Knowledge-based urban development redefined : from theory to practice knowledge-based development of cities

The concept of knowledge-based urban development has first come to the urban planning and development agenda during the very last years of the 20th century as a promising paradigm to support the transformation process of cities into knowledge cities and their societies into knowledge societies. However, soon after the exponentially rapid advancements experienced, during the first decade of the 21st century, particularly, in the domains of economy, society, management and technology along with the severe impacts of climate change, have made the redefinition of the term a necessity. This paper, first, reports the findings of the review of the relatively short but dynamic history of urbanisation experiences of our cities around the globe. The paper, then, focuses on the 21st century urbanisation context and discusses the conceptual base of the knowledge-based development of cities and how this concept found application ground in many parts of the world. Following this, the paper speculates development of future cities by particularly highlighting potential challenges and opportunities that previously have not been fully considered. This paper, lastly, introduces and elaborates how relevant theories support the better conceptualisation of this relatively new, but rapidly emerging paradigm, and redefines it accordingly.

The analysis of social capital in online social communities

Social networks have proven to be an attractive avenue of investigation for researchers since humans are social creatures. Numerous literature have explored the term “social networks” from different perspectives and in diverse research fields. With the popularity of the Internet, social networking has taken on a new dimension. Online social communities therefore have become an emerging social avenue for people to communicate in today’s information age. People use online social communities to share their interests, maintain friendships, and extend their so-called circle of “friends”. Likewise, social capital, also known as human capital, is an important theory in sociology. Researchers usually utilise social capital theory when they investigate the topic relating to social networks. However, there is little literature that can provide an explicit and strong assertion in that research area due to the complexity of social capital. This thesis therefore focuses on the issue related to providing a better understanding about the relationship between social capital and online social communities. To enhance the value within the scope of this analysis, an online survey was conducted to examine the effects of the dimensions of social capital: relational capital, structural capital, and cognitive capital, determining the intensity of using online social communities. The data were derived from a total of 350 self-selected respondents completing an online survey during the research period. The main results indicate that social capital exists in online social communities under normal circumstances. Finally, this thesis also presents three contributions for both theory and practice in Chapter 5. The main results contribute to the understanding of connectivity in the interrelationships between individual social capital exchange within online social networks. Secondly, social trust was found to have a weak effect in influencing the intensity of individuals using online social communities. Third, the perpetual role of information sharing has an indirect influence on individual users participating in online social communities. This study also benefits online marketing consultants as marketers can not only gain consumer information easier from online social communities but also this understanding assists in designing effective communication within online social communities. The cross-sectional study, the reliability of Internet survey data, and sampling issues are the major three limitations in this research. The thesis provides a new research model and recommends that the mediating effects, privacy paradox, and social trust on online social communities should be further explored in future research.

A grounded theory of protest movement continuity

Using a thematic story telling approach which draws on ethnographic method, a grounded theory of protest movement continuity is presented. The grounded theory draws from theories and activist stories relating to the facilitative role of movement networks, social contagion theory and the cultural experience of activism. It highlights the contagious influence of protest networks in maintaining protest continuity over time and how this leads to common perceptions of development risk and opportunity within communities. It also reveals how communities use collective values and identity, social capital, emotional dynamics and symbolic artifacts to maintain protest continuity.

Enhancing workplace learning through collaborative HRD

Human resource development (HRD) has evolved a great deal over the past 20 years. Indeed, developments in HRD theory, research and practice have helped transform HRD from a reactive function focusing on administrative and bureaucratic issues to a proactive function focusing on creating learning and development opportunities for employees that not only allow them to achieve their potential but also make a substantial contribution to the longterm survival and sustainability of the organisation. HRD is now seen as an investment in the future of an organisation. This investment perspective is based on the recognition that HRD is linked to business strategy and the achievement of competitive advantage (Caravan et al. 2002). One reason for the shift in emphasis is that many of the traditional sources of competitive advantage (technology, economies of scale) have diminished in value. Nowadays it is the workforce that has come to be seen as an important source of competitive advantage for the organisation. However, not too long ago employees were viewed by management as a disposable resource rather than an asset to an organisation.

