Contractual relationships for better stewardship of privatised critical infrastructures

Governments increasingly rely on forms of privatisation to provide critical public infrastructure yet when those infrastructures fail to meet community expectations government bears the political and economic risks, being held accountable by the public as steward for those infrastructures. Reconfiguration of the contractual relationships may achieve better stewardship. Many of the forms of privatization rely on Agency theory prescriptions, conceptualizing organisations and individuals as motivated solely by self-interest. Stewardship theory (Van Slyke 2007) has developed as a complement to Agency theory offering the possibility of contractual relationships which maximize stewardship outcome. Stewardship theory asserts that pro-stewardship factors cause the agent/steward to act in the interests of the principal. This research has interrogated the literature finding that of the pro-stewardship factors, sense of responsibility is pre-eminent and has a significant link to the agent acting as a steward. The research has explored how important it is that the steward feel sense of responsibility and the actions that sense of responsibility. Case studies of privatized core elements of urban water systems infrastructure were explored. Data has been gathered primarily from archival sources and individual interviews of government and private sector executives key to those systems. This paper reports the findings as to the extent of stewardship, how important it is that the steward acts in the interests of the principal, even to the steward’s detriment and the importance of the steward feeling a sense of responsibility. The actions which increase that sense of responsibility will be assembled to position the research to better proceed with the analysis of the data as to these actions.

Scenes, quarters and clusters : new experiments in the formation and governance of creative places in China

This thesis examines the formation and governance patterns of the social and spatial concentration of creative people and creative business in cities. It develops a typology for creative places, adding the terms 'scene' and 'quarter' to 'clusters', to fill in the literature gap of partial emphasis on the 'creative clusters' model as an organising mechanism for regional and urban policy. In this framework, a cluster is the gathering of firms with a core focus on economic benefits; a quarter is the urban milieu usually driven by a growth coalition consisting of local government, real estate agents and residential communities; and a scene is the spontaneous assembly of artists, performers and fans with distinct cultural forms. The framework is applied to China, specifically to Hangzhou – a second-tier city in central eastern China that is ambitious to become a 'national cultural and creative industries centre'. The thesis selects three cases – Ideal & Silian 166 Creative Industries Park, White-horse Lake Eco-creative City and LOFT49 Creative Industries Park – to represent scene, quarter and cluster respectively. Drawing on in-depth interviews with initiators, managers and creative professionals of these places, together with extensive documentary analysis, the thesis investigates the composition of actors, characteristics of the locality and the diversity of activities. The findings illustrate that, in China, planning and government intervention is the key to the governance of creative space; spontaneous development processes exist, but these need a more tolerant environment, a greater diversity of cultural forms and more time to develop. Moreover, the main business development model is still real estate based: this model needs to incorporate more mature business models and an enhanced IP protection system. The thesis makes a contribution to literature on economic and cultural geography, urban planning and creative industries theory. It advocates greater attention to self-management, collaborative governance mechanisms and business strategies for scenes, quarters and clusters. As intersections exist in the terms discussed, a mixed toolkit of the three models is required to advance the creative city discourse in China.

Business planning in emerging firms : do nascent and young firms use business planning differently

Previous research suggested that due to the uncertainties surrounding the venture creation process, planning activities may be more valuable for already operating firms than for emerging ventures (McGrath and MacMillan, 1995). Business planning may serve different purposes during the early stages of the venture development process. Early planning during the nascent stage may be used to marshal the resources toward the achievement of preliminary goals (Locke and Latham, 2000), to gain external legitimization and funding (Karlssson & Honig, 2009; Stinchcombe, 1965). Planning may reduce the risk of future failure by facilitating the decision making process of launching -or not- the venture (Chwolka & Raith, 2011) by analysing the opportunity and its market potential (Boyd, 1991; Delmar & Shane, 2003). In later stages, planning may have a more internal role and may act as a strategic implementation tool (Brews & Hunt, 1999). However, if the reasons why ventures should engage (Frese, 2009) –or not- (Honig, 2004) in business planning have been investigated quite extensively (Brinckmann et al., 2010), how business plans are actually used over time by new ventures at different stages of their development and how these uses impact the performance of the firms are still unclear.

Generating new economic activity through design

Firms face the challenge of remaining competitive through both entrepreneurial activities and the strategic management of resources. Strategic entrepreneurship around notions of acquiring, bundling and leveraging resources to create value for customers and firm competitive advantage has been studied in relation to large established firms (Hitt et al 2010) but largely overlooked in studies of small and medium enterprises. Recent theorizing regarding the processes by which firms orchestrate resources to create new economic activity (Sirmon et al, 2011) has focused on the managerial capabilities of structuring, bundling and leveraging resources across the firms breadth, depth and lifecycle. This approach offers a potential framework for investigating processes of economic activity and strategic renewal (Agarwal & Helfat, 2009).

