gas industry has increased pressure on regional communities. Debate surrounding the industry is intense and a social licence to operate has yet to be granted to the industry in its entirety. This article presents an analysis of social issues surrounding the coal seam gas industry, making comparisons between two case studies: the Ranger and Jabiluka mines and the Yandicoogina mine. It presents the results of a desktop study, focussed on three topics: community identity; procedural justice and distributive justice, which provides a means for comparison and draws attention to central concerns. It is found that: power imbalances; changing community identities; potentially inequitable distributions of long term benefits and the process to distribute those benefits and negative perceptions of the industry as a whole serve to undermine the provision of a social licence to operate by communities and has the potential to impose significant negative impacts on companies within the industry.

Biodiesel production from non-edible beauty leaf (Calophyllum Inophyllum) oil : process optimization using response surface methodology (RSM)

In recent years, the beauty leaf plant (Calophyllum Inophyllum) is being considered as a potential 2nd generation biodiesel source due to high seed oil content, high fruit production rate, simple cultivation and ability to grow in a wide range of climate conditions. However, however, due to the high free fatty acid (FFA) content in this oil, the potential of this biodiesel feedstock is still unrealized, and little research has been undertaken on it. In this study, transesterification of beauty leaf oil to produce biodiesel has been investigated. A two-step biodiesel conversion method consisting of acid catalysed pre-esterification and alkali catalysed transesterification has been utilized. The three main factors that drive the biodiesel (fatty acid methyl ester (FAME)) conversion from vegetable oil (triglycerides) were studied using response surface methodology (RSM) based on a Box-Behnken experimental design. The factors considered in this study were catalyst concentration, methanol to oil molar ratio and reaction temperature. Linear and full quadratic regression models were developed to predict FFA and FAME concentration and to optimize the reaction conditions. The significance of these factors and their interaction in both stages was determined using analysis of variance (ANOVA). The reaction conditions for the largest reduction in FFA concentration for acid catalysed pre-esterification was 30:1 methanol to oil molar ratio, 10% (w/w) sulfuric acid catalyst loading and 75 °C reaction temperature. In the alkali catalysed transesterification process 7.5:1 methanol to oil molar ratio, 1% (w/w) sodium methoxide catalyst loading and 55 °C reaction temperature were found to result in the highest FAME conversion. The good agreement between model outputs and experimental results demonstrated that this methodology may be useful for industrial process optimization for biodiesel production from beauty leaf oil and possibly other industrial processes as well.

Measuring Productivity Gains from Deregulation of the Japanese Urban Gas Industry

The Japanese government initiated a series of regulatory reforms in the mid-1990s. The Japanese urban gas industry consists of various sized private and non-private firms. Numerous previous studies find that deregulation leads to productivity improvements. We extend the literature by analyzing deregulation, privatization, and other aspects of a regulated industry using unique firm level data. This study measures productivity to evaluate the effect of the deregulation reform. Using data from 205 firms from 1993 to 2004, we find that the deregulation effect differs depending on firm size. Competitive pressure contributes to advanced productivity. The deregulation of gas sales to commercial customers is the most important factor for advancing productivity. Copyright © 2013 by the IAEE. All rights reserved.

Does the price of oil interact with clean energy prices in the stock market?

In this paper, we analyze the relationships among oil prices, clean energy stock prices, and technology stock prices, endogenously controlling for structural changes in the market. To this end, we apply Markov-switching vector autoregressive models to the economic system consisting of oil prices, clean energy and technology stock prices, and interest rates. The results indicate that there was a structural change in late 2007, a period in which there was a significant increase in the price of oil. In contrast to the previous studies, we find a positive relationship between oil prices and clean energy prices after structural breaks. There also appears to be a similarity in terms of the market response to both clean energy stock prices and technology stock prices. © 2013 Elsevier B.V.

Effect of Oil Price on Emissions Trading Market: VAR Analysis

In this study, we investigated the relationship of European Union carbon dioxide CO2 allowances EUAs prices and oil prices by employing a VAR analysis, Granger causality test and impulse response function. If oil price continues increasing, companies will decrease dependency on fossil fuels because of an increase in energy costs. Therefore, the price of EUAs may be affected by variations in oil prices if the greenhouse gases discharged by the consumption of alternative energy are less than that of fossil fuels. There are no previous studies that investigated these relationships. In this study, we analyzed eight types of EUAs EUA05 to EUA12 with a time series daily data set during 2005-2007 collected from a European Climate Exchange time series data set. Differentiations in these eight types were redemption period. We used the New York Mercantile Exchange light sweet crude price as an oil price. From our examination, we found that only the EUA06 and EUA07 types of EUAs Granger-cause oil prices and vice versa and other six types of EUAs do not Granger-cause oil price. These results imply that the earlier redemption period types of EUAs are more sensitive to oil price. In employing the impulse response function, the results showed that a shock to oil price has a slightly positive effect on all types of EUAs for a very short period. On the other hand, we found that a shock to price of EUA has a slightly negative effect on oil price following a positive effect in only EUA06 and EUA07 types. Therefore, these results imply that fluctuations in EUAs prices and oil prices have little effect on each other. Lastly, we did not consider the substitute energy prices in this study, so we plan to include the prices of coal and natural gas in future analyses.

Total factor productivity growth and convergence in the petroleum industry : empirical analysis testing for convexity

While economic theory acknowledges that some features of technology (e.g., indivisibilities, economies of scale and specialization) can fundamentally violate the traditional convexity assumption, almost all empirical studies accept the convexity property on faith. In this contribution, we apply two alternative flexible production technologies to measure total factor productivity growth and test the significance of the convexity axiom using a nonparametric test of closeness between unknown distributions. Based on unique field level data on the petroleum industry, the empirical results reveal significant differences, indicating that this production technology is most likely non-convex. Furthermore, we also show the impact of convexity on answers to traditional convergence questions in the productivity growth literature.