To bound or not to bound: preliminary Theory of Time Bounds Specification in strategic alliances

This article augments Resource Dependence Theory with Real Options reasoning in order to explain time bounds specification in strategic alliances. Whereas prior work has found about a 50/50 split between alliances that are time bound and those that are open-ended, their substantive differences and antecedents are ill understood. To address this, we suggest that the two alliance modes present different real options trade-offs in adaptation to environmental uncertainty: ceteris paribus, time-bound alliances are likely to provide abandonment options over open-ended alliances, but require additional investments to extend the alliance when this turns out to be desirable after formation. Open-ended alliances are likely to provide growth options over open-ended alliances, but they demand additional effort to abandon the alliance if post-formation circumstances so desire. Therefore, we expect time bounds specification to be a function of environmental uncertainty: organizations in more uncertain environments will be relatively more likely to place time bounds on their strategic alliances. Longitudinal archival and survey data collected amongst 39 industry clusters provides empirical support for our claims, which contribute to the recent renaissance of resource dependence theory by specifying the conditions under which organizations choose different time windows in strategic partnering.

Value management : an extension of quantity surveying services in Malaysia

Value Management (VM) initially started in early 1940s in the US manufacturing industry has increasingly becoming popular within the construction industry community internationally. It has been widely accepted as an important tool in the management of projects. The structured, systematic and multi-disciplinary approach in decision making process is a niche for VM in delivering better value for money project to the client investment. It would appear to be gaining some momentum as an essential management tool in the Malaysian construction sector especially in the quantity surveying practice. Quantity surveyors increasing involvement in VM provides an opportunity for the profession to re-model some of its traditional services in a more positive light and develop leading-edge skills and promote the profession. International practice has associated VM to be part of services offered in the quantity surveying practice; especially in UK has proven to be a natural progression of QS profession. The introduction of VM as early 1980’s in Malaysia combined with increasing demand for construction project to facilitate nation progress is shedding a positive light for quantity surveying profession to take lead in developing VM as one of their niche area. Therefore, the quantity surveying profession having the opportunity to take lead of this service which reflect their traditional attributes for providing the best value-for-money advise to the client. This paper shall discuss on the development of VM in Malaysia and the challenges VM face services in QS firm to remain ahead of their competitors.

Mediating cultural politics : a dialogue with Georgina Born

The following dialogue is based on an interview conducted as part of Professor Born’s visit to Brisbane in 2006, which included three public seminars at the University of Queensland (UQ) and Queensland University of Technology (QUT). The following dialogue provides a counterpoint to these events and to Born’s work as a whole, drawing together and extending key themes in the cultural politics of both public service broadcasting and new media technologies. It begins by discussing the possibilities of public sphere theory to provide useful models of institutional design. The discussion moves from there to SBS Television – an example of Public Service Broadcasting that provides an interesting contrast to the BBC, especially by virtue of SBS’s relationship with the politics of multiculturalism in Australia. The second half of the interview draws out the issues around cultural value, cultural power and the politics of technology in relation to new media, and concludes by focusing especially on the problems and potentialities of ‘user-generated content’.

Converting theory to practice : university-school collaboration on devising strategies for mentoring pedagogical knowledge

There appears no shortage of theorists for preservice teacher education; however many ideas are abandoned without practical applications. Indeed, it can take years for theories to materialise into practice, if they materialise at all. The quality of preservice teacher education is central for enhancing an education system, and mentors’ roles can assist to shape preservice teachers’ development within the school context. Yet mentoring can be haphazard without being underpinned by a theoretical framework. A mentoring model (personal attributes, system requirements, pedagogical knowledge, modelling, and feedback) has emerged from research and the literature to guide mentors’ practices. This qualitative study investigates mentors’ pedagogical knowledge as one factor crucial to the mentoring process. More specifically, this study involves a questionnaire and audio-recorded focus group meetings with experienced mentors (n=14) who deliberated on devising practical applications for mentoring pedagogical knowledge. Findings revealed that these experienced mentors pinpointed practical applications around a mentor’s role for providing pedagogical knowledge to the mentee. These strategies were varied and demonstrated that any one mentoring practice may be approached from a number of different angles. Nevertheless, there were core mentoring practices in pedagogical knowledge such as showing the mentee how to plan for teaching, articulating classroom management approaches, and talking about how to connect learning to assessment. Mentors may require education on current mentoring practices with practical strategies that are linked to theoretical underpinnings.