Virtual prototyping for planning bridge construction

4D simulation, building information modeling, virtual construction, computer simulation and virtual prototyping are emerging topics in the building construction industry. These techniques not only relate to the buildings themselves, but can also be applied to other forms of construction, including bridges. Since bridge construction is a complex process involving multiple types of plant and equipment, applying such virtual methods benefits the understanding of all parties in construction practice. This paper describes the relationship between temporary platforms, plant and equipment resources and a proposed-built model in the construction planning and use of Virtual Prototyping Simulation (VPS) to implement different construction scenarios in order to help planners identify an optimal construction plan. A case study demonstrates the use of VPS integrated with temporary platform design and plant and equipment-resource allocation to generate different construction scenarios.

Strategic planning in a non profit organistion : valuing the process

Non-profit organisations by their very nature are staffed by a variety of different people with a range of backgrounds, experiences and reasons for participation. These differences can lead to “distancing” of certain groups and with little time or money for boundary spanning the organisation can find itself in a fractured state that hampers not just its goal realisation, but its goal determination. Strategic planning is often seen as an expensive, time consuming process that many smaller non-profit organisations can little afford to indulge in. In addition, the ruling elite, whether historical or professional may view the process as unnecessary or threatening. However, strategic planning can offer processes and potential outcomes that non profit organisations can not afford to ignore. This paper provides an analysis through one case study involving a non-profit, health related organisation that moved through a process of strategic planning that ultimately encouraged development and group cohesion through goal identification and determination as well as strategy formulation. The results indicate the importance of valuing the strategic planning process itself rather than the form it takes. Challenging the rulership of the historical or professional elite can be difficult in a non-profit organisation, but diversity of involvement rather than uniformity proved to be a successful strategy. Organisational cohesion through consensus building was the ultimate outcome.

Embedding human expert cognition and real-time trajectory planning in autonomous UAS

This thesis presents a new approach to compute and optimize feasible three dimensional (3D) flight trajectories using aspects of Human Decision Making (HDM) strategies, for fixed wing Unmanned Aircraft (UA) operating in low altitude environments in the presence of real time planning deadlines. The underlying trajectory generation strategy involves the application of Manoeuvre Automaton (MA) theory to create sets of candidate flight manoeuvres which implicitly incorporate platform dynamic constraints. Feasible trajectories are formed through the concatenation of predefined flight manoeuvres in an optimized manner. During typical UAS operations, multiple objectives may exist, therefore the use of multi-objective optimization can potentially allow for convergence to a solution which better reflects overall mission requirements and HDM preferences. A GUI interface was developed to allow for knowledge capture from a human expert during simulated mission scenarios. The expert decision data captured is converted into value functions and corresponding criteria weightings using UTilite Additive (UTA) theory. The inclusion of preferences elicited from HDM decision data within an Automated Decision System (ADS) allows for the generation of trajectories which more closely represent the candidate HDM’s decision strategies. A novel Computationally Adaptive Trajectory Decision optimization System (CATDS) has been developed and implemented in simulation to dynamically manage, calculate and schedule system execution parameters to ensure that the trajectory solution search can generate a feasible solution, if one exists, within a given length of time. The inclusion of the CATDS potentially increases overall mission efficiency and may allow for the implementation of the system on different UAS platforms with varying onboard computational capabilities. These approaches have been demonstrated in simulation using a fixed wing UAS operating in low altitude environments with obstacles present.

Taxation of multinational banks : using formulary apportionment to reflect economic reality

The taxation of multinational banks is currently governed by general principles of international tax. However, there are characteristics exclusive to multinational banks that may warrant consideration of a separate taxing regime, as the current system does not produce a result that accurately reflects the economic source of the income or the location of the economic activity. The suggested alternative is unitary taxation using global formulary apportionment.

Distribution feeder loads classification and decomposition

Load in distribution networks is normally measured at the 11kV supply points; little or no information is known about the type of customers and their contributions to the load. This paper proposes statistical methods to decompose an unknown distribution feeder load to its customer load sector/subsector profiles. The approach used in this paper should assist electricity suppliers in economic load management, strategic planning and future network reinforcements.

Beyond the inner city : real and imagined places in creative place policy and practice

As the economic and social benefits of creative industries development become increasingly visible, policymakers worldwide are working to create policy drivers to ensure that certain places become or remain ‘creative places’. Richard Florida’s work has become particularly influential among policymakers, as has Landry’s. But as the first wave of creative industrial policy development and implementation wanes, important questions are emerging. It is by now clear that an ‘ideal creative place’ has arisen from creative industries policy and planning literature, and that this ideal place is located in inner cities. This article shifts its focus away from the inner city to where most Australians live: the outer suburbs. It reports on a qualitative research study into the practices of outer-suburban creative industries workers in Redcliffe, Australia. It argues that the accepted geography of creative places requires some recalibration once the material and experiential aspects of creative places are taken into account.

From slum to suburbia : examining a spectrum of planned and unplanned urban morphology in humid sub-tropical regions of the world

The current rapid urban growth throughout the world manifests in various ways and historically cities have grown, similarly, alternately or simultaneously between planned extensions and organic informal settlements (Mumford, 1989). Within cities different urban morphological regions can reveal different contexts of economic growth and/or periods of dramatic social/technological change (Whitehand, 2001, 105). Morpho-typological study of alternate contexts can present alternative models and contribute to the present discourse which questions traditional paradigms of urban planning and design (Todes et al, 2010). In this study a series of cities are examined as a preliminary exploration into the urban morphology of cities in ‘humid subtropical’ climates. From an initial set of twenty, six cities were selected: Sao Paulo, Brazil; Jacksonville, USA; Maputo, Mozambique; Kanpur, India; Hong Kong, China; and Brisbane, Australia. The urban form was analysed from satellite imagery at a constant scale. Urban morphological regions (types) were identified as those demonstrating particular consistant characteristics of form (density, typology and pattern) different to their surroundings when examined at a constant scale. This analysis was correlated against existing data and literature discussing the proliferation of two types of urban development, ‘informal settlement’ (defined here as self-organised communities identifiable but not always synonymous with ‘slums’) and ‘suburbia’ (defined here as master planned communities of generally detached houses prevalent in western society) - the extreme ends of a hypothetical spectrum from ‘planned’ to ‘spontaneous’ urban development. Preliminary results show some cities contain a wide variety of urban form ranging from the highly organic ‘self-organised’ type to the highly planned ‘master planned community’ (in the case of Sao Paulo) while others tend to fall at one end of the planning spectrum or the other (more planned in the cases of Brisbane and Jacksonville; and both highly planned and highly organic in the case of Maputo). Further research will examine the social, economical and political drivers and controls which lead to this diversity or homogeneity of urban form and speculates on the role of self-organisation as a process for the adaptation of urban form.

Testing a model of physical activity among mothers and fathers of young children: integrating self-determined motivation, planning, and the theory of planned behavior

Parents are at risk for inactivity; however, research into understanding parental physical activity (PA) is scarce. We integrated self-determined motivation, planning, and the theory of planned behavior (TPB) to better understand parental PA. Parents (252 mothers, 206 fathers) completed a main questionnaire assessing measures underpinning these constructs and a 1-week follow-up of PA behavior to examine whether self-determined motivation indirectly influenced intention via the TPB variables (i.e., attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control) and intention indirectly influenced behavior via planning. We found self-determined motivation on intention was fully mediated by the TPB variables and intention on behavior was partially mediated by the planning variables. In addition, slight differences in the model’s paths between the sexes were revealed. The results illustrate the range of important determinants of parental PA and provide support for the integrated model in explaining PA decision making as well as the importance of examining sex differences.

Serious playground : using Second Life to engage high school students in urban planning

Virtual world platforms such as Second Life have been successfully used in educational contexts to motivate and engage learners. This article reports on an exploratory workshop involving a group of high school students using Second Life for an urban planning project. Young people are traditionally an under-represented demographic when it comes to participating in urban planning and decision making processes. The research team developed activities that combined technology with a constructivist approach to learning. Real world experiences and purposes ensured that the workshop enabled students to see the relevance of their learning. Our design also ensured that play remained an important part of the learning. By conceiving of the workshop as a ‘serious playground’ we investigated the ludic potential of learning in a virtual world.

Creating new possibilities : using design processes to overcome constraints

This paper describes how a team from a large company, when faced with a challenge to develop new customers in fast growing international markets, carried out the exploration of the needs of new clients in the largely unexplored market space of a developing country. This team used design methods and processes to identify the latent needs of new customers in situations of major economic, geographical, cultural and financial constraints. This encapsulation of the life experiences of potential customers is used extensively in some new product development, but is largely novel to business practices and in processes of developing new services. This research links with the sub-theme of discovering creativity in necessity and highlights the potential benefits of design methodologies to create new possibilities for better accessibility of the company’s products to new clients, with future implications for organizational strategy. The overall theme of Design for the Colloquium encourages exploration of the ways and means of developing new ideas for new business with better outcomes, using design concepts and design technologies.

Environmental and economic evaluation of N fertilizer rates in a maize crop in Italy : a spatial and temporal analysis using crop models

Crop simulation models have the potential to assess the risk associated with the selection of a specific N fertilizer rate, by integrating the effects of soil-crop interactions on crop growth under different pedo-climatic and management conditions. The objective of this study was to simulate the environmental and economic impact (nitrate leaching and N2O emissions) of a spatially variable N fertilizer application in an irrigated maize field in Italy. The validated SALUS model was run with 5 nitrogen rates scenarios, 50, 100, 150, 200, and 250 kg N ha−1, with the latter being the N fertilization adopted by the farmer. The long-term (25 years) simulations were performed on two previously identified spatially and temporally stable zones, a high yielding and low yielding zone. The simulation results showed that N fertilizer rate can be reduced without affecting yield and net return. The marginal net return was on average higher for the high yield zone, with values ranging from 1550 to 2650 € ha−1 for the 200 N and 1485 to 2875 € ha−1 for the 250 N. N leaching varied between 16.4 and 19.3 kg N ha−1 for the 200 N and the 250 N in the high yield zone. In the low yield zone, the 250 N had a significantly higher N leaching. N2O emissions varied between 0.28 kg N2O ha−1 for the 50 kg N ha−1 rate to a maximum of 1.41 kg N2O ha−1 for the 250 kg N ha−1 rate.