Trading spaces : on the lore and limitations of latent semantic analysis

Two decades after its inception, Latent Semantic Analysis(LSA) has become part and parcel of every modern introduction to Information Retrieval. For any tool that matures so quickly, it is important to check its lore and limitations, or else stagnation will set in. We focus here on the three main aspects of LSA that are well accepted, and the gist of which can be summarized as follows: (1) that LSA recovers latent semantic factors underlying the document space, (2) that such can be accomplished through lossy compression of the document space by eliminating lexical noise, and (3) that the latter can best be achieved by Singular Value Decomposition. For each aspect we performed experiments analogous to those reported in the LSA literature and compared the evidence brought to bear in each case. On the negative side, we show that the above claims about LSA are much more limited than commonly believed. Even a simple example may show that LSA does not recover the optimal semantic factors as intended in the pedagogical example used in many LSA publications. Additionally, and remarkably deviating from LSA lore, LSA does not scale up well: the larger the document space, the more unlikely that LSA recovers an optimal set of semantic factors. On the positive side, we describe new algorithms to replace LSA (and more recent alternatives as pLSA, LDA, and kernel methods) by trading its l2 space for an l1 space, thereby guaranteeing an optimal set of semantic factors. These algorithms seem to salvage the spirit of LSA as we think it was initially conceived.

Negotiating the Business Environment: Theory, Practice for all Governance Styles

The business environment across the globe is today characterised by three primary governance arrangements - bureaucracies, markets and networks. For organisations operating within each of these business contexts the terms of engagement in regard to negotiation are different. Rather than starting from a broad ‘how to’ approach or a specific cultural interface, Negotiating the Business Environment looks at governance arrangements within the business environment and at how such governance arrangements impact on how negotiation occurs. This text provides an Australian—not an overseas—perspective on negotiations that will be a welcome change for Australian students. Uniquely, it takes into account the context in which negotiations take place. Negotiating the Business Environment demonstrates how responding to business style in negotiations can effect successful outcomes. It include strong pedagogy including: key terms, key points, further reading lists, case studies, and end of chapter questions

An experimental study of a reactive plume in grid turbulence

Experimental results for a reactive non-buoyant plume of nitric oxide (NO) in a turbulent grid flow doped with ozone (O3) are presented. The Damkohler number (Nd) for the experiment is of order unity indicating the turbulence and chemistry have similar timescales and both affect the chemical reaction rate. Continuous measurements of two components of velocity using hot-wire anemometry and the two reactants using chemiluminescent analysers have been made. A spatial resolution for the reactants of four Kolmogorov scales has been possible because of the novel design of the experiment. Measurements at this resolution for a reactive plume are not found in the literature. The experiment has been conducted relatively close to the grid in the region where self-similarity of the plume has not yet developed. Statistics of a conserved scalar, deduced from both reactive and non-reactive scalars by conserved scalar theory, are used to establish the mixing field of the plume, which is found to be consistent with theoretical considerations and with those found by other investigators in non-reative flows. Where appropriate the reactive species means and higher moments, probability density functions, joint statistics and spectra are compared with their respective frozen, equilibrium and reaction-dominated limits deduced from conserved scalar theory. The theoretical limits bracket reactive scalar statistics where this should be so according to conserved scalar theory. Both reactants approach their equilibrium limits with greater distance downstream. In the region of measurement, the plume reactant behaves as the reactant not in excess and the ambient reactant behaves as the reactant in excess. The reactant covariance lies outside its frozen and equilibrium limits for this value of Vd. The reaction rate closure of Toor (1969) is compared with the measured reaction rate. The gradient model is used to obtain turbulent diffusivities from turbulent fluxes. Diffusivity of a non-reactive scalar is found to be close to that measured in non-reactive flows by others.

Crowdsourcing information systems : a systems theory perspective

Crowdsourcing harnesses the potential of large and open networks of people. It is a relatively new phenomenon and attracted substantial interest in practice. Related research, however, lacks a theoretical foundation. We propose a system-theoretical perspective on crowdsourcing systems to address this gap and illustrate its applicability by using it to classify crowdsourcing systems. By deriving two principal dimensions from theory, we identify four fundamental types of crowdsourcing systems that help to distinguish important features of such systems. We analyse their respective characteristics and discuss implications and requirements for various aspects related to the design of such systems. Our results demonstrate that systems theory can inform the study of crowdsourcing systems. The identified system types and the implications on their design may prove useful for researchers to frame future studies and for practitioners to identify the right crowdsourcing systems for a particular purpose.